October 2013 Issue

INSIDE

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By Lizzy Thomas

Construction on a park-ing garage on the west side of Coldwater Canyon and a pe-destrian bridge to the main entrance could begin by the beginning of the 2014-2015 school year, Vice President John Amato said.

In a letter to parents last week, Amato, who is the con-struction project spokesman, said the Upper School Park-ing Improvement Project has reached a “key milestone.”

The school published a Draft Environmental Impact Report last Thursday, a city document which describes the projected environmental effects of the proposed construction.

The Draft EIR also answers comments made by attendees at a late summer scoping meeting where the school presented the project to the public for the first time.

Following a 45-day period where members of the public and city agencies can comment on the document, the school will release a final EIR with all of the comments and the school’s responses to them.

Though the city could take issue with the final version of the EIR, the school is hopeful it will be approved.

“Anything is possible. Yes, the city could not approve it, but this is really what the city uses as a document to determine the correctness, the rightness, the properness of the project,” Amato said. “And I think, when all is said and done, we are conservatively confident that we will be able to be successful.”

The EIRs are part of the entitlement stage of the proj-ect, which involves the school getting entitled to apply for building permits and which began with the scoping meet-ing during the summer.

The entitlement process should be completed by mid to

MORE THAN A COMMUTE:Bus driver

Johnny Salazar worked in data entry in Ecuador and at a factory before his current job as a the Westchester 1 driver for Atlantic Express.

Extended mid-semester break provides opportunity for college visits, brief vacationBy sarah Novicoff

Students plan to visit col-leges, work on college ap-plications and relax during this week’s changed mid-se-mester break. Seniors will have Wednesday off while ju-niors and sophomores take the PSAT. The whole Upper School has Thursday and Fri-day off. Middle school stu-dents have spent the week on retreat.

“We feel it is almost the

only thing in recent memory that is universally appealing,” Dean Sharon Cuseo said. “I think faculty need it and stu-dents need it; seniors espe-cially are taking advantage of it as a chance to visit colleges. I think, especially since we started earlier this year, it is just the right time when peo-ple are starting to feel a little overwhelmed, and they need a chance to catch up and take a breath. I feel like it was a very positive step.”

In previous years, mid-semester break meant the Monday after the PSAT off for all three grades at the Up-per School. However, by mov-ing that day-off to Thursday and adding an additional day of break on Friday, the school hoped to give students a chance to visit schools and teachers a chance to write recommenda-tions for early applications.

“Last year we decided that, especially since we were start-ing school early, we had a few

more school days to play with essentially,” Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts said. “We thought about when those days would be best, when would a couple days off best be utilized, and we came up with the Oc-tober break. It’s really seen as a way to reduce stress around here. Seniors need it for col-leges, juniors need it because they’ve been working really hard, sophomores need it be-

• Continued on page A9


ONthEWEBCOMEDY CENTRAL:Director Jason Reitman ’95 interviews director and comedian David Wain.

Watch the video athwchronicle.com/reitman

HRONICLEtHE HaRvaRd-wEstLakE

Los Angeles • Volume 23 • Issue 3 • Oct. 15, 2013 • hwchronicle.comC

COURT CONTROL: Despite several players’ injuries, the girls’ varsity tennis team extended their win streak to move to a 6-0 season record.

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TALK THE TALK: Peter Bouckaert, a Human Rights Watch activist, spoke to students about slain photojournalist Tim Hetherington.

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JACK GOLDFISHER/CHRONICLE

By Lizzy Thomas

Last month’s Homecoming Formal was likely the first of many, prefect Sarah Winshel ’15 said.

“It was absolutely as successful if not much more so than we expected it to be,” Winshel said. “I can’t say with 100 percent certainty that it will, but I can say that there is no reason it wouldn’t become a long-standing tradition.”

High attendance at the Sept. 28 dance has gone a

long way toward instituting Homecoming Formal as a permanent tradition, Director of Student Affairs Jordan Church said. A total of 635 students attended the dance, well above expected numbers.

“Our number that was kind of a mark of if it was successful was 500,” Church said.

By comparison, attendance was significantly higher than at last year’s Whiteout dance and, taking into account that only grades 10 through 12 were permitted at the event,

similar to the typical turnout at Semiformal.

“There were hundreds of more people at this event than there were last year, which is super exciting because it was the equivalent number to Semiformal,” Winshel said. “That was our goal because we want to have something that can be as fun.”

In stark contrast to formal events of the past, the administration received no official complaints about misbehavior at Homecoming

Formal after parties or in limos on the way to the event.

“The 10-hour period post Homecoming Formal was blissfully uneventful,” Head of School Audrius Barzdukas said. “I didn’t get any phone calls, texts or emails.”

“I wish that all the students could know how much the prefects appreciated that and how much all their classmates appreciate that,” Winshel said. “Because that is what is going


KICK IN THE TEETH: Safety Chase Aldridge ’15 (#19) brings down Serra quarterback Jalen Greene (#3) as he attempts to hurdle over Aldridge in the varsity football team’s 63-7 loss Oct. 11. The defeat was the second consecutive loss after a four-game winning streak.

Adding injury to insult

Homecoming Formal likely to be annual tradition

Coldwater building may begin next year

The Harvard-Westlake Chronicle Tuesday, Oct. 15, 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 Cole Feldman

and Claire GoldsmiTh

More than 25 teachers from both the Middle and Up-per School toured celebrity homes and hotspots on a hike in the Hollywood Hills Sat-urday, Oct. 12. Upper school math teacher Bill Thill led the trip, accompanied by his friend William Miltenberger, a guide from Bikes and Hikes LA.

“Last year, we ran a small-er hike with about 12 teachers and [Miltenberger] did a great job,” Thill said. “He has a vast knowledge of movies and ce-lebrities, and is able to tell you what movie and what scene many places are from.”

The hike was followed by a barbeque at a home in the Hol-lywood Hills formerly owned

by actor Patrick Dempsey. The house, rented out by the tour company, featured a pool, paddle tennis and tennis courts for the faculty to use.

“I think it is really impor-tant for faculty to get to know each other outside of the work we do [at Harvard-Westlake],” Thill said. “We get to appreci-ate what other teachers do in different departments when we actually sit down and get a chance to know them.”

Even though the faculty live in the Los Angeles area, Thill said they still learned new things about hidden fea-tures of the city.

“[Miltenberger] does a great job at showing people that live in Los Angeles things who they never would have seen,” he said.

The teachers and admin-istrators on the hike photo-graphed celebrity homes and cars and took pictures of the vistas from Runyon Canyon.

Thill believes trips like these help the faculty bond more than they do during school hours.

“It’s hard [for us] to do a

lot of social gatherings during the week, because we are hav-ing focused conversations on work rather than getting to know each other,” he said.

Teachers hike Hollywoodoffbeat

News A4

FeAtures B7

PUSH, SLAP, DRIVE: Alex Kano ’14 prepares to sweep the ball away from a Newport High School defender in the varsity field hockey team’s game Sept. 19.

BELOW DECKS:The bomb shelter, now used for performing arts storage, is one of the lesser-known places on campus.

FORCE OF GRAVITY: Physics teachers Karen Hutchison, far left, and Jesse Reiner, far right, float in a reduced gravity aircraft Sept. 28.

IN THE SPOTLIGHT: Amita Pentakota ’14 dances with her company at the Ford Amphitheatre Sept. 21.

GRANT NUSSBAUM/CHRONICLE

TOURIST TRAP: Middle and upper school teachers pause at Runyon Canyon on a hike touring celebrity homes in the Hollywood Hills led by upper school math teacher Bill Thill Oct. 12.

PRINTD WITH PERMISSION OF WILLIAM THILL

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF AMITA PENTAKOTA

LAUREN ROTHMAN/CHRONICLE

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF ZERO-G CORPORATION

A&e B9

sports C1

By Lauren SonnenBerg

Due to the federal govern-ment shutdown, there is only one retreat option for the eighth and ninth grade classes, rather than each grade divid-ing into two groups. This is the first time in 22 years that each class has attended retreat as one group.

Ninth grade retreat is usu-ally split between wthe Upper River and the Lower River on the Colorado River. Eighth graders can usually opt to at-tend retreat at Joshua Tree National Park instead of at Al-pine Meadows, located in the San Bernardino Mountains, with the majority of their class.

However, Joshua Tree Na-tional Park and part of the

Colorado River were closed along with the rest of the National Parks in the United States when the federal g o v e r n -ment shut down Oct. 1. Due to the govern-ment shut-down, only “essential” w o r k e r s continued to receive pay.

Joshua Tree was shut down by the budget impasse in the government because it is run by the National Park Service, a United States federal agency that manages national parks.

The 60 students who signed up to attend retreat at Joshua

Tree instead joined the rest of the eighth grade at Alpine Meadows.

Because the upper part of the C o l o r a d o River is run by the Bureau of Land Man-a g e m e n t , a govern-ment agency within the

US Department of the Inte-rior that administers public lands, ninth grade retreat has been changed so that all ninth grade students will camp at Walter’s Camp and Martinez Lake, both on the Lower River.

Since the government shut-down 15 days ago, the admin-

istration has been aware of the possibility that students would not be able to attend retreat at either location, but “we waited until [Oct. 9] at noon to make the decision , hoping that our elected officials could compro-mise,” middle school dean Paul Mastin said.

Parents were notified of the change Oct. 9.

Though Mastin sees the change as a chance to provide a bonding experience for the class, some students do not share this sentiment.

“I chose to attend Joshua Tree retreat because I want-ed to go backpacking with my friends, and have bonding time without any electronics,” Elly Choi ’18 said. “When I found out that retreat was moved, I was really disappointed.”

By Sarah novicoff

Technological problems with the new Common Ap-plication, released online Aug. 1, are beginning to affect stu-dents and deans as early application deadlines approach.

“We are pretty frustrated with its functionality,” Dean Beth Slattery said. “We are quite con-cerned about these problems, especially the technological ones. We are, how-ever, confident that, with our connections to col-leges, we could fix all problems that arose and are cautiously optimistic that no serious problems will be produced.”

Out of 139 seniors polled on a Chronicle survey, 64 per-cent indicated that they have experienced problems with the Common Application. Such problems include the dele-tion of descriptions in the Ac-tivities section, missing green

check marks that indicate the completion of a section and print preview errors. Addi-tionally, students are unable to change the status of their Family Education and Privacy

Act rights, the right for a student to read teacher recommenda-tions, and must cre-ate a new account if they fail to waive such rights as deans advise.

“There’s a steep learning curve because we are still figuring it all out,” Dean Sharon Cuseo said. “Hope-fully that process will

be fine, but I think that, ulti-mately, decisions won’t be dif-ferent. It will just add a layer of stress and inconvenience, hopefully not to the applicants because the process is stress-ful enough. I think that there will be a more understanding and a more patience on the part of the college on complet-ing applications so that’s nice.”

The New York Times re-ported Sunday that colleges,

such as Cornell University and the Georgia Institute of Technology, have encountered problems processing applica-tions and are worried about functionality.

Other such problems in-clude the creation of accounts and inaccurate word counts.

“I could not sign in to the Common App because the site kept telling me that I was too young to make an account,” Bakari Bolden ’14 said. “I had to use my dean’s computer in order to create my account.”

Dean Pete Silberman rec-ommends that students expe-riencing problems check the Common Application “Knowl-edgebase” to see if solutions are known. The Common Ap-plication has received and re-solved more than 10 problems and is working on 14 more, such as issues with recom-mendation forms. The list of solutions is available at https://appsupport.commonapp.org/link/portal/33011/33013/Ar-ticle/931/Known-Issues-and-Progress-Updates.

hwchronicle.com/news news A3oct. 15, 2013

College president to discuss Civil War By henry vogeL

The president of the University of Richmond will speak on the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War and emancipation of slaves at an upper school assembly Oct. 30 in Taper Gymnasium. The speech is part of University of Richmond President and professor Edward Ayers’s national tour on the subject.

Before becoming president of the University of Richmond, Ayers taught history and wrote 10 books on American history. Some of his titles include “America’s War: Talking about the Civil War and Emancipation on their 150th Anniversaries” and “The Oxford Book of the American South.”

In addition, Ayers created a digital archive project about the Civil War and has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for his Civil War history books.

Ayers also co-hosts a radio show titled “BackStory” that relates history to modern current events and political issues.

Upper school dean Tamar Adegbile said she heard Ayers speak twice, and when Harvard-Westlake was approached by the Assistant Vice President and Dean of Admission at Richmond about the opportunity to be a stop on Ayers’ tour, she pushed for him to come.

The new assembly committee, created by Director of Student Affairs Jordan Church and Head of Upper School Audrius Barzdukas, reviewed and accepted the proposal to have Ayers visit and speak.

Online Common Application submission technology faces glitches

Middle School relocates retreat sites due to federal government shutdown

PICTURE THIS: Posters created at the second Civitalks meeting of the year hang in the Emery Room. Each Civitalks group split up into smaller groups to create posters depicting their idea of the school’s community as if they would be placed in a time capsule.

Civitalks groups create ‘time capsule’ postersSCOTT NUSSBAUM/CHRONICLE

naTHanSon’S

Beth Slattery

SOURCE: CHRONICLE POLLGRAPHIC BY SCOTT NUSSBAUM

Have you experienced problems with the Common Application?

Yes

No

Activities descriptions being deleted

Green check marks missing after completion of a section

Problems waiving FERPA rights

Other

Print review errors

Problems that have been encountered:

46%

54%

37%

74%

13%

36%

10%

“ When I found out that retreat was moved, I was really disappointed.”

—Elly Choi ’18

Out of 139 seniors polled, 64 faced complications while using the Common Application website. Seniors checked all issues that they encountered.

Reitman ’95 interviews comedian, director about films in ‘Speaking of Movies’ series

By Nikta MaNsouri

Three teachers were hon-ored by Stanford University as part of the Teacher Tribute Initiative this past month.

Latin teacher Paul Che-nier, English teacher Jocelyn Medawar and history teacher Dror Yaron were nominated by former students who are now freshmen at Stanford.

During the summer, in-coming freshmen were given the opportunity to write about a teacher who played a sig-nificant role in their lives. The university then chose a few to honor.

Conor Cuse ’13 said Medawar changed the way he felt about English and made him enjoy it.

“It was kind of an accept-ing yet rigorous and demand-ing [class],” Cuse wrote in his nomination. “It was fun, but it was interesting. For the first time it felt important. Medawar created this atmo-sphere.”

Medawar, a Stanford alumna, was touched by what Cuse said and that he spent time writing about her.

“It’s incredibly gratify-ing that a student who is in the middle of his freshman year would take the time to sit back and write something so thoughtful about me,” Medawar said. “That’s what makes it so valuable.”

Josh Lappen ’13 nominated Chenier, and Carla Sneider ’13 nominated Yaron.

“I am deeply honored to have been nominated by such an extraordinarily talented, inspiring and humble student,” Yaron said. “She came to class always eager to actively engage with her peers, posed provoca-tive questions and not once complained about the rigorous challenges of the course.”

The Teacher Tribute Ini-tiative program, which Stan-ford sponsors, was created to honor influential and inspiring teachers.

By JacoB GoodMaN

Writer, actor and director David Wain said he validated his comedic voice while work-ing with the sketch comedy group The State when he spoke to Jason Re-itman ’95 Oct. 9 in the sixth installment of Reit-man’s inter-view series “Speak ing of Movies.”

Wain has written and di-rected movies such as “Wan-derlust,” “Role Models” and “Wet Hot American Summer” and television shows like “The State” and “Children’s Hospi-tal.”

He spoke about his original aspirations and how his career as a comedian developed.

“When people said ‘What are you going to be when you grow up?’ I said ‘the best magi-

cian in the world,’” Wain said.Wain said that he moved

away from magic when he was around 12 or 13.

“The magic went out the window when I realized it

wasn’t inter-esting to girls,” Wain joked.

Wain dis-cussed his be-ginnings in the industry as a member of the sketch com-edy group The State, which he and other

students started at the Tisch School of Arts at New York University.

“As soon as I met and saw all of those guys I thought ‘Wow, this is incredible,’ Wain said.

The State was eventually turned into series that ran for two seasons on MTV. Wain and the other cast were al-lowed to run their show how they liked.

“We got into a situation

where no one was telling us what to do,” Wain said. “We didn’t come from Groundlings, UCB or Second City. We were teaching each other.”

Wain also spoke about “Wet Hot American Summer,” which he co-wrote with “The State” member Michael Show-alter.

The movie was originally a group of 10 story lines that were outlined with the inten-tion of being filmed during the summer with a bunch of friends. However, as they kept writing, the kept story devel-oping into more, and they be-gan to think of it as a feature film, Wain said.

“We started to realize it was more of a full screenplay, and then as we started to go out and try to get people to invest money in it,” he said. It took three years to finally get the movie together, he said.

“Wet Hot American Sum-mer,” which stars Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, Bradley Coo-per, and Amy Poehler pre-miered at the Sundance Film

Festival in January 2001 and was released later that year.

“The goal for us was to fin-ish it and have its day in court, which meant open in one the-ater,” Wain said. “So when it opened in two theaters that was amazing, truly.”

Wain went on to write and direct “Role Models,” “Wan-derlust” and “Children’s Hos-pital.”

Through it all, he has been influenced by that original group of comedians from The State, he said.

“My dream was always to be on ‘Saturday Night Live.’ By the time I was a sophomore in college I didn’t have that dream anymore,” Wain said. “Because I was like ‘We’re do-ing “The State.” That’s what we’re doing. That’s our thing, and I want to do my thing.’ And I’ve always done that for better or worse. I would prob-ably be a much richer man if I did something else, but I just said ‘I said I’m doing my thing whether it’s nothing or big or small, I’m doing my thing.’”

Stanford honors 3 teachers

Students with ‘growth mindsets’ make better grades, study showsBy Noa Yadidi

Students with a “growth mindset,” who are more con-cerned with learning than with getting good grades and appearing “smart,” wind up actually doing better in school and learning more, a Stanford psychology professor told fac-ulty and parents last week.

Carol Dweck, who wrote the book “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success,” spoke to faculty at 3:30 p.m. and par-ents at 7 p.m. at the Middle School.

“Some kids have a fixed mindset,” she said. “They be-lieve their talents and abili-ties are fixed traits. You have a certain amount and that’s that. This is the mindset that turns children into non-learn-ers because they are so wor-ried about how much they have and whether they’ll look smart that learning takes a back seat.”

Those with growth mind-sets, Dweck continued, believe “their basic abilities and tal-ents can be developed through hard work, perseverance, good strategies, good instruction and help from others.”

Dweck said that though you can hold a different mind-set in different areas, mind-sets can be changed.

She said that in a fixed mindset, rule number one is to “look smart at all times and at all costs. But even more so, big rule number one is never look dumb.”

“The kids who care about learning and study from learn-ing are going to be the kids who do better, rather than the kids who are just going for the grades,” Dweck said.

Dweck provided data cor-relating students categorized in “growth” and “fixed” mind-sets to test scores, with those in the “growth” category not

only doing better, but applying more effort and better dealing with setbacks.

“In a fixed mindset, effort is a bad thing,” she said. “They hate it. They believe that if you have ability, things should come naturally to you and if you have to work at something it means you’re not good at it. Those with a growth mindset think effort is a great thing, it activates your ability, allows you to use it to the fullest and it increases your ability over time.”

Dweck said that language is one of the ways teachers and parents got their values across to their students and that praise at times can have a negative effect.

“By telling them how smart they are, we are making them ashamed to be imper-fect, ashamed to be learners,” she said.

She advised the parents and faculty to try setting up a

new value system for kids re-lating the message that “easy is boring; easy is a waste of time. Hard? Now that’s inter-esting; that’s worthwhile.”

“What stood out for me in this presentation was just the irrefutable evidence that a change in thinking can have such a profound change in out-comes,” Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts said.

As a result of Dweck’s presentation, the Human De-velopment and Choices and Challenges teams will develop lessons about mindsets, Huy-brechts said.

“The value of a growth mindset is going to be a discus-sion topic in faculty meetings and now that we’ve all heard the evidence from her and

many of us have read the book, I’m sure we’ll be incorporat-ing it into our own teaching,” Huybrechts said.

One such incorporation will be in the workload survey that will be sent to all students in November, as part of a sur-vey sent every six years.

“We are asking [Dweck] for some of the research ques-tions she has used with stu-dents to discern whether they were of a fixed mindset or of a growth mindset and we’re actually going to incorporate those,” Huybrechts said.

The survey, which will be 100 percent anonymous, will attempt to collect data to see if there are correlations between fixed mindsets and other attri-butes, Huybrechts said.

Oct. 15, 2013A4 News the chrONicle

“What stood out for me in this presentation was just the irrefutable evidence that a change in thinking can have such a profound change in outcomes.”

—Jeanne HuybrechtsHead of School nathanson’s

MOVIE MAGIC: Director and comedian David Wain, right, performs a magic trick during his interview with director and writer Jason Reitman ’95. Wain spoke about how before he got into film, he wanted to be the world’s greatest magician up until he was 12 years old.

NIKTA MANSOURI/CHRONICLE

“ I’m doing my thing whether it’s nothing or big or small, I’m doing my thing.

—David Wain

By LeiLy Arzy

Upper school science teacher Walt Werner has tak-en a medical leave after being diagnosed this past June with Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph tissue.

Doctors are confident that he will be in the hospital for a stem cell transplant within a month.

The school has been very supportive and Werner hopes to be back by the beginning of second semester, his wife, his-tory teacher Francine Wer-ner, said.

Upper school science de-partment head Larry Axelrod and science teacher Dietrich Schuhl are covering Werner’s AP Biology classes during his absence.

Substitute teacher Wil-liam Peet will cover Werner’s Human Anatomy and Physiol-ogy classes for the remainder of the semester. Axelrod asked Peet to substitute because he used to teach those same courses when he was a mem-ber of the faculty from 1979-2003.

“Harvard-Westlake is a great place to teach, great stu-dents, great faculty and staff and great facilities,” Peet said.

Peet mainly taught regular, honors and AP Biology.

“I love biology and I hope to engender the same love for it in my students,” Peet said.

Although he is currently substituting for Werner, Peet has been spending his retire-ment “keeping busy with a wide variety of projects.”


Physics teachers take flight on ‘Vomit Comet’modified aircraft, experience weightlessness

Scienceteachertakes leaveof absence

By Sophie Kupiec-WegLinSKi

Physics teachers Karen Hutchison and Jesse Reiner experienced weightlessness aboard a Boeing 727 aircraft, which was modified to have re-duced gravity.

Hutchison and Reiner flew to San Jose Sept. 28 where the specialized aircraft, owned by ZERO-G Corporation, was set to take off.

“We talk a lot about weightlessness in physics class, and we came across this opportunity to experience it,” Hutchison said. “I thought it would be a good addition to our teaching.”

Reiner and Hutchison worked together in organiz-

ing the trip and getting finan-cial assistance from Harvard-Westlake.

“It was an amazing ex-perience and I’m extremely grateful for having been granted the opportunity,” Reiner said.

R e i n e r and Hutchi-son had been talking about taking the flight and decided on doing it last spring. To prepare for the one and a half hour flight, Hutchi-

son and Reiner ate a special breakfast that was low in acid and protein so it would be

easy to digest. Since nau-sea is com-mon when experiencing we ight less-ness, these aircrafts are n i c k n a m e d “Vomit Com-ets.”

O n c e aboard, the plane reaches normal cruis-ing altitude, then dives

and completes 15 parabolas, each one giving passengers

about 30 seconds of complete weightlessness. In addition, Hutchison and Reiner were able to experience the grav-ity levels similar to those on Mars and on the moon. Along with Hutchison and Reiner there were many foreign tour-ists and a research group from Motorola aboard.

On the aircraft, Hutchison and Reiner were able to play with water droplets, see how objects slowly drop to the floor in lunar and Martian gravity and fly though the air.

“I wanted to experience for myself what it feels like and to observe the physical behav-ior of bodies and other objects in a weightless environment,” Reiner said.

Teachers attend FloridaRound Square conference

By JeSSicA Spitz

Six documentaries made by students who traveled to Laos last spring break will be screened in Ahmanson Lec-ture Hall Oct. 24.

The documentaries focus on the victims of unexploded ordinance left in Laos after the Vietnam War.

The Say No to UXO Club is organizing the event, includ-ing the silent auction that will take place before the films are shown.

Framed photos taken dur-ing the trip will be sold to raise money to donate to the

people the students met while in Laos.

“We want people to be aware of the atrocities that happened in Laos,” said Dani-elle Stolz ’15, one of the stu-dents who went on the trip. “I didn’t even know about the Secret War until I talked to the people there.”

The Secret War refers to the illegal bombing of Laos by the United States in the 1970s. Many of the unexploded bombs that were dropped remain in Laos’ soil today, posing a con-stant threat to civilians.

Upper school visual arts department head Cheri Gaul-

ke was one of the leaders of the trip and is helping stu-dents create their videos and find ways to spread their mes-sage.

In addition to screening the documentaries, Gaulke plans to enter them in film festivals and put them on mul-tiple websites.

“We want the students to be responsible, active citi-zens in creating change about the issues that they learned about,” Gaulke said. “We’re trying to empower students to not just have an experience, but to tell people about the ex-perience in an artful manner.”

Students to screen Laos documentaries

By pAtricK ryAn

Upper school history teacher Nini Halkett and middle school Spanish teacher Melissa Strong attended the Round Square School Associa-tion Conference in Boca Raton, Florida from Oct. 6-10, hosted by Saint Andrew’s School.

Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts invited the two teachers to observe the con-ference to see whether Har-vard-Westlake would join the association as it seeks to “de-velop global education,” Huy-brechts said.

The organization “pro-motes in young people a com-mitment, beyond academic merit, to personal growth, and responsibility through service to others and through practi-cal, experiential learning,” ac-cording to its website.

Although Harvard-West-lake is already a part of the World Leading Schools Asso-ciation, it is looking to possi-bly join the 142 other member schools in Round Square.

Round Square was founded in 1967 and includes a much broader range of schools, span-ning over five continents.

“You come together as stu-dents from all over the world to do service, outreach and com-munity engagement,” Huy-brechts said. “[Round Square

and World Leading Schools Association] all have their mission of bringing students and teachers together from all over the world. There’s more diversity of the type of school in Round Square.”

When approached by Huy-brechts, Halkett accepted be-cause of her interest in world politics.

““I have always been inter-ested in global outreach and education,” Halkett said. “I have always been interested in how we can connect different cultures and promote interna-tional understanding as a way of reducing conflict.”

There is an application process and fee to join the or-ganization.

“My only concern about it is that it is all independent schools,” Halkett said. “I would have liked to have seen an ef-fort to reach out to state sup-ported schools. My impres-sion was that there was more racial and cultural diversity than there was socioeconomic diversity.”

The organization provides some valuable experiences for students, but the school would have make a financial commit-tment so that only a handful of students could participate in conferences, service projects or foreign exchange programs, Halkett said.

UP IN THE AIR: Physics teachers Karen Hutchison, left, and Jesse Reiner float weightlessly in a reduced gravity environment on a modified Boeing 727. The aircraft is nicknamed the ‘Vomit Comet’ due to its parabolic flight pattern, which results in zero gravity.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF JEANNE HUYBRECHTS

SMILE FOR THE CAMERA: In Sarah McAllister ’15 and Marcella Park’s ’15 documentary, the students visit the Luang Probang Preschool, where Laotian children play the game “London Bridge.”

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF SARAH MCALLISTER

“We talk a lot about weightlessness in physics class, and we came across an opportunity to experience it.

—Karen HutchisonPhysics teacher

By Su Jin nam

The Community Council sponsored the first Harvard-Westlake Sports Drive, col-lecting used sports equipment to donate to the Los Angeles Boys & Girls Club.

Community Council

planned to incorporate com-munity service into the Home-coming Dance, but ran into lo-gistical issues, and decided to hold a drive on Homecoming day and the week of Oct. 7.

The goal of the drive was not only to collect donations, but also to inform parents of

community service opportuni-ties that are available on cam-pus.

Due to the success of the drive, Community Council is considering the idea of mak-ing the drive an annual occur-rence.

“It was incredibly success-

ful — we got so many dona-tions and we were able to in-volve parents in a community service endeavor,” Community Council head Tatiana Ettens-berger ’14, said. “I certainly think we will keep it as a tra-dition since we did achieve such success with the drive.”

By Jacob Goodman

One evening last Janu-ary around dinnertime, upper school visual arts teacher Arthur To-bias and his wife noticed a group of local gang mem-bers spray-painting a wall near his West Adams home.

W h e n Tobias con-fronted them, one hit him in the head with a bottle, another drew a knife and a third shot him in the shoulder with a gun. The taggers fled when Tobias started shouting for police.

Two weeks ago, Tobias was notified that his application for victims compensation from the California state govern-ment had been denied based on the grounds that he had brought the attack on himself.

Tobias was originally hesi-tant to approach the taggers, he said.

“I was standing there thinking, ‘Should I take a gun? Should I go at all?’” Tobias said.

He decided to walk up to the taggers unarmed. He said it was ultimately better for him to go without a weapon.

“It was better for me to put myself up as an unarmed potential victim than anything else, and still try to do some-

thing,” Tobias said.

Later, as Tobias lay on an ambulance gurney, a po-liceman who was inter-viewing him s u g g e s t e d that he apply for the Cali-fornia Victim C o mpe nsa -tion Program.

The pro-gram pro-vides crime victims with monetary aid to help with

medical bills and other conse-quences of certain crimes.

The letter from the Calif. VCP refused to provide servic-es based on claims that he was negligent when he confronted the taggers.

“Our verification process revealed that your conduct was negligent and you had placed yourself in the position to be victimized when you left the safety of your home and confronted the multiple sus-pects,” the notice said.

Tobias was outraged.“[When I was lying on the

gurney] No one said we’re go-ing to make a judgment about what you did, but that’s what they did but I think based on

insufficient information,” To-bias said.

“Yes, I did know what I was doing, but I didn’t asked to be shot,” Tobias added. “They didn’t have to shoot me. I went up to them and asked them to stop what they were doing and they attacked me.”

Tobias, along with other members of his community, has been trying to improve his neighborhood for years through public service projects and the fostering of relation-ships with city officials.

“Through my efforts and other people’s: painting, clean-ing, picking up gar-bage, contacting the police…we’ve made significant improve-ments in the neigh-borhood,” Tobias said.

This is partially what angered him, he said.

“Given the history of our neighborhood and what we’ve tried to do to improve the area, what I did was a little bit of an outlier but it wasn’t really that unusual,” Tobias said.

It promotes the wrong idea when the VCA says that he should have stayed in his home, Tobias said.

“This is what made me mad about this,” Tobias said. “Stay in the safety of your home, and you give your neighbor-hood over to the bad people if you have bad people willing to come into your neighborhood,

which we do. There’s a lot of ‘training’ in place that tells you to stay in doors. But bul-lets go through walls.”

Tobias decided to appeal the claim and contact local news stations in the hopes of getting back at the VCP. A day after he received the letter, To-bias was interviewed by CBS 2 reporter Amy Johnson. He was featured on the 5 o’clock news later that evening.

Tobias was hesitant to tell people not directly related to the incident about what hap-pened, but the letter was the last straw, Tobias said.

“I felt like I was being victim-ized all over again last Thursday,” To-bias said. “The gang shot me, and now [they’re] trying to shaft me. I don’t like being called a victim, but somebody vio-lated my integrity in a way that had never happened before, and it wasn’t any-

thing that I wanted to talk to people about.”

Even after being shot, To-bias has not considered mov-ing out of his neighborhood.

“A cop who was interview-ing me on the phone finally went, ‘Why do you live here?’ and I was sort of flummoxed,” Tobias said. “It’s my neighbor-hood, I live here.”

Police are still trying to lo-cate the three taggers who at-tacked Tobias.


inbrief

Club assists special education students

The Helping Hands club has begun attending group meetings at Kids Like Me, an eight-week program that teaches specialty skills to chil-dren and adolescents with de-velopmental challenges.

“It’s a really fun way to interact with the kids while helping them at the same time,” club leader Irene Kao ’14 said. “The program is unique because the kids are doing things that they actually really enjoy, and they’re able to interact with kids like us.”

Club members are able to fulfill their community ser-vice requirements by assist-ing the children Mondays and Wednesdays at the Culver City or Sherman Oaks locations.

—Kristen Gourrier

Administration approves Spain trip

Middle School hosts Rest and Recharge day

Debater wins ‘Voices’ tournament

Debater Connor Engel ’17 won the novice division while Annie Kors ’14 was voted top participant in the round robin during the Voices Round Rob-in and Tournament this week-end in San Jose.

At the Long Beach tourna-ment Sept. 28 and 29, Noah Simon ’17 won the JV division while Kevin Wesel ’17 reached semifinals. In the novice di-vision, Kami Cooper ’17 and Dario Madyoon ’17 were co-champions. Three freshmen also received speaker awards.

“So far we are off to a great season, we have a bigger team than we’ve ever had and a lot of really talented debaters,” coach Nate Zerbib-Berda said.

—Sacha Lin

Students will have the op-portunity to go on a two-week tour of Spain during spring break.

The trip, chaperoned by Spanish teacher Javier Zara-goza, will be from March 21 to April 6.

Students are scheduled to spend five days in Toledo and Valencia each. In these cities, students will participate in homestays and take Spanish classes during the day. Stu-dents will spend 40 hours in classes at the Aula Institute in Toledo and the Españolé Insti-tute in Valencia, equivalent to one semester of Spanish class.

Weekends are scheduled to be spent in the cities of Ma-drid, Zaragoza and Barcelona.

—Morganne Ramsey

The second annual middle school Rest and Recharge Day was Oct. 4. No homework was assigned for the weekend.

R&R Day will happen once each quarter and is run by the Middle School Student Coun-cil. After each R&R Day, there will be no homework, This first R&R Day coincided with Homecoming, Oct. 5.

“I think R&R has been re-ally effective in accomplishing its original purpose: to relieve Harvard Westlake students’ stress,” Senator Matt Thomas ’17 said.

—Jonathan Seymour

South African students, director visit Upper SchoolBy Scott nuSSbaum

Two juniors and the school director from the Tiger Kloof School in South Africa visited classes and spoke with faculty Oct. 8.

The Children Overseas Club, led by co-presidents Kelsey Ogomori ’14 and Di-vya Siddarth ’14, organized the visit as part of its efforts to form a connection between the two schools.

“It was incredible to talk to them be-cause they offer such a deep perspective,” Sid-darth said. “Our lives are just so different, and sometimes living in Los Angeles can put blinders on your world view.”

The visitors ob-served Psychology, AP Latin and Studies in Scientific Research classes and met with deans to discuss their visit.

“The connection between students and teachers is so different,” Matshidiso Le-galamitlwa said. “The interac-tion and relationship is clearly very deep at Harvard-West-

lake.”The students’ and school

director Mark Boobbyer’s itin-erary was designed to give them a complete look at the different departments and ex-tracurricular activities offered at Harvard-Westlake.

“The class difference is nothing like our school,” Thabang Mohumapele said. “At our school, when you are studying science, you only

take science classes. When you study math, you only take math classes. The class diversity was the one of the most shocking things.”

The three visitors will also travel to high schools in Connecticut, Washington D.C. and Oregon. While there, they will also visit local colleges.

“The idea is to establish a connection with these schools which may lead to exchange and study abroad opportuni-ties for our students,” Boob-byer said. “Tiger Kloof is such a different school it is almost impossible to compare, but you

can always see what works in a school environment and what does not. It is not all about the facilities but the people who attend the school.”

In the past year, the club has sent students to visit Ti-ger Kloof in Vryburg, South Africa, set up a pen pal pro-gram and held numerous fun-draisers to raise funds that

were donated to Tiger Kloof. The club is currently working to set up a video chat network between the two schools.

“It was very interesting to see the level of independent study expected from students at Harvard-Westlake,” Boob-byer said. “That is definitely something we can take back from this visit.”

CBS interviews teacher who was attacked

nathanson’s

Kelsey Ogomori ’14

Student drive collects used sports equipment

LONG DISTANCE: Thabang Mohumapele, left, from the Ti-ger Kloof School in South Africa poses with Divya Siddarth ’14.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF DIVYA SIDDARTH

“ Stay in the safety of your home, and you give your neighborhood over to the bad people if you have bad people willing to come into your neighborhood, which we do.”

—Arthur TobiasVisual Arts Teacher

nathanson’s

Arthur Tobias

By Lauren rothman

The yearbook is asking clubs to submit their own pho-tographs for the yearbook this year.

Photos are due Nov. 1, and club leaders can post their photos, taken with a phone or cam-era, on the iPhone app I n s t a g r a m and tag the Vox account or hashtag the year-book with #HWVOX.

T h e s e photos will be in Vox Populi XXIII. The pho-tos, all squares, will be used creatively in a unique design.

The idea behind this way of representing clubs is to bring out their personality, yearbook adviser Jen Bladen said.

“The idea was inspired

when last year the Mine-craft club sent us their own picture,” Bladen said. “They made themselves into little Minecraft animated charac-ters. We found this so cute and fun, and we wanted to do something like it.”

W h e n Bladen an-nounced the idea to the Y e a r b o o k staff, it was supported.

“I really liked the idea because it’s a way for clubs to have com-plete control over how

they want to creatively repre-sent themselves through a pic-ture,” Clubs Editor Christina Tribull said.

Club heads are asked to submit the names and years of graduation of people in the pictures for the yearbook staff.

By David WoLdenberg

Human Rights Watch Emergencies Director Peter Bouckaert engaged in a Q&A with viewers who attended a documentary screening where he explained his relation-ship with the documentary’s subject, photojournalist Tim Hetherington.

Performing arts teacher Ted Walch hosted the screen-ing of “Which Way is the Front Line,” which chronicles Hetherington’s career cov-ering wars in Africa and Af-ghanistan, Oct. 1.

Bouckaert described how he was on Skype with film-makers in Libya when he learned Hetherington had died and how he arranged to have his body sent to England for burial.

Bouckaert was also the one who told Hetherington’s girl-friend and family about his death. He gave Hetherington’s camera to his mother.

“[I gave her] the camera he’d been carrying through

which he saw the world,” Bouckaert said.

Bouckaert also talked about how Hetherington constantly found himself in harm’s way, on the front line, but how he knew that it was one aspect of being a good photojournalist. He cared less about the “bang-bang” of war than about the people affected, Bouckaert said.

Bouckaert also spoke about when he first joined Human Rights Watch and the changes within the organization since then, including ones that make an effort to get information to people as quickly as possible , while still making each report

unique and motivating.“We reinvented the meth-

odology of the Human Rights Watch; we kept the same stan-dard of excellence,” Bouckaert said.

Bouckaert said he wanted to not just depict what was happening but also attempt to fix it as an organization.

“Our job was to save lives and not just to document the killings afterward,” Bouckaert said.

Walch taught Bouckaert at the Branson School in North-ern California in 1988, and have remained in close friends since. When Walch heard Bouckaert’s was hosting movie

screenings for Human Rights Watch, he convinced him to show it at the upper school.

The film starts with Heth-erington’s early life and his first assignment in Liberia. Hetherington would not just highlight the blood and gore of war but also the humane and unreported aspects of war. The documentary featured a series Hetherington shot about American soldiers sta-tioned in Afghanistan. He de-picted the untold story of the soldiers as boys, like any other young Americans, and cap-tured them saying quotes like, “It’s not a murder; it’s war. There’s a difference.”

inbrief

Spanish teachers attend AP seminar

Teachers attended a semi-nar last Friday titled “Verti-cal Teaming and Scaffolding of Instruction” given by Laura Zanke, the College Board’s co-chair of AP Spanish Language and Culture development. Due to the visitor, Spanish classes were cancelled for the day.

The seminar’s purpose was to teach instructors activities that better students’ commu-nication in real-world situa-tions, a skill evaluated on the exam.

“If you go to Spain, no one’s going to ask you to conjugate a verb,” World Languages department head Margot Riemer said, “They’re going to try to talk to you and hope you can respond.”

—Morganne Ramsey

Alumni to mentor through networking

HW Works and the Har-vard-Westlake African-Amer-ican Alumni Network will hold a speed networking night Oct. 24.

Alumni representing vari-ous industries, including fi-nance, journalism and enter-tainment, will mentor recent graduates and current stu-dents through the job market and career opportunities.

The event will feature nine “speed networking” ses-sions, during which attendees can seek advice regarding the mundane, including proper resume format, to extremely important matters, such as career choices, alumni admin-istrator Janiece Richard said.

—Kenneth Schrupp

President Rick Commons will address alumni and their parents Oct. 16 at the middle school at an event titled “Meet the President.”

The event already has 300 RSVPs from families and alumni.

Commons said he still does not know what he will say to the attendees but said he hopes to figure it out soon.

“It’s like I have a paper with an approaching deadline, and I know I’ve got to get it done,” Commons said.

—Jack Goldfisher

Commons to speak to alumni, parents

Middle school bus schedule to change

All Middle School late bus departure times will be changed to 5:45 p.m. Monday to Friday, effective Oct. 21. Along with the late bus time change, the late shuttle bus from the Upper to the Middle School will depart at 5:10 p.m. Early buses and shuttle times will not change.

Departure times are per-manently pushed back due to the traffic on Coldwater Can-yon.

“The buses are being held [in traffic] with kids who have to go back to the Middle School, and they all arrive af-ter the buses pull out,” Direc-tor of Student Financial Af-fairs Patti Snodgrass said.

—Sharon Chow


Student clubs take own yearbook photos

Journal publishes teacher’s researchBy Jack goLdfisher

Though science teacher Antonio Nassar has had 56 research papers published in physics journals during his career at Harvard-Westlake and the University of Califor-nia Los Angeles, he considers his latest to be his crowning achievement.

“There was always one journal, the most prestigious one, that never published me before,” Nassar said. “But now that journal has.”

The journal is Physical Review Let-ters, the first publish-ers of famous papers like Peter Higgs’s discovery of the “God Particle.”

Nassar’s paper, co-authored with Spanish physics professor Salvador Miret-Artés, upsets a common belief in physical science: that at the exact moment a particle is observed it loses its quantum properties and becomes a clas-sical physics particle. Nassar’s research led him to conclude that this does not happen in-stantaneously but occurs over a timespan of 10-26 seconds, one sextillionth of the time it takes for lightning to flash once.

An example of this prin-ciple is the “Schrödinger’s Cat” thesis: one does not know whether a cat inside a closed box with a vial of poison equal-ly liable to kill the cat or leave it unharmed, is dead or alive. By opening the box and “mea-suring” the cat’s life state, the observer instantly changes the state and invalidates his or her own measurement.

This belief agrees with

what Nassar describes as the “Copenhagen orthodox” school of thought. Nassar’s own work falls under an oppositional category called “Bohmian me-chanics.” However, up until now, the only split between the two groups has been the meth-od of discovery, not the conclu-sions they reach, Nassar said.

Nassar’s discovery, he said, is revolutionary as it could not have been found with the orthodox method of physical thought.

“In a sense, it is the first true Bohmian discov-ery,” Nassar said. “It’s something that really changes the game.”

Nassar adapted ideas in this paper from a paper he pre-viously published, which was his first attempt to find the value of the Bohm-ian time constant he found in his research

for this paper. While his study was pub-

lished this week, it could be a long time before its main the-sis is experimentally proven.

“I feel like I’ve found some-thing big, but many theories are beautiful and unproven,” he said. “I’m not even sure I’ll be alive to see this proven. Technology has to progress more before that can happen.”

While Nassar said this dis-covery may not affect people’s daily lives, he believes it will spur innovative thinking and pave the way for future chang-es.

“I hope that my work in-spires people to go into the discovery process and not just seek financial success,” Nassar said. “There’s immense poten-tial for discovery out there.”

Activist speaks at movie screening

PAGE TURNER: The book club poses with chosen novels. Victo-ria Keating ’16, back and second from the left, started the club.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF SHANNON ACEDO

nathanson’s

Antonio Nassar

TED TALKS: Performing arts teacher Ted Walch and Human Rights Watch activist Peter Bouck-aert, a friend of deceased journalist Tim Hetherington, speak in a Q&A after the movie screening.

HENRY HAHN/CHRONICLE

“ It’s a way for clubs to have complete control over how they want to creatively represent themselves.”

—Jen BladenYearbook Adviser


Students, parents attend Rwanda trip information session, learn about genocide

Performing arts teacher hires aide

RWANDA BOUND: Friendship Tours World Traveler founder Alethea Tyner Paradis speaks to the students and parents who attend-ed the Rwanda meeting Oct. 3. Attendees learned about the upcoming trip to Rwanda, where students will interview survivors of the geno-cide and produce projects depicting their visit. Visual arts department head Cheri Gaulke and an award-winning producer also spoke.

MARCELLA PARK/CHRONICLE

By Marcella Park

A meeting in Ahmanson Lecture Hall Oct. 3 presented students and parents with in-formation on a trip to Rwanda to investigate the Rwandan genocide and its effects.

Award-winning producer Jeff MacIntyre, Friendship Tours World Travel founder Alethea Tyner Paradis and upper school visual arts de-partment head Cheri Gaulke talked about the goals and itinerary of the trip.

Students will interview people with different views on the genocide, including Gabo Wilson, the former Head of Security in Rwanda who worked with now-President Paul Kagame to establish con-trol after the 1994 genocide; western investors in the min-eral industry there and rep-resentatives of both the Hutu

and Tutsi ethnic groups that clashed during the genocide.

Each student will produce a media project in the form of a documentary or slideshow depicting their trip.

MacIntyre, Paradis and Gaulke will coach students throughout the trip and help channel these projects toward organizations that might use them, including ABC, the San-ta Barbara International Film Festival and non-profit orga-nizations Creative Visions and Witness.

The trip costs $1350 for airfare and an $800 deposit to the tour company is due by Oct. 30, and another $3575 is due by Nov. 21.

Applications for financial aid are due Oct. 15.

The trip will run from Jan. 23 to Feb. 2, requiring stu-dents to miss the last day of midterms and the first three

days of the second semester, allowing for students projects to be part of the news cycle on the genocide’s 20th anniver-sary.

Students can enroll in the Directed Studies course in the Interdisciplinary Studies and Independent Research department to set aside time during the school day to work on them.

One of the main ques-

tions to investigate will be how Rwanda has become the saf-est country in Africa since the genocide, in which “800,000 people were butchered in 100 days at three times the rate of the Holocaust,” Paradis said.

The same three instruc-tors took students to Laos last spring break to make doc-umentaries about the unex-ploded ordinance problem left there by the Vietnam War.

By enya Huang

Performing arts teach-er Shawn Costantino hired new assistant Matt Yeakley to teach his sixth period Jazz Rhythm Section class this year.

After performing arts teacher Mark Hilt created a second music theory section, he turned his Wind Ensemble class over to Costantino.

Costantino said he wanted to streamline all the classes involving wind, brass, and per-cussion.

“I didn’t feel like teaching all five of my classes myself was realistic,” Costantino said.

Costantino chose Yeakley as his assistant out of a hand-ful of musicians with whom he works with regularly.

“He plays guitar, and the Jazz Rhythm section has a lot of guitar players, so I wanted a good guitar-playing teacher,” Costantino said.

Both of Yeakley’s parents were musicians always had instruments lying around. He remembers when he first picked up a guitar in 2000.

“On a summer break when I was in high school, I was like, oh, well, I should probably pick that [guitar] up, learn how to play it,” Yeakley said.

After studying classical music theory at a community college in San Diego, Yeakley transferred to the Musicians Institute in Hollywood.

“It was a natural transition for me to continue that study,” Yeakley said.

Yeakley welcomed Costan-tino’s offer as a venue of ex-ploring his love for jazz.

“What was interesting about the Harvard-Westlake gig was that it was an oppor-tunity for me to talk about jazz stuff to people who were be-yond the basics,” Yeakley said.

“They did a really good job of painting a picture of what the trip was actually going to be like. It’s not entirely service, but it’s not entirely a vacation.”

—Tatiana Ettensberger ’14

soundbyte

nathanson’s

By angela cHon

The cycling club joined thousands of other cyclists to participate in their first CicLAvia event as a group.

Held Oct. 6, the eighth CicLAvia event since its start in downtown Los Angeles in 2010, welcomed cyclists as well as pedestrians to ride or walk down typically car-heavy streets.

“A number of people have gone to the event before, but as a school organized event, this was the first time,” sci-ence teacher and club adviser Dietrich Schuhl said.

However, few students participated as it was held the day after Homecoming. It was also early in the year and many senior members were working on college applications.

“It’s hard to expect a lot of people to come,” Schuhl said. “It’s a really laid back kind of thing.”

President Rick Commons and his family, Senior Alumni

Officer Harry Salamandra, Head of School Jeanne Huy-brechts and her husband, As-sistant Director of Admissions Melanie Leon, English teacher Chris Rutherford, Alumni Ad-ministrator Janiece Richard and her husband and parents joined Schuhl and members at 9:30 a.m.

They crossed a bridge over the Los Angeles River into Boyle Heights and then biked to the downtown Los Angeles arts district.

There, they ate lunch and hung out after the event was over.

“Our club met at a great bistro called Bottega Louie for breakfast and then headed out down 7th St. on our trip around downtown,” cycling club head Amiya Brown ’14 said. “We circled down to 14th and Central, the produce and industrial section of the city before doubling back and tak-ing Spring St. into the heart of the downtown Civic Center.”

HOT WHEELS: Members of the cycling club, including students and teachers, parents of members, and President Rick Commons’ and his children, pose for a photo together after the CicLAvia event.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF AMIYA BROWN

Cycling club rides in first CicLAvia

Freshmen midterm exam format to change By lauren Sonnenberg

The ninth grade class will no longer take midterm ex-ams, effective this year. In the past, ninth graders were separated from the rest of the middle school student body in mid-January to take semester exams in their core academic classes. Ninth graders will still take final exams at the end of the school year.

This change in policy comes with a hope that “go-ing off for Winter Break with cumulative exams out of the way will mean [students] can use that time more fully to recharge and to start second semester off on a good foot,” middle school English teacher and Faculty Academic Com-mittee chair Julia Grody said.

The decision to change midterm testing was prompt-ed by the earlier school year start date, Grody said.

Though there are no of-ficial midterms, teachers can still give their students semes-ter exams, but any potential exams will be administered in classrooms. Students used to

take tests in the same subject at the same time in Marshall Center.

Additionally, any tests or projects administered in the first semester must be com-pleted before winter break.

Due to the testing change, Marshall can remain open for athletic events in January. In addition, students will not take back-to-back two-hour midterms, as they have in the past.

The decision to halt mid-terms at the Middle School may benefit students in the short-term, but some students are concerned about how this will affect their transition to the Upper School, where se-mester exams occur in Janu-ary and in June.

“This could be a bad idea because it would be nice to ex-perience what midterms are like before getting thrown into them at the Upper School,” Casey Crosson ’18 said.

It is up to each teacher’s discretion whether they will give midterm exams, unit tests, or something more spe-cific to their class.


SING-ALONG: Chamber Singers play volleyball at Camp Wrightwood in Wrightwood, Calif., left. Male singers discuss new pieces with choral director Rodger Guerrero, top right. Seniors in Chamber Singers pose with their new sweatshirts in front of the camp, bottom right.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF ANDREA TORRE

Chamber Singers practice new songs, participate in group activities on retreatBy Zoe Dutton

Chamber Singers gathered at Camp Wrightwood in the San Gabriel Mountains for their annual retreat Sept. 27-28.

Students rehearsed new songs and played volleyball as a group activity. At the end of the retreat, students gathered in a full circle to share their feelings and experiences dur-ing the retreat and discuss their expectations for the year.

The retreat was chaper-oned by choral teacher Rodger Guerrero and piano accompa-nist Sara Shakliyan.

“We had just a fantastic time,” Guerrero said. “Choirs really have their own, unique personalities, and it’s impor-tant to self-discover who they are early on in order to prog-ress as a musical unit. The singers come from such di-verse Harvard-Westlake areas because Chamber Singers is one of the few specific activi-ties that includes sophomores, juniors and seniors.” Even though the students are very different, Guerrero said that the retreat brought the group together. 39 of the 41 Cham-ber Singers attended the re-treat.

“The retreat was a great bonding experience,“ Delilah Napier ’15 said. “We got so much work done and it was so great to work to-gether in a n o n - s c h o o l environment. I feel like I learned so much more about my peers.”

The tradition of the Cham-ber Singers retreat began in 2002 in an effort to bring the

choir closer together.“My favorite part always

is the final discussion,” G u e r r e r o said. “The singers sit in a huge circle in our re-hearsal room. Each member then speaks to their re-treat experi-ence, what C h a m b e r

Singers and music in general mean to them and their hopes and dreams for the year.”

“ It’s important to self-discover who they are early on in order to progress as a musical unit.”

—Rodger Guerrerochoral teacher

Peer Support draws studentsBy Carly Berger

A total of 417 students,

nearly half of the upper school student body, signed up for Peer Support at Activities Fair this year, making it the largest club on campus.

Peer support coordinators also created groups without any adult involvement for the first time. Although many stu-dents signed up, only about 300 students attended the first meeting held Oct. 7.

This attendance is fairly common for the first couple of meetings, Peer Support super-visor Luba Bek said.

After the first couple of meetings, the attendance tends to drop, Bek said.

“What is predictable ev-ery year is the attendance,” Bek said. “The first couple of meetings are quite big, and then things quiet down. Some people are too busy. Some peo-ple decide they can’t commit to Peer Support. Some people are just not the ‘Peer Support’ type.”

Bek attributes the amount of students signed up to the activeness of the Peer Support trainees and leaders at Activi-ties Fair.

While the numbers are en-couraging for the popularity of Peer Support, they also made it very difficult for the coordi-nators to split the large crowd of students into the usual amount of 14 groups.

“Choosing groups was definitely really hard because we wanted to make the best groups possible but at the same time meet everyone’s needs,” Peer Support coordi-nator Sophie Sunkin said.

School presents project to public, submits draft of environmental report

“ It’s a concern. Anytime your neighbors are unhappy with you, you can’t ignore them.”

—John AmatoVice President

late June 2014, Amato said. The project will then prog-

ress to the permit stage, which will likely take the summer, putting construction on track to start in August or Septem-ber, Amato said. Construction is projected to take a compa-rable amount of time to the middle school modernization project, Amato said.

“From start to finish, we plan to have construc-tion completed in two years,” Amato said. “By comparison, the middle school project took

about two years.” The school has received no

negative com-ments since the draft EIR was made public though the project has not been c o m p l e t e l y immune to oppos i t i on . Save Coldwa-ter Canyon! Inc., whose website de-scribes its goal as “to preserve the beauty and tranquility of Coldwater Canyon, with the

immediate goal of stopping the Harvard-Westlake plan

in its tracks,” formed on the heels of the scoping meeting.

“It’s a concern. Any time your n e i g h b o r s are unhappy with you, you can’t ignore them,” Amato said. “We’ll

be calm and try to meet with them and mitigate the con-cerns they have.”

• Continued from page A1

Estimated Parking Structure Timeline

SOURCE: JOHN AMATOGRAPHIC BY SCOTT NUSSBAUM

Enviromental Impact Report draft submitted Oct. 10

The parking structure has begun the entitlement process, in which the city will review and approve construction plans. Next, it must move to the permit approval process and begin construction.

Final Enviromental Impact Report to be released Nov. 24

Permit process begins next summer

Construction begins during the 2014-2015 school year

The plan projects the environmental impact of construction and questions can be raised by public and city agencies on the estimated impact.

Proposed questions will be addressed and the city will decide whether to approve the final plan.

>>

>>>>

>>


to make it a tradition in the future, that everyone could come together and be so awesome about that.”

Attendees also seemed to enjoy the dance held in Taper Gym, Barzdukas and Winshel said.

“The vibe during the event was of kids having fun. I think people had fun. It was a real high school homecoming dance in the gym that came off really well,” Barzdukas said.

“It was more like your classic dance and it was more Harvard-Westlake spirited [than in years past], obviously in perfect timing since it was

the week before Homecoming,” Winshel said. “I think people more enjoyed the feel of it, since it had almost a clubby vibe.”

To achieve that ambience and transform Taper Gym into a place nearly unrecognizable from the site of basketball games, Prefect Council consulted WOW! Special Events.

The school had the idea of completely carpeting the gym’s hardwood floor with black turf.

“That was a great idea because if you can see the basketball court, then it’s one thing but if that’s all covered with the dance floor

in the middle it adds so much,” Winshel said.

Another likely tradition was inaugurated during the weeklong Homecoming celebration.

The annual Homecoming pep rally showcased a relay race on an inflatable obstacle course between faculty and their children who also attend the Upper School.

The faculty parent-student race will probably be continued in coming years as well, Church said.

“There are enough faculty kids that will still be at the school to continue it,” Church said. “Plus the faculty need a chance to redeem themselves.”


DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION: Upper school students dance with their peers as a hired DJ plays music in front of a screen displaying music videos that went along with the song playing at the moment.

SCOTT NUSSBAUM/CHRONICLE

Prefects, administration consider Homecoming Formal successful

cause they’ve been working re-ally hard too. Faculty, who are writing up to 30 recommenda-tion letters, need it to write those letters.”

81 per-cent of 142 seniors polled reported that they will spend part of the break working on collgee appli-cations while 36.6 percent reported that they will visit colleges over the break. Sam Weintraub ’14 will use the break for the second pur-pose: visiting colleges that he wouldn’t have otherwise seen before the early deadlines.

“I’m visiting UT Austin, Tulane, Indiana and Michi-gan,” Weintraub said. “Missing one day of school on its own is so overwhelming. Missing a whole week would be really stressful. I’m really happy that we get this week off not only because it will allow me to re-lax, but also because I believe it will really influence where I end up. Seeing a school first-hand I believe is the best way to determine whether a school is truly right for you.”

Cuseo echoed that state-ment, saying she hopes that

students will now make more thoughtful and well-informed decisions as a result of the break.

“I’m hoping that maybe better decisions will be made,”

Cuseo said. “I don’t think it will change the percent-age [of stu-dents who apply early] because that is going to be high no mat-ter what, but maybe if they are going to do Early De-

cision where they are really committing, it will be more thoughtful.”

75.2 percent of 139 juniors polled reported that they will use the break to unwind and relax in Los Angeles.

“I’m so excited to go to Six Flags over mid-semester break with my friends,” Shan-nyn Schack ’15 said. “I am re-ally looking forward to riding all the new rides, especially Superman. It’s going to be so much fun.”

83.6% of 148 sophomores polled reported they will spend the break relaxing and unwinding in Los Angeles, like the juniors.

“This is the first year, and I can honestly say that I believe we will do it again,” Cuseo said.


“ I can’t really call it a break from work, but it’s a break from the teaching day I need.”

—Jocelyn Medawar English Teacher

Students to spend break visiting colleges, unwinding at home

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:

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:

Angela Chon, 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

sPorts assistants: Bennett Gross, Caitlin

Neapole, Jonathan Seymour, Henry Vogel, Audrey Wilson

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 wEBMastErs:

David Gisser, Josh Shapiro

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.

HRONICLEtHE HaRvaRd-wEstLakE

Los Angeles • Volume XXIII • Issue III • Oct. 15, 2013 • hwchronicle.comC OpINION

The Chronicle • Oct. 15, 2013

editorial

Homecoming embodies the best of our school — the drive, the enthusiasm and the community. While this shined through for most of the lead-up to Homecoming, some of these aspects were lost day-of, when those emotions should have been amplified most.

Homecoming week kicked off with a strong turnout at the first-ever Homecom-ing Formal. This time around, it seemed like the warning bells were finally heard, and the night went off without a hitch. For one night, we were normal highschoolers — our school gym was transformed into a dance floor, our suits were adorned with bouton-nieres and our wrists with corsages and our nights ended in a backyard, cozied up next to our dates.

Coming off of the excitement of the dance, throughout the weeklong Fanatic Fest, we ate crepes, dressed up like cowboys and tourists and cheered on our teachers as they challenged their children to an obstacle course they were doomed to lose. Fanatic Fest got our blood pumping as we witnessed the Wolverine mascot tackle Jackson Bea-vers ’15 dressed as the Palisades Charter High School mascot, but the Homecoming fervor was tempered by discomfort as the Head Fanatics and cheerleaders tried to energize the school with borderline inap-propriate dancing at the pep rally. While we appreciated the effort, it seemed the line between appropriate cheering and provoca-tive dancing was blurred. Although the in-tention was to raise school spirit, ultimately teachers and students felt uncomfortable,

bringing the otherwise effective pep rally to a somewhat disappointing end.

When the big day came Saturday, boys’ water polo brought the only win, over Long Beach Wilson, with girls’ volleyball falling short against Lakewood High School and the previously undefeated football team losing to Palisades Charter High School. The previous week (and four straight football wins) had raised our expectations, only to have them crushed by a heartbreaking loss to a team we were favored to beat.

To add insult to injury, the bleachers lacked a student section, and we lost our home-field advantage. The Fanatics and the Administration failed to communicate, and the lack of a place to sit together led to stu-dents milling around on the track. Given the absence of a dedicated section, students and Fanatics should have organized themselves and roused the team, even without seats. We look to the Head Fanatics as examples, and knowing this, they failed to deliver and some went as far as to go home early. We followed their lead and let our team down.

The football team kept playing as the score got worse and worse, and we should have stood behind our classmates as they represented our school. As the clock ticked down and the score became more demoral-izing, the thud of opposing pads was ampli-fied by the silence as we made a beeline for our cars. We left the football players alone to shoulder the burden, when we should have walked off the field as one — one school and one team.

Stand behind our teamJacob Goodman/CHRONICLE

Oct. 15, 2013A12 OpiniOn the chrOnicle

We all have secrets. Some secrets are the result of things

we keep private from oth-ers for fear that we might be judged harshly. Some secrets just happen, not because of anything we do or say, but just because life moves fast and people don’t have the time or interest to learn these secrets.

My secret? I have a twin. Many of my friends don’t even know he exists. Sure, everyone knows my older brother, Jake ’11. He made quite a splash here. He is as opinionated as I am, we have had many of the same teach-ers and we share some of the same friends. But people do not know my secret twin, Brad.

We were born a minute apart and we live just feet away from each other, yet we live in different worlds. Sure, I see him all the time. Some-times I don’t see him but just feel his presence or the effects of his presence. He confettis my room. He steals cookies I make for friends’ birthdays. When friends come over, they

are surprised to meet my se-cret twin. Physically, we are different. He towers over me, he sings and acts, he reads obscure existential novels and contemplates string theory.

But he isn’t just physi-cally different. He attends high school in a different place — a different world. His high school isn’t the academic powerhouse of Harvard West-lake, but it has attributes that make it special in a different way. Brad’s high school more closely resembles the sort of place my parents speak about when they reminisce about their youth — dress up days, less competition, unabashed school spirit, a shared value system. At my brother’s school, everyone knows he has a twin sister. It’s indicative of a sharing community — it has traditions and a persona that I am envious of.

In some ways, I think of our Homecoming Formal, with its “retro” venue of our own Taper Gym, as a step toward being more like a “typical” high school. I had a sense, being at the gym all

decked for a dance, that this high school has a soul, some-thing that hasn’t always been clear.

In some sense, the dance made our school seem a little bit more like my secret twin’s school. Perhaps we should try to get in touch with that feel-ing more often.

This got me thinking. Perhaps we should step a bit out of our comfort zone and get to know more about each other and each other’s secrets. Harvard-Westlake doesn’t have a corner on the market on high school ex-perience. There is much we can gain from emulating the best in others. I’m going to start by sharing a secret or two. One, I liked our simple homecoming dance. We should be open to more events like this. Two, I have a secret twin. We should be a little less self-absorbed and focused only on what affects us day to day. We should want to know more about each other and our secrets. It’s time for us to meet each other’s secret twins.

You’d think that with a name like Pak, it would be easy to think of a

pun, and yet I still haven’t figured out what my Facebook name should be.

Every year, seniors em-brace the tradition of chang-ing their names on Facebook. Originally intended to hide profiles from colleges or companies, these new names range from various inside jokes and pop culture refer-ences to rhymes or wordplay.

So far the senior class has produced some entertaining names on Facebook. Some names that I particularly ap-preciate this year include Alex See Ya Later (Alexia Le ’14), Juanton Soup (Juan Acevedo ’14) and of course Large (Sam Sachs ’14). On the other hand, I still scratch my head when Mook Hurt (Oliver Goodman-Waters ’14) and KickedAnd TamperedWith (Alex Thal ’14) appear on my newsfeed.

I’ve never changed my name before, but I’ve thought about doing it for a couple of years. Seeing the previous senior classes produce cre-ative new names excited me, and I resolved that, with such an easy last name, I would come up with a great alias. I couldn’t wait until I was a senior, except now it’s actually happened and I don’t have a name.

Right off the bat, I strayed away from being that Asian kid who decides to write his name in Chinese or Korean. No offense, but that’s hardly creative, and it just makes it hard to find on Facebook.

I couldn’t find a name that took advantage of my mono-syllabically rhymable last name while also appealing to a wide audience.

For a while in my head, I would even go through the alphabet thinking of words rhyming with Pak — back,

hack, lack, etc. However, none produced any results.

A few names that have shown promise include Pak Man, Tupak and even Paks Romana, a reference to an-cient Rome that I particularly enjoy.

I’ve tried to solicit ideas from all of my friends, but none of their ideas seemed very plausible. As I fielded ideas, a couple people would agree, but one or two would shut it down. I soon realized that there is no way to come up with the perfect name. There are great aspects to every name, but it is a habit to find what people wouldn’t like about it.

Of course, as a first quarter high school senior in struggling to finish college applications, Facebook should probably be the least of my worries.

I feel like deciding on a name would provide some sort of comfort and distraction from my daily stress, except I can’t tell if this is actually contributing to it.

Perhaps the struggle to find a name provides more distraction then settling on the name itself.

I would rather not use the saying that satisfaction comes from the journey rather than the destination, but I’ve al-ready said it.

However, I can’t help thinking that maybe part of the reason I haven’t decided on a name is that I’ve enjoyed the act of searching for one. I’ve probably overthought the whole situation, and the name I finally choose will merit more disapproval than I would like, but at least I am confident that it will accu-rately represent my creativity and pride in being a senior.

If you think you have a good idea, let me know. I’m still looking.

By Jensen Pak

By Claire Goldsmith

By Lauren Sonnenberg

A few of my secrets

Your shutdown rundown: what you need to know

Un-Pak your ideas

You’ve probably heard a lot about the debt ceiling and the shut-

down in recent weeks, but it’s admittedly pretty hard to understand the complex fiscal policies and decisions of the United States. So, I’ve assem-bled a handy FAQ for all your shutdown information needs.Why is there a government shutdown?

Basically, Congress didn’t pass a budget for the 2014 fis-cal year, and without money allotted for various govern-ment departments, they can’t function. In the last few days of September, the government tried in various ways to avert the shutdown. The Sen-ate passed a bill that would have funded the government through December; Repub-licans in the House passed a similar bill that also defunded the Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s heath care reform bill. The two chambers went back and forth several times, with Republicans re-fusing to compromise or pass a “clean” bill (one without

provisions changing or delay-ing the ACA).

Because of the shutdown, 800,000 “non-essential” fed-eral workers have been fur-loughed, meaning they can’t go to work or even check their work email while the govern-ment has shut down — and they’re unpaid. Congressional salaries, however, are unaf-fected. On Oct. 5, Congress passed a bill that authorizes back pay for all these workers after the shutdown is over. Okay, so what does it mean?

Because of the furloughs and lack of funding, many branches of government can no longer perform their normal duties. The Food and Drug Administration has stopped routine food inspec-tions and laboratory research, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has stopped all workplace safety inspections except in cases of immediate danger or death and the Environmental Pro-tection Agency has stopped cleaning up hazardous chemi-cal sites. National parks and

monuments all over the country have been shut down, including Joshua Tree, where some eighth graders typically go on retreat, and the Upper Colorado River, where some ninth graders go. Only 600 of NASA’s 18,000 employees are still working, and they’ve postponed all projects except communicating with the In-ternational Space Station.Wait. This sounds a little familiar. Didn’t something like this happen just a few months ago?

You’re pretty close. For the past couple years, we’ve been lurching from fiscal cri-sis to fiscal crisis because both sides are putting together short-term or stopgap mea-sures that don’t address their larger differences. Obama has called for a “grand bargain,” which could include entitle-ment and tax reform, and some Republicans are now proposing their own version, but the main issue at the moment is the shutdown. We almost went over the “fiscal cliff” at the beginning of the

year, the sequester (which cut spending across the board and forced the closure of some government programs) went into effect in early March, and underlying the shutdown is a fight about the debt ceiling. What’s the debt ceiling?

It’s all in the name — the debt ceiling establishes an upper limit for how much money the United States can borrow for debts it’s already promised to pay. If Congress doesn’t raise the debt ceiling, the Treasury Secretary has warned that the United States could default on its debts and thus wouldn’t be able to pay government expenses. There’s some debate over whether the President could prioritize some expenditures over oth-ers, but the government could potentially be unable to pay for anything — and there’s $43 million in Social Security and Medicare checks that need to go out to beneficiaries on Nov. 1. According to Trea-sury Department estimates, we’ll run out of money Oct. 17 (that’s two days away).

That’s all very well, but why have you written this many words about it? You’re a senior in high school, not a furloughed federal worker.

Excellent point, percep-tive reader! Okay, here’s the thing. A bunch of Republican lawmakers are denying that the shutdown is a problem — and many of them don’t think the debt ceiling is an issue ei-ther. Some have said it would be good for the country to default, even after economists and researchers have said that a default could plunge the country into a decline as bad as or even worse than the 2008 recession. A Republican pollster showed that the last debate about the debt ceil-ing hurt consumer confidence (and in turn the stock market and the economy in general) by more than 9/11, the Lehm-an Brothers collapse or the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

The debt ceiling is bad. The shutdown is bad. Get involved, call your Congress-man — and please, don’t grow up to be like them.

JACOB GOODMAN/CHRONICLE

hwchronicle.com/opinion opinion A13oct. 15, 2013

I started my junior year with the same questions and anxieties that I’m sure

many of my classmates also had: is it really as bad as they say? How will I deal with the workload? Will I sleep? Will I have a social life? Will I even make it to June?

I could think of only one upside to embarking on the infamous journey of junior year, which was that no one could tell me to stop com-plaining about how stressed I was because junior year is widely accepted as the worst.

Seniors were quick to inform me that I was sorely mistaken. I learned that not only is first semester senior year just as challenging as junior year, but, in addition to the usual workload, seniors are also working on college applications.

When I initially consid-ered this, I thought that it was completely fair to say that the beginning of senior year is harder than junior year. But then why had I been hearing about the stress of 11th grade since I came to Harvard-Westlake as a seventh grader? And why, every year, am I told that my workload is nothing compared to that of the year above me?

It all boils down to the fact that Harvard-Westlake students can be a bit self-centered. As 10th graders, weren’t most of us terrified at the prospect of our first in-class essay for English, or our first upper school history test?

In the moment, when you are staying up until the early hours of the morning to study for a test or finish a project,

no year at Harvard-Westlake seems effortless. It is much easier to say that you had no trouble at all in hindsight and that the work you are doing now is significantly harder.

I realized that I am com-pletely guilty of this behavior myself. My younger sister is in eighth grade at Harvard-Westlake, and my younger brother is in sixth grade at Curtis School. It is incredibly difficult not to roll my eyes when my sister (who is not a whiner) occasionally men-tions the Algebra I test she has coming up or my brother talks about studying his ISEE vocabulary.

Instead of brushing off younger students’ complaints about their workload, I sug-gest that we offer support and sympathy. All that people want to hear about their con-cerns is that they are valid, not that they are unfounded.

As frustrating as it may be to listen to issues that seem less pressing than your own, try to see the situation from someone else’s perspective.

Everyone handles stress differently, some much worse than others. We go to a school that, along with all of its incredible benefits and op-portunities, has a reputation for stress. Maybe if we extend helping hands rather than act in a condescending man-ner, we can ease some of that stress.

So the next time my sister vents her problems to me, I will not snap and tell her that she should just wait until she’s a junior, or ignore her entire-ly. Instead, I will take a deep breath, force a smile on my face and ask how I can help.

By Beatrice Fingerhut

By Jessica Spitz

There’s always that one adult in your life telling you to not rush growing

up, that there will always be a time and place for everything, and, well, that you’ll get there eventually. While that little tidbit of knowledge does carry meaning, for us teenagers it rarely resonates. My mom would always chide me for not remembering what she said; the words went in one ear and out the other. While this exchange may have occurred in Russian, the sentiment was the same.

Looking back on my time at Harvard-Westlake, it all seems like a blur. It feels like an eternity ago when we ar-rived fresh-eyed and bushy-tailed at the middle school campus. There it all started. We looked up at the students in the grades above us and be-lieved we deserved the same

privileges. Each year we waited for

that landmark event: the chance to refer to ourselves as high school students, the experience of going to the DMV to get our driver’s per-mits, and the arrival of the first sweet 16 party. It car-ries on every year, and now a little more than a month into my senior year, I’ve visited a couple of college campuses, talked to more than a few college students about their experiences so far and have concluded that I cannot wait to start the next chapter of my life.

So far, I’ve noticed that as we’ve gotten older, the younger kids seem to rush more towards becoming an adult. I turned 18 in mid-Au-gust, and I can easily say that becoming a legal adult has not changed my life at all. I

still live at home, abide by my parents’ rules and have not noticed a significant increase in freedom from last year.

Then again, I have never treasured my childlike be-havior more. To celebrate my 18th birthday, I went with two of my closest friends to the Orange County fair. There, I won a giant stuffed toy, a two foot-tall minion from the ani-mated movie “Despicable Me,” and saw that as the highlight of the day.

Like most, I might have rushed to grow up. Now I’ve realized that probably the best thing to do is to remem-ber that I am still kind of a kid. I like to make stupid jokes or go to a county fair and bring back a couple of stuffed animals, and in my opinion, that is a lot nicer than speeding towards adult-hood.

Avoid stressing over stress

Embrace your childhood

By Julia Aizuss

I ditched a class a few weeks ago. I simply did not attend third period, my directed

study in Ancient Greek. I didn’t forget about class,

I wasn’t cramming for a test, I wasn’t even at home “sick.”

No, I was in Chalmers 313 along with a couple dozen other seniors, listening to the University of Chicago’s as-sistant director of admission, Mitch Salm, host an informa-tion session.

I like my Greek class, I really do; its mix of language and interdisciplinary teach-ing of myth is one of the highlights of my week. I was reluctant to miss it.

But I’m not applying to UChicago early, so even though I’ve already visited the campus, I thought I had to show the college more “demonstrated interest,” to use a popular piece of college admissions jargon.

Before third period began, Salm happened to stumble upon me during activities pe-riod and ask for directions to the dean coordinators, so af-

ter my dean encouraged me to introduce myself, I informed him of my dilemma.

“You’re making me choose between my education and my education,” I told him.

It sounds like a win-win situation. Either way, I’m do-ing something for my educa-tion, right? But in class, I really am (hopefully) learn-ing, acquiring an education. Attending an info session, meanwhile, means I’m trying to boost my chances of getting into a desirable college that may give me a good educa-tion in the future. There’s no guarantee.

Salm acknowledged I was right, encouraged me to go to Greek and gave me his busi-ness card. I ended up at the info session anyway, which was so crowded I had to sit on the floor. But I signed my name on the clipboard he passed around, and that was all that mattered. I had offi-cially Demonstrated Interest.

So far, that’s the only time I’ve missed class for an info session. I passed up Kenyon

because I didn’t want to miss the second day we would spend in AP Lit on “Hamlet,” and I decided understanding the newest integrals we were learning in AP Calc BC was more important than hearing about Vassar.

Columbia, meanwhile, could not compete with the class dedicated to making this new issue of the newspaper. I’m not interested in NYU, but if I were, I would not have thought twice about choos-ing to stay in AP Art History for a class that Ms. Holmes-Chuba called “actually really important.”

I haven’t visited Kenyon and Vassar, so these schools still don’t think I’ve demon-strated interest, whatever that means. (On the other hand, I admit I have attended an info session and a tour on the Columbia campus.)

Apparently, the only way you can demonstrate inter-est in a college is by visiting a campus or listening to an info session that just contains the most relevant parts of

the website. And if you’re not lucky enough to have the means to fly out to nowhere, Ohio (sorry, Gambier) or upstate New York, then you’re down to one option: skipping class.

It bothers me if I have to miss two minutes of class to go to the bathroom; how could I ever be comfortable with missing all 45?

Sure, attending an info session is more educational than attending to my bodily functions, but at least one of these activities is literally necessary, while the other one, however much it tries to advertise itself otherwise, is not. It’s a racket, and all the deans, students and some-times even the admissions officers themselves are willing to admit it.

I already knew everything Salm talked about in his UChicago presentation, and I still feel guilty about the discussion of ancient myth I missed out on in Greek. Admittedly, my sister attends UChicago, which explains my

knowledge; my experience at an info session for Vassar or Kenyon or any other college I’ve ditched for class would probably have been different and more beneficial. But my regret for missing those ses-sions is nowhere near as great as the regret I would have felt if I missed class.

I’m not sure how to schedule these info sessions in such a way that they don’t interfere with class—after all, if they were all just held concurrently before and after school, many of the info ses-sions would probably be held at the same time.

Students would have to pick between colleges to learn about, and they would inter-fere with any extracurricular commitments after school. The way they’re scheduled right now really is the best method possible.

However, I do know for sure that I care, first and foremost, about the education I’m getting right now. Hope-fully, the colleges I apply to will see the value in that.

Choosing between my education and my education

Jacob Goodman/CHRONICLE

Oct. 15, 2013A14 OpiniOn the chrOnicle

I’ve been really busy these past couple of weeks. In the past week alone, every

single one of my classes has either tested or assigned a project or essay.

Now, the logical thing to do would be to pack up all my stuff as soon as eighth period ends, send my sister a couple of nasty texts telling her to hurry up, hop in my car that’s long overdue for a wash (I’m telling you, I’ve been busy!) and book it over Coldwater Canyon, maybe grab a grande Starbucks coffee on the way and get to work.

So why have I found my-self shivering as I walk to my car after dark almost every night in the past two weeks, just leaving school then? Sure, half of that was for this issue of the Chronicle you’re cur-rently holding in your hands (or surfing through on hw-chronicle.com), but the other was fulfilling a regret.

Two weeks ago, I attended a screening of a documentary following a photojournal-ist’s career in war zones that ultimately ended in his death in Libya (read more about it on A6), followed by a Q&A with the photojournalist’s friend, Human Rights Watch Emergencies Director and performing arts teacher Ted Walch’s former student Peter Bouckaert. The documentary was one of the most amaz-ing films I have ever seen in my life: it was inspiring, well-done and relevant, but it was also instructive. The

Q&A further complemented everything that I learned in the documentary, teaching me more with every ques-tion. I will never forget what I learned that day, but I prom-ise you I’ve already forgotten what the Middle East Studies reading that night was about (sorry, Mr. Yaron).

My parents, teachers and friends have often advised me to “live life without regrets,” and I told myself when I em-barked on my Harvard-West-lake experience that I couldn’t let it come to an end with regrets. If I could, I would try to emerge with none at all. Well, I’ve stumbled upon a regret and have only less than eight months to remedy it.

This regret might not be earth-shattering — it’s not like I finally decided that science is my passion after immersing myself in four his-tories and no science, or that deep down I’ve always wanted to be the lead in the musical and missed my final shot. But it’s a regret nonetheless.

What’s unique about Harvard-Westlake is that we are part of a community full of incredible, interesting and selfless people. The teachers, students, parents and alums who make up this community have an impressive collec-tive resume. The network of people they know beyond that only further expands the list of incredible people this com-munity has access to.

In one case, this results in the amazing speakers we

get every year to talk to the whole student body. Just last year, we had actor Samuel L. Jackson, one of the most recognized actors in the world. Then we had Olympian swimmer Dara Torres ’85, first openly gay former NBA athlete John Amaechi, and conductor of the Los Ange-les Philharmonic Gustavo Dudamel – all in one year! We’re lucky that beyond these mandatory assemblies, teach-ers and former alums often bring in their former students who are doing great things to talk to us.

However, students aren’t required to attend these discussions and screenings. They usually occur late after school, when, as I mentioned, students are swamped with work. Because of this, some-times students — myself included — who want to go to these presentations cannot do so due to their workload.

If you haven’t yet caught my drift, I regret choosing to do my schoolwork. Let me clarify. Homework is impor-tant and has a purpose, or else we wouldn’t be forced to do it (right?), but sometimes it’s okay to forgo one night of history reading or one night of problem sets to attend one of these events. We’re so lucky to have them, as many schools don’t have access to such people, and sometimes the value of learning is higher at these events than in that one night of history reading.

Too often, we students blame our immense workload for our absences from these events, and I regret not hav-ing taken advantage of these speakers in my time at the Upper School. I’m not denying that homework is important, but the things these speak-ers have to say, whether it’s Bouckaert, Jason Reitman ’95 or Benedict Cumberba—I

mean, “Julian Assange”—, are the real learning experiences, the immediately applicable ones that complete what we learn in the classroom. It’s not just what’s in the text-books but also about what the outside world is like now, and these are the ways we can learn about that.

So, yes, however trivial this may seem, my regret is having not taken complete ad-vantage of the amazing oppor-tunities our school provides. Upon speaking with some of my friends and classmates, they echo that same idea. We have to set our priorities and pick what is most important, and sometimes the big math test the next day might be that, but with a little time management and a little risk, there is a major reward.

Suffice it to say, I will be taking advantage of all the speakers this year. I have some catching up to do.

By Noa Yadidi

JACOB GOODMAN/CHRONICLE

guest column

Don’t miss out

The first graded essay that I ever handed in at Harvard-Westlake

got a B-. My short, awkward seventh-grade self quietly stared at what I thought was a definite sign of my failure as I began to lose any shred of hope that I had for surviv-ing at a school with a larger than life reputation. All was lost until I looked around. Everyone else had received a B- or a B and the teacher told us that, over time, our grades would improve. Prior to that moment, I had never

compared myself directly to other kids, holding close the idea that everyone was differ-ent and excelled at different things. Now, I had suddenly and unknowingly been tossed into the infamous Harvard-Westlake competition.

It’s impossible to not be at least a little competitive in this kind of environment.

It’s not something the administration induces di-rectly, but it’s partly due to its actions (or lack thereof) towards particular policies or situations like the unfair

disparity between the levels of difficulty of different teach-ers teaching the same subject. Some students are propelled by this competition as they feed off of it, happy to grind away on a pile of coursework. Some of us may pretend that the competition creates some kind of feeling of community, but I can’t count the amount of times I’ve asked some-one for a study guide and have simply received a small, pointed “no.”

Witnessing people pull continuous all-nighters and

show up to school with eyes glazed over and a shaky hand holding a cup of coffee, the re-alization that I couldn’t keep comparing myself to others hit me.

Slowly, I began to stop asking people what they got on the test, and instead I started to meet with my teachers one-on-one and talk through grades I received. I became an individual, but my grades were still not ideal. Why would I keep getting a B+ on most of my essays? Did this mean I was simply a B+

student?The key, I found, was a

balance between the two. Re-alizing I was not alone in my unsatisfactory essay grades was helpful, but I made sure not to ask for the GPA of someone applying to the same college I was. We have to real-ize that we go to an extremely difficult school where we will not always get A’s, but we can’t compare ourselves to someone who has led a dif-ferent life and has different struggles. In a sense, we’re getting what we asked for.

Remove yourself from the everpresent competitionBy Angela Knight ’14

By Shannon Acedo, Head Upper School Librarian

Save the written word in this new digital age

One question I often get these days with regard to books is, “Isn’t it all online?” I’ll usually respond with, “Well, we’re not quite at that stage yet.” When someone asks “Isn’t everything on-line?”, “everything” includes:

1. The newest copyright protected titles to older public domain titles and everything in between.

2. Popular titles and obscure titles: If it’s very pop-ular, publishers get protective about selling to libraries. Up to 30 percent of new titles are not available to libraries in digital form. However, if it’s not popular and still pro-

tected by copyright there isn’t much push to digitize it, and often it’s not legal to digitize.

3. Many books that are published digitally are avail-able for sale only to indi-viduals. Some new titles are only available to libraries for purchase at three to four times the amount charged to individuals. One recent title, “Unbroken,” cost $84 a copy for library purchase, com-pared to $12.99 for individual purchase.

4. Digitized and not yet digitized: new books have publishers to make them available digitally — for sale. Old books in public domain

have Google/HathiTrust able to digitize them for entities like Project Gutenberg. Books that are not new but are still copyright-protected are often unavailable. While Google might digitize them and want to provide them for free, the copyright holders are not eager for that to happen, and have been bringing lawsuits.

However, perhaps the most important questions to ask about digital books are:

1. Are all ebooks free to everyone, or are they available to people who can afford to buy them?

2. Are all titles — includ-ing less popular titles — even

available in digital format? If those entities currently interested in digitizing books become more interested in selling ebooks than in the public service of digitizing “everything,” will less popular, perhaps controversial titles be passed over and end up unavailable digitally?

In a June 2013 survey of upper school students, when asked about school projects, 52 percent preferred to read from paper texts, while only eight percent preferred digital sources.

When asked about rec-reational reading, 73 percent said they preferred to read on

paper, while only two percent would rather read digitally.

Often these preferences shift with the circumstance. Travelling? Your Kindle or Nook lightens your load. Catching up on classroom reading? Grab your paperback edition of “The Great Gatsby” and get ready to highlight away.

As long as you have the option for either, you still have a choice.

While it is exciting to think of the expanded avail-ability that digitization brings to many books, it is important to look more deeply to see the hidden impact.

guest column

hwchronicle.com/opinion opinion A15oct. 15, 2013

quadtalkThe Chronicle asked:

reportcard

B

A

A-

F

C

Only two weeks remain until the end of the first quarter

Extended mid-semester break for all Upper School Students

Two of the three sports teams playing at Homecoming lost

No student section during the Homecoming football game

“Absolutely, the spirit week events are a very fun way to get everyone together. Who doesn’t like dressing up?”

—Julie Engel ’14

“I thought the pep rally was great, I had a lot of fun. As for the different dress up days, I thought they were a really great way to be with the community and be silly.”

—Zachary Birnholz ‘14

“What are you planning to do over the extended mid-semester break?”

“Did the events prior to homcoming, like spirit week and the pep rally, boost your school spirit?”

“Even though I will be pretty busy, hopefully I’ll be able to relax a little and hang out with my friends since this break is coming at a very nice time amid junior year.”

—Sloane Chmara ’15

“I don’t have any plans at all. I will be hanging out at home and working on my college applications.”

—Mike Sheng ‘14

“Which of the following would you blame for the lack of a student section during Homecoming?”

Fanatics359 students weighed in on the Chronicle

poll

AdministrationParents

142

106111

Two movie screenings were offered to students in the past month

“I want to catch up on my sleep and just spend time with my friends who are in town. I also have some studying to do because I have an AP Biology test when I get back to school.”

—Morgan Choi ’15

“I’m going to celebrate my birthday over the break. I’m also planning to visit a few colleges.”

—David Manahan ‘14

Kyla rhynes/chronicle

“I feel that not having a Fanatics section didn’taffect the athletes. I usually see the Fanatics having more of an effect on the audience asopposed to the players.”

—David Goldberg ’15

“There was a lack of school spirit at the game. Not many people watched the game so I think the Fanatics would have been helpful in making everyone more cheerful and excited.”

—Neda Mazdisnian ’16

“Do you think it affected the student athletes during the Homecoming game?”

412 students weighed in on the Chronicle poll

No

Yes

222

190

Oct. 15, 2013A16 exposure

Hustle & HeartIn preparation for Homecoming Oct. 5, students participated in a range of activities to show school spirit during Fanatic Fest week. Upper School students attended the first Homecoming Formal dance in recent years Sept. 28 in Taper Gym. The following week, students dressed up in various costumes with different themes every day to celebrate Fanatic Fest. The week culminated with a pep rally in Taper Oct. 4, featuring a relay race through an obstacle course between students and their faculty parents.

FIRST DANCE: Students dressed in semiformal attire dance in Taper Gymnasium, which was decorated for the first Homecoming Formal.

SCOTT NUSSBAUM/CHRONICLE


FOOTLOOSE: Prefects Jackson Beavers ’15, left, and Albert Choi ’15 dance on the quad Sept. 30 with a group of students during break on ‘80s day.

WE’VE GOT SPIRIT: The Wolverine dances to pump up the crowd at the Fa-natic Fest pep rally in Taper Gym Oct. 4.


SAY CHEESE: Mckynzie Dickman ’14 and Brianna Gazmarian ’15 dress up in floral shirts for Tacky Tourist Thursday Oct. 3.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF MCKYNZIE DICKMAN

ARMS WIDE: Varsity wa-ter polo goalie Anthony Ridgley ’15 dives for the ball in the game against Long Beach Wilson Oct. 5.

CAITLIN NEAPOLE/CHRONICLE

HELD BACK: Palisades High School defend-ers attempt to tackle quarterback Marshal Cohen ’16 in the varsity team’s 45-18 loss.


Oct. 15, 2013B12 Features the chrOnicle

By Zoe Dutton

Nick Ramirez ’14 stands beside his great-grandmoth-er’s grave, surrounded by a sea of marigolds. The occa-sion is Día de los Muertos, the Mexican holiday when families gather to celebrate the lives of dead loved ones. While most students at Harvard-Westlake are busy planning their Hal-loween costumes, a few are preparing for Day of the Dead Nov. 1 and 2.

“Since we can’t visit our family members’ graves [in Mexico], we try to find other ways to honor them here,” Ja-vier Orozco ’15 said. “We set up our own shrine in the living room, and on the two nights of Día de los Muertos we sit in front of it as a family and pay our respects and just hang out together.”

Day of the Dead origi-nated in Mexico as a fusion of Catholic and indigenous beliefs. Mourning was not al-lowed because it was believed tears would make the spirit’s path slippery and treacher-ous, the cultural arts curator for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American In-dian Hayes Lavis said in an interview with NPR. The holi-day has retained this sense of light-hearted-ness and is a time of mer-riment rather than grief.

O r o z c o lives in the predominant-ly Hispanic n e i g h b o r -hood of Boyle Heights and looks forward all year to the nearby Day of the Dead festi-val in Mariachi Plaza.

“There are displays of shrines to the dead but also food stands and activ-ities like mask making, paper cutting, and candy skull mak-ing,” Orozco said. “I’m usually just an observer, but we have different dances too, usually Aztec-style. You’re celebrating the dead as a whole so it just makes the holiday seem that much more special.”

Spanish teacher Javier

Zaragoza compared Day of the Dead’s social role to that of Thanksgiving.

“A lot of people find it as an opportunity for family to get together,” Zaragoza said. “Peo-ple travel to their hometown and visit, like Thanksgiving. It has the very same effect as Día de los Muertos. It’s not a sad day; it’s a day of remem-brance.”

Orozco’s family is from Guadalajara, too far south for them to easily visit their rela-tives’ graves during Day of the Dead. Ramirez, on the other hand, has been driving down to Tijuana to celebrate with family since he was a little boy.

“When we go to TJ, we go to church and read the rosary, and we go to the cemetery,” Ramirez said. “If you’ve ever seen a Mexican cemetery, you’ll know they’re never green; they’re always so color-ful. They just carpet the graves in red and yellow and pink. Also, since it is a feast holiday, we usually have menudo [a traditional Mexican soup].”

Orozco said the most im-portant part of Day of the Dead is the opportunity to re-member his family.

“Every year, the person I honor the most is my grand-mother,” Orozco said. “She

played a very impor-tant role in my life, though she died five years ago.

I don’t have that many things that my g r a n d m a o w n e d , apart from maybe a scarf or two, so instead of putting up things

left from her I usually put up something I’ve made. Last year I made bracelets and wrote a poem, and I put that on the altar. Everyone in the family puts something up; my sister made this traditional Mexican candy.”

Karenina Juarez ’16 also commemorates her grand-mother during Day of the Dead, and said she enjoys con-

necting with her heritage.“It’s important to celebrate

your ancestors and learn about the past, to keep the traditions alive,” Juarez said.

Juarez intends to continue celebrating Day of the Dead as an adult and anticipates even one day honoring her parents with her own children.

“Sometimes you lose some-one very important, and you want to remember them,” Zaragoza said.

“In my case I lost four brothers. Now that I’m 58, I should have a little ceremony for my dad. I’ve lost all four of my grandparents, I’ve lost many friends. For many peo-ple, the holiday helps with that.”

Though Zaragoza stopped celebrating Day of the Dead in his early 20s, he said he still sporadically attends festivals.

“I’m still very connected to Día de los Muertos,” Zaragoza said. “I’m always very happy to see others celebrating. It brings back memories.”

Although few students at Harvard-Westlake celebrate Day of the Dead or even know what it is, Orozco said it doesn’t bother him.

“I don’t feel sad about it,” Orozco said. “Maybe it’s just because of where I live, but I do feel like people still con-tinue to [celebrate Day of the Dead] and celebrate Mexican culture, and that makes me happy.”

Ramirez disagrees over Day of the Dead’s continuity.

“A lot of the celebration has died down,” Ramirez said. “I think it’s because Mexico has gotten much more Ameri-canized. Even when I was a kid, there were a lot more tra-ditional things you could buy during Día de los Muertos. I want Mexico to still keep its own culture. I see so much getting Americanized, mostly towards the border, but it’s creeping down towards the rest of the country.”

Ramirez said that as much as the loss of his heritage trou-bles him, he knows he will al-ways be connected to Mexico in one form or another.

“When I die, they’ll prob-ably put me in a box and send me back across the border to be buried in my family plot,” he said, laughing.

“ People travel to their hometown and visit, like Thanksgiving. It has the very same effect as Día de los Muertos. It’s not a sad day; it’s a day of remembrance.”

—Javier ZaragozaSpanish teacher

ILLUSTRATION BY SYDNEY FOREMAN

DAYDEAD

of the

By Noa Yadidi

When Eugenie L u n d - S i m o n ’14 asks friends to “pardon my

French,” she’s not apologiz-ing for her profanity. A native French speaker, Lund-Simon frequently finds herself un-consciously slipping into her mother tongue.

Lund-Simon was born in Paris, France to an American father and French mother, moved to Los Angeles a age 8 — a move her family had not anticipated.

“We didn’t know we were going to move to Los Angeles, so I just never learned Eng-lish,” she said.

Lund-Simon, who began attending the Lycée Francais de Los Angeles did not even being to learn English right away once she moved.

“I pretty much only spoke French,” Lund-Simon said. “I had one hour of English a week, but the first two years I was very young and lazy and didn’t really make an effort, especially because there is a large French community in Los Angeles, and it wasn’t re-ally necessary to learn English right away.”

After Lund-Simon’s sister, Eléonore ’12, began attending Harvard-Westlake, her par-ents had similar aspirations for her, causing them to begin pushing Lund-Simon to learn English fluently. She began to force herself to speak English, while her dad began speaking only English to her.

Lund-Simon is now fluent in both languages but still finds herself more comfortable with French. At home, her family continues to speak French to each other.

“I’m fine with both, [but] in terms of vocabulary, some-times in class I have no idea what I’m saying,” she said.

Lund-Simon has had some difficulty, especially in deci-phering idioms that do not

translate into French, such as “it’s raining cats and dogs.” Lund-Simon has found that this problem goes both ways as well, citing the French idiom that translates to “I’m peeing in a violin,” which, in French, means that no one is listening to you.

“In English class, some-times I try to say an expres-sion, and everyone gets con-fused,” she said. “It makes sense in French, but appar-ently not in English.”

L u n d -Simon finds herself ac-cidently slip-ping into French often, which earns her confused looks from c lassmates , especially in English class-es.

“It’s very embarrassing, but I tend to do that a lot,” she said.

Anton Beer ’14, who was born in Germany, grew up speaking both English and German simultaneously and doesn’t remember learning one first.

“My mom grew up [in the United States], so she spoke English at home because she had just moved to Germany six years before I was born,” Beer said. “[Since] she spoke English at home, I spoke Eng-lish as well.”

Beer has found that there are benefits to speaking multi-ple languages, as it has helped him succeed in his foreign lan-guage classes at school.

“[I’ve taken] two languages here, and I’m really good at them, but they’re not relat-ed to German and English,” he said. “Maybe it makes me more language-adept.”

For Alexandra Arreola ’15, being born to two “very proud Mexican parents,” speaking Spanish from a young age and

as her first language was ex-pected from her.

“Everyone in their family speaks Spanish, it’s kind of a passed down thing, so my mom wanted to make sure every one of her kids spoke Spanish, wrote in Spanish and can read Spanish,” she said. “When [your parents] are talking to you they’ll speak Spanish to you and you’re expected to answer back in Spanish, not English.”

A r r e o l a was born in North Caroli-na, but moved to Mexico at age 2 in order to be closer to family.

Less than a year later, her fam-ily moved to California as her parents decided there were more

opportunities for them back in the United States.

Arreola began learning English while attending a bi-lingual head-start preschool and doesn’t think she’s par-ticularly special or out of the ordinary for having learned a different language first.

“People get surprised when I tell them I learned English and it wasn’t my first lan-guage,” she said.

Arreola sees only advan-tages to learning Spanish first and believs speaking it has not affected her English-speaking ability. Especially living in Cal-ifornia, she has encountered many people who only speak Spanish and has been able to communicate with them be-cause of her bilingualism.

Although Alisa Tsenter ’14 was born in the United States, her first language still wasn’t English. While most chil-dren were calling their par-ents mom and dad, Tsenter’s first words were “mama” and “papa,” mom and dad’s Rus-

sian equivalents. As Russian is the primary language spo-ken in her home, she began to learn English in preschool.

“I was really quiet the first couple of months, but then I started talking [more] be-cause I started hearing more, and my parents started using English more often so I could learn it,” she said.

Now, although Tsenter continues to understand Rus-sian fluently, she finds herself now answering her parents in English.

Although Koji Everard ’15 learned both Japanese and English from a young age, his first language was not one his English-speaking father actu-ally spoke.

“I think my mom wanted me to be bilingual because that can open up a lot of options in the future in terms of college and work, and it allows me to connect with Japanese cul-ture,” he said.

Everard was born in Lon-don and, before moving to Los Angeles, lived in Hong Kong and Japan. Since moving away from Japan, he has found it difficult to retain Japanese be-cause he isn’t using it on a dai-ly basis like he was in Japan.

“The hard part is when you live so completely in one of your languages, like I am now in Los Angeles,” Everard said. “I barely even write it so I have to try and work hard to main-tain it and even then it slips away.”

“Being able to speak and interact with more people, even if you’re travelling, it’s really useful,” he said. “Cultur-ally, if you know the language, it allows you to connect to the people. For example, Japanese people, they’re kind of differ-ential but also distant from foreigners so when they speak English to me, but I reply to them in Japanese and eventu-ally they catch on that I speak Japanese, and then they talk to me a little more like them-selves.”

How do you say hello?

“ I think my mom wanted me to be bilingual because that can open up a lot of options in the future in terms of college and work.”

—Koji Everard ’15


Guten Tag

English is not the first language of all students at Harvard-Westlake. Some grew up in bilingual households, where English was coupled with

other languages or non-existent.

Hola Bonjour

nathanson’s

Anton Beer ’14nathanson’s

Alisa Tsenter ’14nathanson’s

Alex Arreola ’15nathanson’s

Koji Everard ’15nathanson’s

Eugenie Lund-Simon ’14

The thieves wouldn’t have been too far off. At

the time, Gei-ger had a hand-gun concealed on his person, as he always does, just like the rest of the security team.

Like all the other members of the school security team, Geiger has a background in law enforcement (in his case, as a Los Angeles County deputy sheriff) and is licensed to carry a con-cealed weap-on. The only member who does not car-ry a concealed weapon and is not licensed to do so is security officer Sanders Jackson, who is an employee of the school and not of CJL, the company which Director of Security Jim Crawford owns and to which the school out-sources its security.

Since most law enforce-ment officers carry either 9 millimeter or 45-caliber hand-guns, those are what the secu-rity carries as well, and their ammunition is standard law enforcement issue, Crawford said. Aside from that, Craw-ford said the team has “a vari-ety of tools available to us that are secure,” declining to delve any further into the specifics of their preparation.

“We’ve always carried guns, from the beginning,” Crawford, who’s worked for the school since the 1980s as Harvard School for Boys’ first part-time security guard, said. “That was something that [former President] Tom Hud-nut wanted. He wanted the guards up here to be armed.”

Hudnut decided to hire armed guards for a variety of reasons, he and Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts said. Huybrechts said it was part of the package when the administration decided to ful-ly cease using school employ-ees as security. In 2008, the school completely transitioned to CJL on the recommenda-tion of the school’s insurance carrier and with the Board of Trustees’ endorsement.

“Re-ally, the

d e c i s i o n was to out-

source our security ser-

vices to a com-pany that was professional, much like you would decide

that rather than develop your website in-house, you were going to contract it out,” Huybrechts said.

Hudnut also said the focus was on the benefits people like retired policemen and sheriffs would bring, in general, not specifically connected to arms.

“Having fully equipped, highly experienced law officers with good judgment is very preferable to the ‘rent-a-cops’ that many schools and busi-nesses hire,” he said.

“I do not think anyone should be armed at any school other than licensed law offi-cers,” he added. “Suggestions that teachers and other school employees be armed strike me as farcical.”

“We need professionals do-ing that work,” Huybrechts agreed. “And whether they are armed or not is somewhat beside the point. The most important piece is they are trained security officers and all that that entails. So they have experience, they have training, they have expertise, they have knowledge that teachers and school adminis-trators do not.”

Although Harvard-West-lake was one of the first pri-vate schools in Los Angeles to hire armed security, it’s no outlier.

CJL caters primarily to private schools, and compa-rable schools that also have armed guards range from Brentwood to the Center for

Early Edu-cation. Hud-nut thinks they followed Har-v a r d -We s t -

lake’s lead, as does Crawford.

“We did it years before anyone even thought about it,” Crawford said. “We are the norm now. I think everybody’s kind of going in that direction because of the recent shoot-ings.”

Recent school shootings were also what impelled the security team to be more open about its armed status. Between about five years ago and the shooting at Columbine High School in 1999, Crawford announced in the all-faculty meeting at the beginning of the school year that the guards were all armed.

“I don’t think we got any negative feed-back,” he said.

“I’ve never heard a complaint,” Huy-brechts said. “None. Ever.”

However, she wasn’t sure if it’s com-mon knowledge that the security team is armed.

“I’m not sure I know what common knowledge means,” she said.

While some people, she said, have always known, and more are always finding out, the school does not advertise the details of its security plan, so families newer to the school might not know.

Even if parents and students might not necessarily know, the people who matter to the security do: possible burglars.

“We haven’t had a burglary in years up here,” Crawford said, although he acknowledged they did have thefts “here and there,” like the thieves Geiger caught in Rugby. “I think it’s partially because the word’s

out that we are armed.”

A f t e r the security team began to let people know, “It gets around,” he said. “They

know the guards here are going to be

armed and they’re going to be less apt to want to confront a guard at night, breaking into something, if it’s a retired po-liceman or an off-duty police-man.”

The team regularly trains on campus during vacations and on the campus shooting range and practices respond-ing to classrooms in the event of a shooter to avoid collateral damage.

“Practicing and practic-ing and practicing,” Crawford said. “We spend a lot of time and a lot of money practicing.”

But so far, no security guard has ever had reason to open fire on someone on cam-pus.

It’s a last resort, Crawford said, and not to be done unless someone’s life is in danger.

That’s why Gei-ger didn’t use his gun during the Rug-by theft a few years ago. No lives were in danger, just prop-erty.

H u y b r e c h t s compared it to the preparations in place for a lockdown situation.

Although the possibility that the school would need to provide food and supplies to every-one on campus for a week is “practi-cally slim to none,” the school wants to be prepared for any event, so those sup-plies are indeed on campus.

“We want to be prepared for that

slim chance,” Huybrechts said.Nor, Geiger said, has any-

one had reason to even draw a gun.

“Come on,” he said, as he watched cars drive out of school one afternoon, from his usual spot near the security kiosk. “This is Harvard-West-lake.”

hwchronicle.com/features features B3oct. 15, 2013

nathanson’s

James Crawford

nathanson’s

Mark Geiger

Security guard Mark Geiger was patrolling campus one night about three and a half years ago when he discovered two thieves stealing sound and light equipment from Rugby Theatre. Geiger, who doesn’t leave campus between Sunday evening

and Friday night, chased them until he lost them, and they got away with only some of the equipment they attempted to steal, too scared to try anything more. “Maybe

they thought I was going to shoot them,” Geiger said, laughing.

1 in 3 students don’t know that school guards are armed

8 in 10 students think having

armed guards is a good idea

1 in 5 students is not

comfortable with having armed guards

SOURCE: SURVEYMONKEY POLLGRAPHIC BY MORGANNE RAMSEY

Approximately

Stick to your gunsApproximately Approximately

The Chronicle polled 407 students on their views about the school having armed guards.

Concealed Weapons

By Julia aizuss

By LeiLy Arzy

There was a blackout in the house, so they went to the dusty basement to get a

lamp. That’s when he fell, down the old wooden staircase with the moss green carpet that looked like grass.

The little girl watched her grandfather break nearly ev-ery bone in his body in what would ultimately be a fatal fall. By the time he reached the bottom of the stairs, she was already screaming with her hands over her ears. The lit-tle girl ran to the living room, with the same moss green c a r p e t -ing that her grandmother picked, to tell her family what had just happened.

Naomi*’15 was just six years old when she witnessed her grandfather’s accident. To this day, she is haunted by flashbacks of her grandfather’s death and is un-able to fall asleep. When she was 12, Naomi was diagnosed with insomnia.

“I still have flashbacks about that,” Naomi said. “So, whether or not I have flash-backs lying in bed, even if I am not thinking about it, the stress of thinking that I am going to have a flashback will literally keep me up for hours, even if I am just lying there and doing nothing.”

The Mayo Clinic, a medical research group in Minnesota, defines insomnia as a disorder in which people are incapable of falling asleep, staying asleep or both.

Insomnia can exhaust en-ergy levels and affect moods in addition to one’s health, work performance and quality of life.

The clinic says some symp-toms of insomnia include dif-ficulty falling asleep at night, awakening during the night, awakening too early, daytime fatigue, sleepiness and irri-tability. The disorder can be caused by stress, anxiety, and depression as well as other factors.

“[Insomnia] is very dif-ficult to get used to,” Naomi said. “I always say that I get used to it, but I am really not. It’s difficult.”

Naomi said her doctors don’t know if this traumatic experience alone caused her

insomnia, but they have deter-mined that the fear of having a flashback is definitely a trigger that keeps her awake at night.

Thomas Yadegar, a private practitioner who specializes in sleep medicine, said that many patients who have in-somnia, whether it is due to some event or illness, develop anxiety after a certain amount of time because they get little to no sleep.

Yadegar said many adoles-cents have a specific disorder, delayed sleep phase syndrome, that can be confused with in-somnia.

“As kids go through puberty and into their early adult-hood, their body’s circa-dian rhythm, one of the con t ro l l i ng factors of a person’s sleep and wake cy-cle, changes,” Yadegar said.

As a re-sult, he said it is not unusual

for teenagers to have trouble falling asleep. If a teenager is given enough time to sleep, he or she will eventually fall asleep. Regardless of the time insomniacs go to bed, they cannot fall asleep.

“Even though I don’t have insomnia, this whole week I have gone to bed at 10:30 p.m., but I have not been able to fall asleep until 11:30 p.m.,” Claire Nordstrom ’15 said. “I just lie there with the lights off trying to fall asleep.”

Naomi, on the other hand, is in bed by 11 p.m. and lies there until 3 a.m. when she eventually falls into a light three hour nap.

During the hours when she is awake, she turns off all technology and sits with pen and paper in hand. She tries to draw or write music to pass the time.

In the past, Naomi has tried to go to bed earlier than 11 p.m. to see what happens, but she said that it did not help and actually made her stay up even later. However, she said she gets better nights of sleep when she is not stressed.

“It really depends,” Naomi said. “I will literally go four days and get three hours of sleep and then, because I am so tired, I will sleep on Satur-day for 15 hours.”

Naomi said that seeing a therapist has helped her in-somnia, but not dramatically so, so she plans to see a sleep specialist in the near future. At

the specialist’s office, she will also be tested for narcolepsy.On average, Naomi said she will momentarily fall asleep 13 times in any given day because she is so exhausted.

“Right now the most diffi-cult thing is staying awake in class,” Naomi said. “It’s hard to try and convince teach-ers that I am actually trying to stay awake and that it is not my fault. Just being tired during school is the difficult part of it. I sometimes put my hands over my head or just tap my fingers on the desk to stay awake.”

The Insomnia Severity Index, a series of seven ques-tions, is used to determine if a patient has mild, moder-ate or severe insomnia. Af-ter answering the questions, a patient adds up their score to understand the severity of their condition. Naomi scored a 22 out of 28, placing her in the severe clinical insomnia category.

Felix* ’15 scored a 23, plac-ing him in the same category as Naomi. He was diagnosed with insomnia last April af-ter his 16th birthday. Felix is unable to sleep without heavy doses of medication.

Even then, his medication sometimes has little to no ef-fect on him, and he will go up to two days with no sleep.

Yadegar said some risk factors of insomnia in young adults include the intake of over the counter and pre-scribed medications as well as caffeinated products such as tea, coffee, sodas, alcohol and nicotine.

“I need to take my medica-tion and be in bed by 9:30 p.m., otherwise I won’t be able to get up in time for school,” Felix said. “Because the medication knocks me out for about nine to 10 hours, I really need to stick to my bedtime. If I don’t, well there goes first and sec-ond period.”

Felix takes his medication 40 minutes before going to bed, and during that time, he is in-capable of working. An addi-tional downside to his medica-tion is that he wakes up feeling groggy.

Felix said there is no chance of him falling asleep without taking his medication. However, with the medica-tion, he is typically able to fall asleep in 15 to 20 minutes af-ter getting into bed.

Because Felix must abide by a strict sleeping schedule, he is unable to study or stay out late if he wants to function normally the next day.

Yadegar said that if anyone

is having trouble sleeping, not just insomniacs, they should set a specific sleep and wake-up time and vary it as little as possible.

In terms of treatment, Yadegar said that behavioral therapies are the most effi-cient methods of treatment for insomniacs.

According to the Mayo Clinic, examples of behavioral therapies are relaxation tech-niques such as breathing to reduce anxiety at bedtime and sleep restriction, which is a treatment that decreases the time you spend in bed. This process causes partial sleep deprivation which makes pa-

tients more tired the next night. But, by the end of the treatment, sleep patterns are adjusted to normal times.

Behavioral therapies also include education about good sleeping habits, like using the bed solely for sleeping and not for eating or watching TV.

“Though I have tried vari-ous things to remedy my case of insomnia, I have yet to find a suitable method with which to establish a normal sleep cy-cle without a need for medica-tion,” Felix said. “I plan to cope with my situation to the best of my rather limited ability.”

*Names have been changed


GRAPHIC BY JACOB GOODMAN AND JACK GOLDFISHER

“ I will literally go four days and get three hours of sleep and then, because I am so tired, I will sleep on Saturday for 15 hours.”

—Naomi* ’15

Insomnia Severity Index:

Difficulty falling asleep 0 1 2 3 4

none - 0, mild - 1, moderate - 2, severe - 3, very severe - 4

Difficulty staying asleep 0 1 2 3 4Problems waking up too early 0 1 2 3 4

very satisfied - 0, satisfied - 1, moderately satisfied - 2, dissatisfied - 3, very dissatisfied - 4

How satisfied are you with your current sleep pattern?

0 1 2 3 4

not noticeable - 0, a little - 1, somewhat - 2, much - 3, very noticeable - 4

How noticeable to others do you think your sleep pattern is?

0 1 2 3 4

not worried - 0, a little - 1, somewhat - 2, much - 3, very much - 4

How worried are you about your current sleep problem?

not at all - 0, a little - 1, somewhat - 2, much - 3, very much - 4

To what extent do you consider your sleep problem to interfere with your daily functioning?

Guidelines for scoring:

Add the scores for all seven questions = ___

0 - 7 = Not clinically significant insomnia8 - 14 = Subthreshold insomnia15 - 21 = Clinical insomnia (moderate severity)22 - 28 = Clinical insomnia (severe)

The quiz below is often used by psychiatrists and sleep specialists to diagnose insomnia.

SOURCE: MYHEALTH.VA.GOVGRAPHIC BY LEILY ARZY, SARAH NOVICOFF AND EMILY SEGAL

0 1 2 3 4

0 1 2 3 4

By Alex McNAb

It was the 1990s, and the economy in Ecuador was failing. People had to car-ry bills worth millions in

their wallets as monetary val-ues in the country quickly de-

creased. E n t e r -

ing data in a very old, very large, very nine-ties computer at a credit union in his hometown of Quito, Ecua-dor, Johnny Salazar, now bus driver for We s t c h e s -ter 1 Upper School, knew he had to get out of the country. He wanted to go to America, where one dollar equaled 25,000 sucre, so he applied for the Visa Lottery, a United States

government program where each year 50,000 randomly se-lected people are awarded a visa to the United States.

Salazar hit the jackpot and won a visa, and so, with his wife Ingrid, his son John and some money from his parents, he left his old life in Quito, the City of the Heavens, to start a new one in Los Angeles, the City of the Angels.

Upon arriving in America in 1996, Salazar spoke no Eng-lish and had no significant job experience outside of his data entry job, so he started to work at a factory, an environ-ment where everyone spoke Spanish.

After working at the fac-tory, Salazar began to drive a laundry van for a movie pro-duction company, taking the actors’ clothes to and from the laundromat. He applied for the job because he knew it would not require much language skill. Salazar later switched to operating semi-trucks.

However, he quickly tired of the constant physical strain that came with loading and unloading the truck’s cargo, so, in 2000, he quit his job as a truck driver and decided to drive school buses for Atlantic Express instead.

He started his career at The Archer School for Girls and Crossroads School before being assigned to drive for Harvard-Westlake at the be-ginning of last year. He has also driven for a few public schools,

but didn’t like it because, he said, the kids were not very respectful of the driver.

From the day that he be-gan work at Atlantic Express, Salazar has gotten up at 4:30 a.m. every day to get down-town to the bus depot from his house in Norwalk for his 5:20 a.m. check-in time.

“It is just part of the job,” he said, “I pick up a cup of cof-fee and go to work.”

Between drop-off and pick-up from school, Salazar, unless he is assigned to drive for a school field trip, has the middle of the day off, a time which he uses to cook, plant and watch TV.

Salazar has since learned to speak English from the bits and pieces that he has picked up on the street and from watching television.

He has also had two more children since in America: Melissa, a 15-year-old student at John Glenn High School in Norwalk, and Kevin, his 12-year-old son who attends Corvallis Middle School in Norwalk. Two more addi-tions found their way into the family as well: Choo-Choo, a Maltese, and J-Lo, a schnau-zer, the family dogs. The kids named them, Salazar said.

Last year, Salazar stopped driving buses for school field trips on weekends because

“those days are for my family,” he said.

Salazar’s real passion is computers, a love that was cultivated at his data entry job at the credit union he used to work at in Ecuador. Salazar misses his old job.

“It is nice to work in an of-fice,” Salazar said of his pre-vious job at the credit union, but he still has a few comput-ers, which he fixes in his spare time.

“At some point in your life, it is not important what you wish you want,” he said. “Sometimes you have to choose between what you want and how to feed your family. I am not rich, but I can live without stress.”

“I like it here,” Salazar said about his job driving for Har-vard-Westlake.

He said that he plans on staying in Los Angeles and on the Westchester 1 Up-per School bus route for a long time, sitting quietly as is his way, while he expertly maneuvers through the traf-fic first on Sepulveda then on Beverly Glen, speaking only when he arrives at 3700 Cold-water Canyon, where he utters a soft, accented “Goodbye” to each of his passengers, stu-dents exiting through the bus’ double doors to begin their day at school.

hwchronicle.com/features features B5oct. 15, 2013

Behind the wheel

HWXPRSS

Bus driver Johnny Salazar worked at a credit union in Ecuador and at a factory before driving school buses.

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY EOJIN CHOI

DRIVER’S SEAT: Bus driver Johnny Salazar sits with his hand on the steering wheel.

EOJIN CHOI/CHRONICLE

By Sophie Kupiec-WeglinSKi

Names like Seaver, Chalmers, Rugby and Mudd are all used daily to de-scribe where classes are taught, where a test will take place or where

to meet up with a friend. Before the names were signs on buildings, they were the names of people who taught at, donated to or studied on this campus, or emblems of the type of educa-tion that the Harvard School for Boys wanted to offer.

The oldest building on the upper school campus, St. Saviour’s Chapel, was dedicated in 1914, making this school year the chapel’s 100-year anniversary. It first dwelled in the original campus of Harvard School on Western Avenue in Venice, so when Harvard moved to Coldwater Canyon, the chapel was cut into 16 pieces and moved to the new campus, where it was then reassembled, according to “Harvard-Westlake: 100 Years,” a commemorative book on the his-tory of the school by Susan Wels.

Modeled after a chapel at the Rugby School in England, St. Saviour’s takes its name from the Saint Saviour’s Cathedral in Southwark, England, where John Harvard, founder of Har-vard University, was baptized.

The chapel’s name is another example of Harvard’s debt to the university, along with the name of the school itself. Harvard School founder Grenville C. Emery wanted to give his new school a good name, so, with permis-sion from then Harvard University president Charles W. Eliot, he named it after the college.

The chapel is now a cultural and historical monument of the city of Los Angeles.

Rugby Hall is named after the same school whose chapel inspired St. Saviour’s. However, the present day Rugby, which dates back to 1962, is not the original. The building where Rugby now stands was a Turkish bath house, a remnant of the Coldwater campus’ former owner. Harvard School replaced the Hollywood Country Club, which sold the land after strug-gling during the Great Depression.

When Harvard moved in, it painted the walls and replaced the lockers with desks and chairs, while a study hall replaced the baths.

Chalmers Hall, dedicated Nov. 24, 1968, is named after Father William Scott Chalmers, an Episcopalian priest who headed Harvard School from 1949 to 1969.

During his tenure, he introduced the pre-fect system and the foreign exchange program and raised $3.5 million to construct the build-ing that bears his name.

Chalmers was born in Scotland in 1907, at-tended Howe Military Academy in Indiana and graduated from Princeton in 1925. In 1938, Chalmers joined Kent School in Connecticut. When Kent’s headmaster had a stroke a year later, Chalmers took his place.

After 10 years at Kent, Harvard offered Chalmers the job as headmaster.

Dedicated in October 1969, The Blanche and Frank R. Seaver Academic Center was named after Frank Seaver and his wife Blanche.

A total of 10 members of the Seaver family attended Harvard School, beginning in 1964. Seaver’s grandchildren Carl-ton Seaver ’64, Patrick Seaver ’64, Christopher Seaver ’65, Hannah Seaver ’07. Jennie Dean ’02, Kyle Dean ’04, Nathan Dean ’06, Ann Seaver ’06, Claire Seaver ’07, and Nicholas Seaver ’03 all attended Harvard or Harvard-Westlake.

The Seaver Foundation was donated to the school in Frank and Blanche’s names. Seaver’s son, Richard, was a trustee of Harvard School.

Not too long after Seaver came Mudd Li-brary, built in the early 1970s. The library owes its name to Seeley G. Mudd, a physician who practiced cardiology in Los Angeles while working at the California Institute of Technol-

ogy to find a cure for cancer. A dozen of Mudd’s relatives, including chil-

dren and grandchildren, attended Harvard, with the first student graduating in 1913.

Mudd has also donated to Stanford Univer-sity, Columbia University and a variety of other institutions.

Any student who has taken a science class is familiar with Munger, named after lawyer Charles Munger, vice-chair-man of Berkshire Hathaway, who donated the funds for the science building in 1995.

A long-time trustee, his three sons, Charles Munger ’74, Barry Munger ’80, Phillip Munger ’86, and two step-sons, David Borthwick ’66, David Borthwick ’70, gradu-ated from Harvard school along with a grandson, Wil-liam Borthwick ’09, who at-tended Harvard-Westlake.

Taper Gymnasium, dedi-cated in 1980, was named af-ter Mark and Amelia Taper, grandparents of Andrew Taper ’78. Mark Taper, born in Poland in 1902, was a real estate investor and founded Biltmore Homes, which pro-duced suburban housing for returning sol-diers from World War II.

In 1952, the Tapers created the S. Mark Taper Foundation, which continues to do-nate to various institutions.

Home to the publications and main-tenance departments, Weiler Hall has a more obscure moniker.

Ralph J. Weiler has no personal con-nection to the school, but his nephew Bart Burnap ’50 is a Harvard alumnus. Bur-nap was named the director of Wei-ler Foundation in Weiler’s will.

“I presume the building is named in Mr. Weiler’s memory by his nephew,” school archivist Allan Sasaki said.

Feldman-Horn Center for the Arts bears the names of former trustee Janis Horn (Jennifer ’91, Jason ’91, Hali ’97) as well as Horn’s father, Leonard Feldman. Feldman’s granddaughter Lindsay Feld-man ‘96 also attended Harvard-Westlake. One of the newer build-ings on campus, it was completed by Michael Maltzan Architecture in 1998 and cost $5.5 million. The bronze cougar statue that sits in the Feldman-

Horn plaza also came from the Feldman-Horn family.

When the gallery was dedi-cated, the family displayed its personal art collection inside, and some faculty members liked the cougar so much that they donated a recast copy to the school.

The Kutler Center for Interdisciplin-ary Studies, which debuted Sept. 28 2012, is dedicated

to Brendan Kutler ’10, who died in his sleep during his senior year.

He cultivated interests in many different fields, rang-ing from astronomy to Japanese culture to music, which he often wished to combine in interdisci-plinary fashions.

The Kutler Center was financed by Kutler’s parents, Jon and Sara Kutler, and donations from the Har-vard-Westlake community.

**Additional reporting by Julia Aizuss

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Big names on campus

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FATHER FIGURE: Father William Scott Chalmers served as headmaster of Harvard School from 1949 to 1969, instituted the current prefect system and raised $3.5 million to fund the construction of the math building now known as Chalmers Hall, top. READING ROOM: Mudd library is named after Seeley G. Mudd and is dedicated to long-time librarian Naomi Javitz, middle.POWER COUPLE: Seaver Academic Center is named for Frank Seaver and his wife Blanche, dedicated in 1969, bottom.HOLY GROUND: St. Saviour’s chapel, which has served as a place of worship for students and faculty for 100 years, center.

B6 Features the ChroniCle oCt. 15, 2013

“ I presume the building is named in Mr. Weiler’s memory by his nephew.”

—Allan Sasaki School Archivist

By JameS hur

Most students probably know the school’s campus like the backs of their hands. They know the shorter alternative routes to get to class as

well as which stairs are less arduous to climb. Yet, there are still some nooks and crannies of

campus that remain less known.While many faculty members regularly

climb the stairs connecting Rugby and the faculty lot, very

few ever use the dirt path adjacent to the stairs. The path leads to a modest, forest-green building with a locked door. Until 1969, this building was a shooting range.

S t u d e n t s who attended

the Harvard School for Boys

when it was a military academy

from 1900 to 1969 used the facility to practice using rifles.

It was converted into a storage room for maintenance immediately after the merging of Harvard and the Westlake School for Girls.

“I think the rifle range is very cool because it shows the history of Harvard,” Katie Ehrlich ’14, who has been to the range for her photography class, said.

However, students are advised to be cautious when

approaching the shooting range.

Near the shooting range is a bomb shelter under Rugby, which was built in 1962 amid Cold War era fears.

“People were afraid of nuclear war, but I don’t know how this

would have protected people from nuclear

weapons,” archivist Allan Sasaki said.

The bomb shelter is now used to store items belonging to

the Performing Arts department and the cafeteria. Sarah McAllister ‘15 occasionally goes inside the bomb

shelter when she is preparing for Jazz concert rehearsals.

“The bomb shelter is like a hipster café because it’s this old place that now has misfit cool props and things,” McAl-

lister said.Above the bomb shelter is Rugby

Tower, which has a deep history of its own.

The tower was used to con-nect the 18th hole of the Hol-lywood Country Club and the clubhouse before the school bought the golf course in 1937.

Before 1960, the tower had an elevator, and the landings were once used as tempo-rary dormitories for Harvard School. A few decades ago, the tower was called the “senior

tower” since only seniors were allowed to use it.

“When alumni from the 1950s come to visit the school, one of the

only things they recognize about the campus is Rugby Tower,” Sasaki said.While Rugby Tower is an almost

intact structure from the Hollywood Country Club, remnants of the golf course can be seen

throughout the campus.The shale used to create the waterfall

opposite of second floor Seaver was originally from stone pathways in the country club.

Frank Hedge, the previous head of mainte-nance, built the waterfall in the late 1980s to increase the aesthetic appeal of the hillside.

Behind the waterfall, situated on top of the hillside, is the Business Office.

To get to the Business Office from the sec-ond floor Seaver, faculty members must travel multiple flights of stairs.

“We’re all in good shape because we climb so many stairs,” Business Manager David Weil ’93 said.

Since the Business Office is on the hillside, some faculty members feel removed from the

rest of the campus.“The joy of being in

a school is being in the hubbub,” Chief Finan-cial Officer Rob Levin said. “The view out of the mountains is great, it’s removed.”

Originally, the Busi-ness Office was the resi-dence of Headmaster Christopher Berrisford, who was at Harvard

School from 1969 to 1987. Berrisford’s daughter Sarah accidentally got her head stuck between the rails, and the maintenance crew had to re-move the rail and have not replaced it since.

After Berrisford’s residence was converted into office space, the building was dedicated to Frank Alvarez, senior controller from 1961 to 1997.

Another part of campus students may not be familiar with is the darkroom on the sec-ond floor of Seaver, which is primarily used by Sasaki.

In 1984, Sasaki noticed that the room, origi-nally used by the custodians, appeared to be a suitable location for a darkroom because it had a sink with running water.

After receiving permission from mainte-nance, Sasaki converted the room to print black and white pictures that were used for yearbooks, the Harvard News and other pub-lications.

“It seems that Harvard never had a photog-raphy program,” Sasaki said. “Starting in the early 80s, I would have students come and ask me for photo lessons.”

Some students, such as Conor Cook ’13, have used Sasaki’s darkroom to learn different methods of photo printing.

Behind Ahmanson Theatre is a small office space surrounded by black metal barricades. Originally built to protect expensive telescopes, the space was converted two years ago to house performing arts teacher Ted Walch’s DVDs for Cinema Studies. A sign with the name “Vault of Dreams” hangs prominently over the door.

Over the years, the Vault of Dreams became more crowded with memorabilia, ranging from lamps to gnomes, donated by former students.

“Being a natural packrat, I brought my own books and rugs from home,” Walch said, refer-ring to his intricately patterned rugs covering the floor.

A Keuring machine is available to his Cin-ema Studies students to make coffee and hot chocolate. They can also rent DVDs.

“Each year I lose eight to nine DVDs, but I think that’s a very little cost,” Walch said. “Sometimes I get DVDs in the mail from alum-ni.”

The name “Vault of Dreams” was suggest-ed by Austin Park ’10. Park was in the same Directed Studies in Cinema class as Brendan Kutler ’10.

When Kutler died, Park took over Kutler’s project on filmmaker Akira Kurosawa and pre-sented his project at the end of the year to a group of students and parents.

“It was one of the best experiences I had as a teacher,” Walch said. “Whenever I come here, I think of Austin Park and Brendan Kutler.”

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Big names on campus

STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN: Plaques commemorating winners of the Club Championship athletic competition from the 1940s and 1950s line the walls of Rugby Tower, connecting Rugby Auditorium to Feldman Horn, Mudd Library, and the Kutler center, top.GUNS N’ ROSES: Students practiced riflery here until 1969, when the Board of Trustees voted to end military instruction, middle. CHAMBER OF SECRETS: Cinema studies students are granted exclusive access to Ted Walch’s Vault of Dreams, a closet con-verted to a hidden room holding Walch’s movie and book collection and housed in a back room of Ahmanson Lecture Hall, bottom.

Features B7hwChroniCle.Com/FeaturesoCt. 15, 2013

“ I think the rifle range is very cool because it shows the history of Harvard.”

—Katie Ehrlich ’14

Though most students are familiar with the more popular sites on campus, few know about the hidden gems scattered around school.

CHRONICLE ARCHIVES


highstakes

By Sydney Foreman

Melvin*, The BrainStill very undecided about

his college plans, Melvin will be applying Early Action to the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan and MIT.

“I’d be happy to go to any of them,” he said.

Melvin has yet to finish any of his applications, but he has started all of them. He is putting most of his effort into his UChicago supplemental es-says because they are the most abstract.

As UCLA is still the only campus that Melvin has stepped foot on, he thinks that visiting schools might impact his opinion of them.

“That’s a lot of time to

take off and pretty expensive if you don’t plan well,” he said, “Going to college meetings here [at school] and finding out more about campus life online is working for me right now.”

Thelonius*, The ArtistAlthough Thelonius is still

set on applying Early Decision to NYU, he will visit Kenyon College during mid-semester break. Thelonius thinks of this trip to Ohio as a “last chance” to make sure he belongs at NYU.

“NYU is my first choice,” Thelonius said. “If anything were to beat it, it would have to really impress me.”

He doubts Kenyon will replace NYU as his first choice. Thelonius is also skeptical

of a significant change in his preference since his art teacher told him Kenyon’s art program is not particularly strong. Thelonius notes that he has not personally researched the art program yet.

In the past, Thelonius had “cold feet” about NYU, but at the moment, he is very excited.

He believes he has a similar chance of acceptance at both NYU and Kenyon, but Thelonius would like to apply somewhere early. He likes the idea of being done with the college process.

Daisy*, The All-aroundDaisy has decided to apply

Early Decision to Columbia University and Early Action to the University of Chicago.

“I am a little nervous

because the competition among Harvard-Westlake, let alone all of the country, will be pretty stiff,” she said.

Although Columbia remains at the top of her list, Daisy also considers the UChicago one of her top choices.

After talking with her coach and researching UChicago’s significantly higher acceptance rate for early applicants, Daisy believes she has a 50-50 chance of acceptance there. Despite having found two schools she enjoys, Daisy does not feel optimistic about the college process.

“Even if I’m doing alright, I’m still a few steps behind,” she said.

Daisy has not finished

her early supplements to her schools yet, but she plans to finish these over the mid-semester break. Florence*, The Athlete

After visiting Oberlin College, Florence is reconsidering Div. III schools.

“Visiting Oberlin has affected my college list because the track coach there made me realize that Div. III schools have a lot of value too,” Florence said. “I wasn’t considering Div. III at all before Oberlin, but now I am weighing the pros and cons of both Div. III and Div. I.”

She is not applying early to a school. Georgetown is still her first choice, but she will not apply Early Action because she believes it will not affect her chances of acceptance.

Finalizing early schools The four seniors visit college campuses and attend information sessions to finalize their decisions about applying early to schools.

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

By Morganne raMsey

After six months of lengthy rehearsals, Amita Pentakota ’14 stepped on stage to perform in “MARA” at the Ford Amphitheatre in Hollywood Sept. 21.

In preparation for the show, a classical In-dian dance performance, Pentakota rehearsed daily for about two hours on weekdays and for about six to eight hours on weekends.

During rehearsals, the dancers learned rou-tines and posted videos on YouTube, so that they could review them later.

During longer rehearsals, they alternated between running the whole show and “nitpick-ing” certain moments.

“The weeks before a show it gets really in-tense and my weekends are taken up,” Penta-kota said.

Despite all of the preparation and practice, little things still went wrong during the show.

Pentakota laughed, remembering how her davani, a part of her costume that was draped over her shoulder, fell off during one of the shows.

“It was kind of just hanging there, and nobody really noticed,” Pentakota said. “I just per-severed and kept dancing like nothing happened.”

The story of “MARA” is based on Buddhist folk-lore, where Mara, a demon, tries to dis-tract the Buddha from reaching en-lightenment.

The story follows the life of Jeeva, one of the characters Pentakota played in part of the show.

“In my section we find out that Mara has this control over Jeeva, and Mara can control Jeeva’s emotions,” Pentakota said.

Pentakota was also one of two dancers who played Mara.

Mara, she said, represents “the mind and the distractions the mind creates.”

“In the third section, we can see how Mara is really a part of all of [Jeeva’s] relationships: Mara is [Jeeva’s] mother, [and] is her friend,” Pentakota said. “Basically everything in Jeeva’s life is created by Mara.”

The type of dance performed in “MARA” is called bharata natyam, a style of classical In-dian dance that originated in Tamul-Nadu, an area of southern India.

Bharata natyam started out as a religious dance in the seventeenth century, but, in mod-ern times, has become more of an art form.

However, many of the dances are still done in praise of certain gods.

“You don’t have to be religious to do it,” Pen-takota said. “Hinduism and Indian culture are very intertwined, so the fact is these stories are part of Indian culture.”

Pentakota has been learning bharata naty-am since she was four at the Shakti School of Bharata Natyam.

In 2009, she had her arangetram, a solo dance debut.

She is now a member of the Shakti Dance Company, the Shakti School’s troupe.

She performs in multiple shows every year, and she has performed all over the country, dancing in places as far as Philadelphia.

In “MARA,” Pentakota performed with 24 other members of the Shakti Dance Company.

Most of the girls in Shakti are in high school or college and have been with the company for years.

“These girls are basically my sisters,” Penta-kota said. “I have grown up with them and we have watched each other grow as dancers.”

In addition to dancing at the Shakti Dance Company, Pentakota began learning modern dance by participating in the dance program at Harvard-Westlake in eighth grade.

Although she is no longer enrolled in dance class at school, she is still in-volved with the dance program, participating in the school’s dance shows.

“I am more confident in what I do in bharata natyam, but with mod-ern dance I am not as sure,” Pentakota said. “I still feel as though I am discovering new things every day.”

Although having to dance both inside and outside of school is a very significant time commitment, Pentakota does not find it a difficult task to balance the two schedules.

Pentakota said that she will prioritize her dancing at school if it is necessary, but the re-hearsals at Shakti often do not start until later than the ones at school because many of the other dancers also have school commitments.

Pentakota said that the dance rehearsals at Harvard-Westlake and the dance rehears-als at the Shakti Dance Com-pany are very different because she has to change her mindset depending on which rehearsal she’s in.

Pentakota described the dance program at Shakti as “or-ganized chaos,” but the dance program at school as far more structured.

“At school it is like we are going to work for an hour and then have a show,” Pentakota said. “But at Shakti Dance Company, sometimes we will get work done, and sometimes it is just there to help us get closer [to each other].”

Pentakota believes that do-ing both styles of dance has helped her to grow and develop as a dancer because she is able to learn different techniques from each of the genres. She describes her own dance style as being a fusion of the two different genres, with aspects of bharata natyam dance choreography mixed in with some modern dance chore-ography.

Regardless of the inherent differences be-tween the two dance styles, Pentakota said that bharata natyam dance and modern dance are more similar than they are different.

“You are trying to tell a story, no matter what style you are doing,” Pentakota said. “You are trying to convey a message.”

a story through dance

Arts&EntErtAinmEnt The Chronicle • Oct. 15, 2013

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF AMITA PENTAKOTA

Bharata natyam:

“ I am more confident in what I do in bharata natyam, but with modern dance I am not as sure. I still feel as though I am discovering new things every day.”

—Amita Pentakota ’14

Amita Pentakota ’14, who has been dancing for 14 years, pursued her passion for classical Indian dance at a professional level, as she recently co-starred in a performance at the Ford Ampitheatre in Hollywood.

Oct. 15, 2013B10 A&E the chrOnicle

From Stadium to Stage

A CHANGE OF PACE: Daniel Dávila ‘14, left, takes the field as center-fielder in a baseball game. Dávila and his teammates, center, celebrate their CIF national champi-onship title in June 2013. Dávila, right, bonds with Chamber Singer members Hudson Ling ’15 and Angus O’Brien ’14 during their retreat at Camp Wrightwood in September.

By Sarah Novicoff

“So let go, go, go of the past now. Say hello to the light in your eyes. Yes, I know that the world’s spinning fast now, but you gotta run the race to win the prize.”

Daniel Dávila ’14 sang those bars from the song “Welcome to the ’60s” in “Hairspray,” before sitting down at a table and beginning to talk.

“I always thought this [in-terview] would be for sports, but now it’s for my singing,” Dávila said.

Dávila will play Link Lar-kin in the fall musical “Hair-spray,” to be performed Nov. 8-10.

Dávila has never been in an upper school musical nor an upper school choral group. He has spent his entire school career playing baseball as a center-fielder for a team that last year won the national championship. He came to the school to play baseball, at-tracted by the program and having played on a club team with Wolverine coaches for years.

“Last year, winning a national championship, it didn’t matter to me that I only got six at-bats, just be-cause for me it was an awe-some, awesome time,” Dávila said. “The team was also re-ally cool. I don’t think I’ve ever been on a team that was so close.”

This year he was accept-ed into the Chamber Singers and got the lead in the show. He doesn’t know whether he will continue to play baseball and has been given time off to be in the musical. He is, how-ever, still on the roster despite not attending practice since the start of the year.

“I’m not 100 percent sure; it just kind of depends on how everything plays out, whether I go back to baseball,” Dávila said. “Ideally I would like to go back to baseball because, when you’ve been playing since you were 2, you really want to fin-ish that last year. Commit-ting all that time to my team, to my coach, to my friends, I just kind of feel like I owe it to them and to myself. Even if I don’t end up playing because I haven’t been there, I just kind of feel like I should finish it off.”

Dávila does not plan to play baseball in college. Rather, he intends to pursue s i n g -i n g a s a

career and worked towards that goal this summer. At Grammy Camp, a music in-dustry summer camp where he studied singing and music management, Dávila was of-fered the chance to pursue that career when he was in-

vited to audition with the producers of

“The Voice.”“I didn’t

n e c e s s a r i l y think anything of it, just be-cause I had only decided

that I wanted to be a singer

months before,” Dávila said. “I had

just my first

voice lesson maybe three or four months before. It was so new to me that I just wanted to familiarize myself with the audition process within the in-dustry.”

After singing three songs, Dávila moved on to an inter-view process and then went home, convinced that the ex-perience was over.

He then received a call that he had made it into the fi-nal round, which only accepts 180 out of the original 65,000.

“I was lucky because I got to be with

my mom the whole time so I wasn’t a l o n e , ” D á v i -

la said. “When you’re

in a room with so many incredibly tal-

ented singers you know there’s something more than just your voice. I don’t get nervous in those situations just be-cause you know who you’re up against, and worse comes to worst, you don’t make it.”

Four days before his “Hair-spray” audition, Dávila got a call that he had moved on to the Blind Auditions, which are televised.

In order to perform on “The Voice,” he would have had to miss a month for school and three more if he moved on from the initial round.

“Given that I would have had to miss so much school and that I was given the op-portunity to be one of the leads in one of my favorite musicals, it was kind of a no-brainer for me,” Dávila said. “I don’t regret it at all. It was pretty reassuring to me just because I’m so new to singing, espe-

cially going out for auditions. So just the fact that I made it there wasn’t really daunting but rather just really, really exciting.”

Dávila hopes that this au-dition was only the first in a long career as a musician, a singer and a guitar player.

He started playing guitar when he was 7 before quitting because he didn’t like his mu-sic teacher.

He picked it up again five years ago when his younger brother wanted to learn how to play the guitar.

He now plays electric and acoustic guitar and sees it as connected to his musical ca-reer.

“It’s always important that you be a musician and not just a singer,” Dávila said. “I want to be able to do other stuff. It really ties into my style of singing.”

Dávila said he has decided to apply to a few music colleges as well as regular schools, and his decision will depend on many factors.

“If I learned anything at camp and through the past couple months, it’s that ev-eryone has a different story of how they made it in the in-dustry,” Dávila said. “You just have to look for opportunities and not worry about where they are going to take you but just hope they take you in a good direction.”

As for the rest of this year, Dávila is still uncertain.

“I don’t know what’s go-ing to happen with baseball, I don’t know what’s going to happen with music,” Dávila said. “All I know now is that I have the lead in the musical.” **Additional reporting by Mazelle Etessami

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF ERIC DEARBORN PHOTOGRAPHY PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF ERIC DEARBORN PHOTOGRAPHY PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF ANDREA TORRE

Daniel Dávila ’14 took time off from the baseball team and turned down a blind audition for “The Voice” to be Link Larkin in the fall musical “Hairspray.”

By Carly Berger

It’s the second act of “The Sunshine Boys,” and advance-ment assistant Annie Abrams ’99 is on stage with Danny De-Vito, dressed in a tight white nurse’s costume with padded sleeves and making the crowd burst into laughter.

Abrams has been perform-ing in the show at the Ah-manson Theater eight times a week since Sept. 24, and the show will continue to run through Nov. 3.

“I’ve always wanted to per-form at the Ahmanson, and

I’ve been attending shows there since I was a little girl,” Abrams said. “It’s been a thrill to per-form in a comedy on that stage with such a remarkable cast.”

The show stars Judd Hirsch and De-Vito, who previously worked together on the television series “Taxi” and have re-united on stage for the first time since.

“Danny and Judd are both comedic ge-niuses,” Abrams said. “Every

rehearsal, and every show, is a lesson in comedy, and acting

in general. I’m espe-cially lucky because my scene in the play is with Danny, and we have a blast each night.”

Abrams loves per-forming comedy since she feels that every show is different de-pending on the au-dience’s reaction. In the show, set in 1972, Abrams plays a sexy nurse. For inspiration

for her vaudeville character,

Abrams looked to some of her favorite comedic actresses, in-cluding Lucille Ball and Mari-lyn Monroe.

Abrams now works part-time at Harvard-Westlake as an advancement assistant, but she is currently off work due to the show. Many faculty members plan on seeing the show.

“Annie was the best part of the show,” advancement ad-ministrator Leah Smith said. “She was incredible, a modern day Betty Boop.”

As a student at Harvard-Westlake, Abrams was in mu-

sicals and plays and performed with Chamber Singers and Dance Production. Abrams’ favorite role at Harvard-West-lake was Fiona in the musical “Brigadoons” during her se-nior year.

Walch recalls Abrams as one of the “very best, smart-est, and most disciplined” ac-tors that he has ever worked with at Harvard-Westlake.

“She had dazzling profes-sional promise from the be-ginning with a work ethic to match,” Walch said, “Further-more, she has always been a pleasure to work with.”

By Pim OterO

The bookstore began to sell tickets Monday for the up-per school fall musical “Hair-spray,” which will run from Nov. 8-10. Actors, cast, and crew have been able to pre-order tickets since Oct. 8, with a total of 236 tickets already sold. The $15 tickets are for reserved seating.

“The musicals sell out al-

most every time, [but] there always are a few people who don’t use all their tickets,” box office coordinator Melissa Ouellet said.

With 55 actors and a pit orchestra, “Hairspray” will be one of the biggest productions in Harvard-Westlake history.

“We knew the cast would be large but the number of enormous group dances and the amount of choreography

that’s involved is more than we imagined,” upper school per-forming arts department head and director Rees Pugh said.

The production of the show has necessitated cast rehears-als five times a week and pit orchestra rehearsals twice a week. The students have been working since Sept. 10, when they did their first read through with the complete cast.

“It’s always chaotic,” per-forming arts teacher and co-director Michele Spears said. “Things are being done so much quicker, and we have a much bigger ensemble than would normally be done.”

The directors and students believe that they are heading in the right direction.

“I’m really excited about opening night,” cast member Nina Juarez ’16 said.

‘Hairspray’ tickets available in bookstore

By Jake SaferStein

Jazz students performed at Vibrato Grill Jazz for four hours Sunday night.

Vibrato Grill Jazz was founded by seven time Grammy winner Herb Alpert and hosts daily jazz performances during its dinner service.

“We like Vibrato because of the beautiful location and amazing venue,” upper school performing arts teacher Shawn Costantino, who organizes the performance annually to showcase the jazz students, said.

Advanced Jazz Combo and the Jazz Explorers, the two highest-level jazz bands at the school, performed at the grill.

“I organize it to give the students extra opportunities to perform because they work so hard in class and I feel they deserve to be heard,” Costantino said.

It was Advanced Jazz Combo’s first performance of the year, while the Jazz Explorers performed at Back to School day and the all-school convocation.

Alex Lange ’14, Ben Greene ’14, Harrison Banner ’15, Jer-emy Tepper ’15, Sinclair Cook ’14 and Vincent Huang ’14 performed in Advanced Jazz Combo.

Andy Arditi ’15, Bridget Hartman ’15, Jason Oberman ’15, Matt Leichinger ’14, Miles Van Tongeren ’16 and Robert Lee ’14 performed in Jazz Ex-plorers.

Jazz band performs at Vibrato

hwchronicle.com/ae a&e B11oct. 15, 2013

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ON THE SPOT: Daniel Palumbo ’14 shares a moment with Teddy Sokoloff ’15 while Ethan Weinstein ’15 and Katherine Calvert ’15 look on during the Scene Monkeys’ open workshop. Michelle Spears, the faculty advisor to the improv troupe, hosted two workshops Friday Oct. 4 and Friday Oct. 11 in the drama lab. These workshops consisted of a variety of improv games designed to help familiarize students with improv techniques. Auditions for The Scene Monkeys will take place on Friday Oct. 25 and Friday Nov. 1.

Scene Monkeys hosts improv workshops before auditionsDAVID WOLDENBERG/CHRONICLE

Alumna acts in comedy play Annie Abrams ’99 stars as a nurse in ‘The Sunshine Boys’ with Danny DeVito and Judd Hirsch at the Ahmanson Theatre.

nathanson’s

Annie Abrams ’99

Tim Hyde

Therese Hyde

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FeaturesThe Chronicle • Oct. 15, 2013

• See page B12

Sugar skulls, fragrant marigolds, photographs of loved ones illuminated by candelight — all are displayed during Día de los

Muertos festivities.

Defense lifts team to single loss record

SportSThe Chronicle • Oct. 15, 2013

C7

RESILIENCE: Despite injuries to several key players, the girls’ tennis team has maintained a perfect record in league play, winning all six league matches so far.

Field Hockey

Girls’ Volleyball

By Jordan Garfinkel

As the postseason ap-proaches, the varsity field hockey team continues to excel in regular season play, winning seven of its last nine games and allowing only goal in those games combined.

Goalie Daniela Grande ’15 is arguably on the hottest streak of her high school ca-reer, as she has left the team’s opponents scoreless in eight of the 11 games this season, in-cluding the last three games.

“Really it’s been how ag-gressive we are together as a team, with everyone commu-nicating, goalie to forward,” stopper Hana Chop ’14 said. “We’ve been able to possess the ball and have great cov-erage behind every play and counterattack.”

The team recently gained vengeance with its beat-down against Glendora High School, the team who handed the Wolverines their only loss this season. The team tallied four goals in its shutout win.

“It was a really tough loss and especially frustrating since we knew we could have won,” Brooke Bagnall ‘14 said. “We wanted revenge. Losing to them at first helped moti-vate us to come out strong and play hard.”

Along with a stout defense, the Wolverines’ production on offense has been nothing short of impressive.

The team averages nearly four goals a game and has won its last four games by a differ-ential of 15 goals.

“We are playing as a unit,” Chop said. “From defense to offense everyone is working hard, moving off-ball to create plays, setting up for passes and shots and blocking up on free hits.”

The Wolverines have two remaining games until play-offs begin. The next match is at Chaminade High School on Oct. 22. The season finale is at home on Oct. 24 against Lou-isville.

By Mila Barzdukas

Coming off a dominating performance at Homecoming, a 1-0 start in league, and a tournament win at the S&R Sport Water Polo Invite, the varsity squad has solidified itself as a top team. Despite these wins, the squad is stuck being ranked second by CIF Southern Section Division I. That all could change today, when the Wolverines face their old foe Mater Dei in a battle to be the best team in Southern California.

The team’s record is 13-1. Their blemish on an otherwise perfect season came from a 9-6 loss to Mater Dei in the Santa Barbara Tournament finals Sept. 21. The Wolverines are seeking redemption for their previous loss.

The Monarchs reign as number one in CIF, but Raede says the team is working hard to capitalize on Mater Dei’s weaknesses.

“When we played against Mater Dei last time we didn’t score in any of our 6 on 5

plays and so right now we are working on power plays,” Raede said. “They also like to come into really far drops and block shots, leaving shooters on the outside open. We’re working on overcoming that because we had a lot of trouble scoring against their defense last game.”

The squad took care of business at the S&R tournament last Friday and Saturday by winning four games in a row to secure the tournament title. Wins over Clovis West, Los Alamitos,

and Long Beach Wilson earned them a spot in the finals against Sacred Heart. The Wolverines trounced Sacred Heart 15-7 in the finals, led by Johnny Hooper’s ’15 dominant offensive performance. Hooper scored six goals, Warren Snyder ’14 scored four, and Morio Saito ’15 and Ben Hallock ’16 scored two apiece. They beat every team they played by at least five goals.

“It was a very big win for

Wolverines trump Crespi 20-3, aim to avenge sole loss to Mater Dei

Team beats Marymount for second time

OUR HOUSE: Duncan Froomer ’16, top, takes a shot at Homecoming. Luke Henriksson ’17 and Anthony Ridgley ’15, left and right, block shot incoming shots.


HAMMER TIME: Four teammates watch as middle blocker Arielle Strom ’14 spikes the ball in its home loss to Santa Barbara High School.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF BERNARD DILLARD

By eliJah akhtarzad

After defeating Mission League rival Notre Dame on Oct. 3, the Wolverines’ Home-coming match featured a non-conference matchup against Lakewood High School, a team the Wolverines sought revenge against after losing to in pre-season play.

The tough hitting Lake-wood Lancers jumped out to an early lead over the Wolverines. The squad lost the match 1-3, but continued to compete af-

ter being down 0-2. The team came out with energy in the third set, blocking hit after hit and playing its best defense of the night. Led by the hitting of team captain and opposite hit-ter Josephine Kremer ’14, the Wolverines were able to secure the third set 25-23.

“Our mindset going into the Lakewood game was that we were just going to put ev-erything out there, knowing that they were a really good team and had some big hit-ters,” team captain and setter

Nicole Elattrache ’14 said. “It was pretty rough and difficult to compete with them, so we knew that the only way we would have any success was by coming together and just being really scrappy because that’s what we can control.”

The Lancer front row was too much to handle in the fourth set for the Wolverines, who attempted to make a comeback midway through the set while being down but even-tually lost 23-25. The squad

• Continued on page C6

• Continued on page C3

The number 2 ranked boys’ water polo team will vie for the top spot in the CIF Southern Section, as the Wolverines will clash today with the current number 1 team,

long-standing rival Mater Dei.

KingfishBoys’ Water Polo

Facts &Figures

Game to watch

OCT. 15Water Polo vs. Mater Dei

The Wolverines only loss in their 11-1 season was to the no. 1 ranked Mater Dei Monarchs Sept. 21. The team is looking to bounce back from that 9-6 defeat in its game at Mater Dei and add another victory to its six game win streak.

6 p.m. @ Mater Dei High School

The total points that the girls tennis team have won by this season 71

Percent of Teddy King ’14’s

receptions that have been for a

touchdown80

Shutouts this season by field hockey goalie

Daniela Grande ’ 158

Length of the girls golf team’s win streak before their loss to Notre Dame Oct. 10 5

Oct. 15, 2013C2 SpOrtS the chrOnicle

Junior Varsity

Cross CountryNext Meet: Oct. 25 @ Mt. SAC Invitational

Junior midfielder tries out for national teamBy Benjamin most

Courtney O’Brien ’15 is trying out for the United States Un-der-17 women’s soc-cer team this month. This makes O’Brien the second Wolverine girls’ soccer player to try out for the U-17 team, after fellow midfielder Chloe Cas-taneda ’15 attended the national team camp in Florida last month.

Coaches for the national

women’s team scout potential players and invite them to na-tional soccer camps. O’Brien

was one of around 30 girls asked the ECNL/id2 Nation-al Training Camp, which took place in Portland, Ore. last August.

O’Brien also re-ceived an invitation for a camp in Carson, Calif. where coaches will consider her for the U-17 national team.

Before being accepted to

the national team, however, players must prove themselves in a series of camps, O’Brien said.

“The goal is to be invited back to the next camp and continue to prove that you deserve to be there,” O’Brien said.

Coaches are currently working on a final roster, which is due and will be re-leased in February for the na-tional women’s U-17 team. If she is accepted to the team, O’Brien will play in the 2014 U-17 World Cup, which is planned for late March and

early April in Costa Rica. All team members are

required to spend at least a month in Costa Rica, in addi-tion to visiting national camps before the World Cup occurs. O’Brien is currently partici-pating in the Elite National Club League fall season.

She practices two hours a week and plays one or two games every weekend, trav-eling frequently for tourna-ments, league games and col-lege showcases. O’Brien hopes to continue pursuing her soc-cer career past high school as well.

ON THE PITCH: Midfielder Courtney O’Brien ’15, #8, heads the ball in a league match against Louisville last season, which the Wolverines won 6-0. O’Brien is the second Wolverine this year to get an opportunity to try out for the U-17 women’s national soccer team in Carson, Calif.

AARON LYONS/CHRONICLE

Hooper scored six goals in the squad’s latest game against Sacred Heart, more than any other person on the team. Despite only being a junior, he has taken over as the team’s leading scorer.

KEY PLAYERJohnny Hooper ’15

Football (4-2)Next Game:Oct. 18 vs. St. Paul HS

Field Hockey (5-2-3)

Oct. 22 @ Chaminade HS

Girls’ Volleyball (18-3)Next Match:Oct. 15 @ Louisville HS

Girls’ Tennis (10-0)Next Match:Oct. 15 @ FSHA

Boys’ Water Polo (7-3) Next Game:Oct. 15 @ Mater Dei

Next Game:

Sports analysts, doctors to speak about statistics, sports medicine in new interdisciplinary classBy Grant nussBaum

Within the next month, analytics consultant and Long Beach Wilson football coach Tim Chou, co-owner of the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies Steve Kaplan (Madeline ’14, Leo ’16) and Grizzlies’ Vice President of Basketball Oper-ations John Hollinger, on Nov. 15., will all speak to and work with the Sports and Statistics class on the subject of sports analytics.

In its inaugural year as a Kutler Center or Interdisci-plinary Studies course, Sports and Statistics has consisted of students performing statisti-cal investigations in the field of either sports medicine or sports analytics. The course is centered around a blog on which all the students’ inves-tigations are posted.

The three analytics experts will follow four sports medi-cine and orthopedic doctors from Children’s Hospital Los Angeles who spoke to the class last month about conducting research in sports and sports medicine.

Chou was one of eight final-ists who presented his project for the “Evolution of Sport” contest at this year’s Massa-chusetts Institute of Technol-ogy Sloan Sports Conference, an annual sports analytics convention which course in-

structor and math teacher Bill Thill attended this past Feb-ruary. Chou’s project entailed creating a new measurement of efficiency in college football.

“I asked him about the sports analytics side because I wasn’t familiar, and I told him about this course, which was already under way,” Thill said. “He was th r i l l e d when I a s k e d him to be a part of it, and we met a couple t i m e s this sum-mer to t h i n k and plan i d e a s a b o u t how he can come to talk. He’s even posted comments on some of our students’ blog posts already.”

Hollinger, who will visit the class on Nov. 15, was an analyst and writer for ESPN before Kaplan hired him to work for the Memphis Griz-zlies. Hollinger is arguably most known for inventing the Player Efficiency Rating bas-ketball statistic, a metric used to quantify a player’s overall

contributions on the court.Children’s Hospital of Los

Angeles doctors Nina Light-dale and J. Lee Pace visited the classes Sept. 24, as did doctors Tracy Zaslow and Bianca Edi-son Sept. 27.

Pace discussed the pro-cess of gathering and analyz-ing data for a research project,

and Lightdale e l a b o r a t e d with examples of her own re-search in the area of ath-letes’ hand in-juries.

Z a s l o w and Edison also contin-ued address-ing methods of sports re-search, and gave students feedback on potential proj-ect ideas.

All four doctors also an-swered questions concerning athletic injuries and sports medicine.

Thill, who has been in con-tact with Children’s Hospital Los Angeles about the course since last April, feels the CHLA doctors’ visits brought unique, valuable insight to students interested in sports medicine.

“Often when you have spe-

cial guests presentations, it’s very hit or miss,” Thill said. “If they know the students and they care about the students taking something away from it, they can prepare something very effective. The doctors and I had really talked a lot about the things that they wanted to get out of it and we wanted to get out of it early on. They put in a lot of work on presenta-tions and plans to work with kids. So now, when students are going to be working indi-vidually with those doctors, there’s a common language and common experiences.”

Thill hopes the speakers will serve as mentors that the students can look to for guid-ance on their sports medicine or sports analytics projects.

“The role of the profession-als is to give students another adult who knows the field, and just connect with them,” Thill said.

“They know what matters most. They may know good ways to design a study, they may know good numbers or metrics to use, to measure de-fensive efficiency or some oth-er qualitative athletic perfor-mance that isn’t in the typical box scores,” Thill said. “Their experiences as coaches, as sports analysts, or as research-ers give us special insight that no single teacher like myself could necessarily provide.”

“ Their experiences as coaches, as sports analysts, or as researchers give us special insight that no single teacher like myself could necessarilyprovide.”

— Bill ThillSports & Statistics teacher

nathanson’s

Courtney O’Brien ’15

By Eric LoEB

The Wolverine football team’s last two games have left what players describe as a sour taste in their mouths. After starting the season off 4-0, the team has lost its last two matchups, its Homecom-ing matchup against Palisades Charter High School and its first Mission League show-down with Serra High School, by an average of 41.5 points per game.

“Obviously no one likes to lose,” said Head Coach Scot Ruggles following the team’s 63-7 loss to the Serra Cava-liers. “But in football and in life you have to get back up if someone knocks you down.”

The team’s matchup against the Palisades Dolphins was one players say they ex-pected to win, and lost not be-cause of their o p p o n e n ts ’ performance, but their own m i s t a k e s . The team c o m m i t -ted multiple holding and false start penalties in crucial situa-tions, leading to shortened drives and placing the defense in challenging situations.

“We just need to be dis-ciplined,” Ruggles said. “You know the bottom line is you can’t put yourself in first and 25 situations. We made too many mistakes to win a foot-ball game.”

In addition to the pen-alties, turnovers have also plagued the Wolverines in not only their matchup with the Dolphins, but also against the Cavaliers.

The team had three turn-overs against Palisades Char-ter, and by just a few minutes into the second quarter in its matchup with Serra, the team’s offense had already given the Cavaliers posses-

sion five times, including three fumbles and two interceptions by first year starting quarter-back Marshal Cohen ’16. Play-ers attribute these turnovers to a dominant Serra front, which simply overpowered the Wolverines offensive line the entire game.

“I don’t think we played to the fullest of our abilities,” starting right tackle Ben Klein ’14 said. “There were a lot of mental mistakes made and those are what kill a play. I think we need to work on fin-ishing our blocks. We often get to our man but don’t fully get him out of the play so he can still come back and tackle. If we finish our blocks and cut out the mental mistakes we’ll be really great.”

In addition to being placed in a tough situation in terms of field position because of the

t u r n o v e r s , Serra’s of-fense scored with ease, up 35-0 at the end of the first quar-ter and 56-0 at halftime. Players said that the size d i f f e r e n c e between the Wo l v e r i n e

players on the defensive line, and the much larger players on the Serra offensive line proved to be a challenge. The aver-age Cavalier lineman boasts a weight of 267 pounds, while no Wolverine weighs more than 245 pounds.

“We’ve played guys who are bigger than us, stronger than us and supposedly better than us,” Jeremy Tepper ’15 said. “Last night we played a team that is good and we definitely respect them, but I think it’s important that we go through the tape and are aware of what went wrong and do everything we can do to turn around our Mission League season. We’ve shown that we can play deal with big linemen against

Loyola and Granada Hills, so it’s a matter of continuing to do that and getting after it.”

The team’s next Mission League matchup is against St. Paul Friday and players and coaches alike are ready to turn the Mission League sea-son around.

“For the rest of the season the offense needs to help out the defense and start games off right and not turn the ball over,” Cohen said. “We may have a young team but we

need to grow up fast to make these next four league games play as smooth as possible.”

Ruggles echoed a simi-lar desire to turn the season around.

“Obviously we want to win and it’s a very good league,” he said. “We know we can com-pete with anyone if we play the way we know we can. We have to go back to basics and start doing the little things right and once we do that we are going to be alright.”

us and we should be proud to bring home the tournament victory,” Morio Saito ’15 said. “One of the things we can take away from this tournament is that our group has the ability to make that CIF champion-ship game. This tournament is one of the factors that should motivate our group to come out, train the hardest we’ve ever trained and come back and play even better for CIF.”

This is the first season the squad has won the S&R Invi-tational.

Homecoming proved to be another opportunity for the Wolverines to showcase their talent and prove they could play at the highest level, but they only scraped by Long Beach Wilson 11-8.

“The win on Homecom-ing was not as dominant as it

should have been,” left-handed attacker Duncan Froomer ’16 said. “Saying that, we came out with a win due to Anthony [Ridgley ’15] coming up with some huge saves and our team executing on offense in key moments.”

League play has not posed a challenge to the team’s sea-son record so far. The Wol-verines rolled Crespi 20-3 in their league opener Oct. 9. Their next league matchup is against Loyola Oct. 23.

The Wolverines hope to keep the same mindset for all of their league games.

“We just have to dominate league and move on to play-offs,” Center Raphael Raede ’15 said. “We have to face all these teams the same way. We need to start and finish against every team the same way: strong.”

SportS C3oCt. 15, 2013 hwChroniCle.Com/SportS

Basketball alumnus plays in Germany

Sports magazine and web-site Baseball America recent-ly named former Wolverine standout Max Fried ’12 one of its Midwest League Top 20 Prospects.

The left-handed Fried scored a number eight ranking for his pitching in the San Di-ego Padres organization. Fried put up 7.6 strikeouts per game this past season on the Fort Wayne Tin Caps, the second-best rate among starters in the Midwest League.

Fried was drafted seventh overall by the Padres in the 2012 draft and spent his first season on the organization’s Rookie league team and this past season in Low-A. For its report, Baseball America talked to an American League scout about Fried.

“I don’t think he’ll take long. He’ll shoot through the minors,” the scout said in his report. “He doesn’t have all that much to work on.”

— Lizzy Thomas

All-time Wolverine boys’ basketball leading scorer Bryce Taylor ’04 made his de-but for the FC Bayern Munich basketball team in the Ger-man Bundesliga Basketball League Oct. 3.

In his first three games with the Bavarian Giants, Taylor, who holds Harvard-Westlake basketball records for most points in both one game and over one season, av-eraged 7.3 points per game on 72.7 percent shooting.

Bayern Munich is Taylor’s fourth team in five seasons as a player in the BBL. Taylor signed with Munich this past July after spending last season with the Artland Dragons.

— Grant Nussbaum

Fried named top 20 Minor Leaguer

Fencer places at first tournament of year

Team captain Roy Dritley ’16 was the only Wolverine to place during the first fenc-ing tournament of the year Sept. 22. He used his sword of choice: the foil. This tourna-ment was the first of two indi-vidual tournaments this year. Dritley hopes that next tour-nament the team will be able to do better and believes this can be achievable with more practice.

“Although we didn’t win, we all played our best,” Dritley said.

—Jonah Ullendorff

Noah Pompan ’14 commit-ted to Gettysburg College for lacrosse Oct. 10. Pompan, a varsity midfielder, also consid-ered University of Richmond, Boston University, Bucknell University and Skidmore Col-lege, but he said Gettysburg was a great fit athletically, so-cially and academically.

“I really liked the kids on the team and the coaching staff,” Pompan said. “I’m re-ally excited to play at the next level.”

—Henry Vogel

Senior midfielder commits for lacrosse

Team earns redemption in finals game rematch

Palisades, Serra hand team first two losses following win streak

Water Polo

CANNON: Davis Wachtell ’16 prepares to take a shot on goal in water polo’s 20-3 rout of Crespi Oct 9. The squad has a 13-1 record.


Football

SLIPPERY: Quarterback Marshal Cohen ’16 breaks a tackle in a run against Serra. The team lost 63-7 and has a 4-2 season record.


“ In football and in life you have to get back up if someone knocks you down.”

—Scot RugglesHead Football Coach

inbrief

• Continued from page C1


Boys’ Water Polo

Homecoming Kings

Homecoming 2013 Recap

Fanatics, athletics department resolve student section dispute

Girls’ Volleyball

Out of Reach Grounded

By Grant nussBaum and Patrick ryan

One aspect lacking from the Homecoming 2013 finale football matchup against Palisades other than a Wolverine victory was the presence of a single, distinct student section in the stands.

Instead of congregating in one area of the bleachers, Wolverine Fanatics were split up throughout the bleachers, the track and the lower quad, hindering communication between the student-fans and preventing any cheers or chants supporting the Wolverines from gaining full momentum.

While they did not have any direct confrontation with the administration, the Head Fanatics thought that the school should have alotted a part of the bleachers solely for the students.

“Collectively, we feel that it would be appropriate for the administration to chain off the section traditionally taken by student fans,” Head Fanatic Jonathan Felker ’14 said. “This would allow those students who attend the Homecoming football game to have a place to cheer together, as opposed to scattered around the track.”

Head of Athletics Terry Barnum believes neither side planned ahead enough to practically form a student section amidst the packed Homecoming crowd.

“We had more people get in their seats for the football game earlier,” Barnum said. “We had people in the stands a full half hour or 45 minutes before kickoff, and we hadn’t told them ahead of time that they couldn’t sit in those spots. There would have been hundreds of people we were asking to move.”

The administration and Head Fanatics have been at odds in the past, notably when school officials ejected Fanatics for chants that were deemed inappropriate.

This time around, both sides look to be on the same page in resolving the issue of a student section for the future, although Head Fanatics believe they do not deserve to bear the blame for the Homecoming football game’s disorganization.

“The Head Fanatics as a group took a lot of the heat for not creating some sort of student section, but what people do not understand is how hard it is to relocate parents who tend to be stubborn about the view from which they watch their children,” Felker said. “If they were not allowed to sit in that section in the first place, however, it would be very easy

for us, as Head Fanatics, to do our job. For future reference, we believe the administration should set up a designated student section large enough to accommodate the standard student fan turnout.”

Barnum agrees with the Fanatics’ solution and does not think either side is to blame for the mistake.

“It has been a joint effort in the past where the Fanatic leaders along with school administrators have tried to rope off a section so the Fanatics have somewhere to sit,” Barnum said. “That

just didn’t happen Saturday. It wasn’t the school’s fault, it wasn’t the Fanatics’ fault. It was just that we had a big crowd.”

“[The student section] is something we will have to plan for better in the future,” Barnum added. “It didn’t work out the way we would have wanted to. What we can do in the future is make sure we rope off that section and let families know that if they sit there, once the varsity game starts, they’re going to have to move so the Fanatics can sit down.”

Football

“ It has been a joint effort in the past where the Fanatic leaders along with school administrators have tried to rope off a section so the Fanatics have somewhere to sit. That just didn’t happen Saturday. It wasn’t the school’s fault, it wasn’t the Fanatics’ fault. It was just that we had a big crowd."

—Terry BarnumHead of Athletics

nathanson’s

CAITLIN NEAPOLE/CHRONICLE JACK GOLDFISHER/CHRONICLE


Boys' water polo was the only Wolverine varsity team to come out of Homecoming Oct. 5

victorious, defeating Long Beach Wilson 11-8.

The Wolverines could not complete their comeback after dropping the first two sets to Lakewood, losing

their Homecoming match 3-1.

Holding and false start penalities in key situations limited the Wol-verines offensive attack in their

45-18 loss to Palisades Charter HS.

hwchrOnicle.cOm/SpOrtS SpOrtS C5Oct. 15, 2013

Crunch Time Along with the water polo team's matchup against Mater Dei, several late-season fall showdowns prove crucial and worthy of being called "Games to Watch."

SAM SACHS/CHRONICLE


PRINTED WITH PERMISION OF BERNARD DILLARD


Girls' Tennis

Field Hockey

Girls’ Volleyball

Football 10/18 vs. St. Paul

10/22 vs. Notre Dame

10/24 vs. Louisville

10/28 League Prelims

After defeating league rival, Dame Knights Oct. 3, the Wolverines went on to defeat the defend-ing CIF Division I State Champions Marymount for the second time this sea-son. The squad split the season series against the Knights last year and has already taken the first match 3-0. The Wolverines are cur-rently first place in the Mission League with an undefeated 4-0 record, followed by Notre Dame, who have only lost one game throughout their season.

The girls' tennis team has notched a 9-2 overall record, while going undefeated in league play thus far with a 6-0 record. The squad has expe-rienced many inju-ries to key players, but has been able to dominate the Mission League with an aver-age win advantage of 11 points. The team will compete in four more league match-es before competing in League Prelims on Oct. 28 and the League Prelim Finals on Oct. 30. The squad lost to Tesoro in the second round of the CIF playoffs last year.

The field hockey team has had one of the best seasons in its history with only one loss, a defeat against Glendora HS that was later avenged in a rematch, which the Wolverines won 4-0. The defense has been nearly flawless, allowing only one goal in the last nine games. Along with the stout defense, the teams offense has been prolific. The team takes on Lousiville HS in its final game of the regular season. The Wolverines defeated Louisville handily in a 7-0 win Oct. 8.

After starting out the year with a flaw-less 4-0 record, the Wolverines lost their Homecoming game to Palisades Char-ter High School and their Mission League opener to Serra Oct. 11. The squad's game against St. Paul is critical to its com-petitiveness in the Mission League and a win will prevent the team from going down 0-2 in league. With a win against St. Paul, the squad will look to get back on track and end its two game losing streak.

ended the match losing 1-3, but took a lot away from play-ing against the 43rd ranked team in California.

“I thought we went out our hardest, and it was just a tough team to play especial-ly because we hadn’t played blockers that were that big and aggressive, but I think it was a good chance for us to realize that we’re not invin-cible despite our great wins in league, and that the teams we are going to face in playoffs are going to be really tough just like Lakewood,” opposite hit-ter Mia Natsis ’14 said.

The Wolverines have faced tough competition all over the country, including a matchup against Assumption, a team

from Kentucky ranked 10th in the nation, and a non-league game against Marymount, the CIF Division I State Champi-ons.

The squad lost to Assump-tion 0-2 in the Durango Tour-nament in Las Vegas, Nev., but managed to defeat the Mary-mount Sailors for the first time in seven years 3-1.

“Going into the Mary-mount match the team was focused every day in practice and intent on getting better as part of the preparation process to play really good volleyball,” head coach Adam Black said. “The win proves that training with a purpose and as a team will improve our performance. That win was a byproduct of everyone’s efforts in practice and support for each other.”

After advancing past pool play with a 4-0 record in the Cali Challenge tournament, the squad faced off against Marymount in the quarterfi-nals.

The Wolverines took the first set 25-18, lost the tightly contested second set 22-25, and closed out the match with a down to the wire 15-11 win against the Sailors.

The win marks the second time in the last month that the squad beat the defending state champions.

The Wolverines went on to lose their next match 2-0 to Torrey Pines in the semifinals of the tournament .

“I think we played unbe-lievably well, and it wasn’t just Marymount making mistakes, it was us showing what we

can really do,” middle blocker Arielle Strom ’14 said. “It was really exciting to beat them again because it shows that our first game against them wasn’t just a fluke, and that we can actually beat them. We are better than them.”

The team faces Louis-ville today, and will matchup against league rival Notre Dame Oct. 22.

The Wolverines split the season series last year against the Knights and defeated them in their first meeting this year 3-0.

“I think we definitely real-ize that they are our biggest competition in the Mission League, and that beating them at their home will be much harder than taking them on here [at home],” outside hitter

Rachel Savage ’15 said. “If we did what we did the first time and came out with a lot more fire than them we will have similar results.”

Wolverines recover from homecoming loss with 3rd place finish in Cali Challenge tournament

ALL IN: The Wolverines huddle up before their Home-coming match against Lake-wood. They lost the match to the Lancers in four games.


Girls’ Volleyball

Squad trounces Notre Dame, remains undefeated in leagueBy Lucy Putnam

With a decisive 15-3 vic-tory against Notre Dame Oct. 10, the girls’ tennis team con-tinued its five game winning streak. The team has earned a league record of 6-0 this sea-son and a 9-2 overall record, placing them at the top of the Mission League heading into CIF Finals in late October. The team’s successful perfor-mance is notable considering its players have been sidelined with multiple injuries.

Captain Levi Craske-Cur-tin ’14 explained that captain Sophie Gunter ’14 pulled a shoulder muscle, Juliana Si-mon ’16 has a stress fracture in her spine that requires physi-cal therapy and Arin Schwim-mer ’15 has a shoulder injury that has kept her off the court but has not been diagnosed and remains a mystery.

Jenna Moustafa ’17 and

Rebecca Li ’15 suffered toe and foot injuries and Isabella de Montesquiou ’16 and Joelle Choi ’16 have also been side-lined by more minor shoulder and back injuries during the season.

“I’m confident that next season will be much better, as we have very good players, but right now, we really need to just work on getting the play-ers back to health,” Craske-Curtin said.

Despite these challenges, the team’s only two losses have been against strong competi-tion from Santa Barbara and Peninsula.

The Oct. 10 victory against Notre Dame was just another win in the teams expected sweep of the Mission League, which it has dominated for years.

The coaching staff ’s switch of doubles partners in the Notre Dame match led to suc-

cess, especially in the hard-won battle of Pan and de Mon-tesquiou, whose sets stood out among the rest.

“We were up, then Notre Dame caught up and it became a back and forth,” Pan said. “Then it ended up evening out at 7-7 only for us to win in a tiebreaker 7-3.”

But this year’s injuries may come to create a more significant challenge. Indi-vidual CIF preliminaries begin Oct. 28, and the team plans to send singles players Moufasa and Craske-Curtin as well as doubles partners Gunter and Paige Moelis ’15 and Pan and de Montesquiou.

“We are focused on our team’s need for bonding and we have been working on that,” Pan said.

“Our goal is obviously to win CIF, but regardless I’m sure we will make it to the quarters again,” Moelis said.


PERFECT SWING: Chelsea Pan ’14 rushes towards the net to return a volley during an Oct. 10 away match against Notre Dame.

Girls’ Tennis


Committed Captains

Nicole Elattrache ’14Setter

Duke University

Jo Kremer ’14Outside Hitter

University of Notre Dame

Marielle Bagnard ’14Libero

University of Southern California

The three captains of the Wolverines girls’ volleyball team have all committed to play volleyball at the collegiate level.

• Continued from page C1

hwchrOnicle.cOm/SpOrtS SpOrtS C7Oct. 15, 2013

Team drops its first match of the seasonBy Sam SachS

After starting off the sea-son 5-0, girls’ golf lost for the first time this year in a match against league rival Notre Dame Oct. 10.

Although the Wolverines shot 221, their second lowest score of the year and their low-est ever at their home Encino Golf Course, they lost by 28 strokes as the Knights shot 193.

The team has just wel-comed back Kate Kushi ’14 after she missed the beginning of the season r e c o v e r i n g from an injury.

“[It] feels great to be back, it was a huge bummer being out for the first half of the sea-son,” Kushi said. “Everyone is playing great, and I’m glad to see some of the younger play-ers make substantial contri-butions.”

Kushi, however, will miss the playoffs for the Wolver-ines as she has official visits that conflict with the team’s schedule.

“Under the new rules for this year if a player misses one round of playoffs she can’t play in subsequent rounds,” Kushi said. “I tried my best

to schedule my official around playoffs but unfortunately everyone is running a really tight schedule and that Mon-day [Oct. 21] is the only time I could visit.”

This means that captain Maddy Abrahams ’14 will again be the only senior in the lineup come playoff time. The team started the season off

3-0 without Kushi and once again will count on younger play-ers to step up and help fill Kushi’s place.

“Kate not being with us in CIF or for the rest of the season is definitely

a loss,” captain Maddy Abra-hams said. “But with what-ever girls we do bring out onto the course, the philosophy re-mains the same.”

Abrahams has shot even par in her last two matches, including the loss against Notre Dame.

The squad finished its regular season out with an away match at Oaks Christian Oct. 14, but the results were unavailable as of press time. The Wolverines have a home match against Flintridge Sa-cred Heart Academy Oct. 17 before Mission League Prelims get under way Oct. 21.

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Girls’ Golf

15% Discount for Harvard Westlake StudentsPick-ups and Dine-ins from the regular menu

By tyLer Graham

With two impact runners returning from injury to the boys’ team, and the girls’ team well on its way to winning a sixth straight Mission League title, the cross country teams are locked and loaded as they near CIF playoffs.

Both teams competed in the Wayne Walker Invitational Sept. 27 at Craig Park, and the Mission League Cluster Meet Oct 3. at Crescenta Valley Park. At Wayne Walker, the boys’ team finished 13th out of 17 teams, while the girls’ team took second place. The girls’ team continued its League suc-cess, adding to an impressive season with another win at the Mission League Cluster, while the boys’ team finished third, behind Loyola and Crespi; the former is ranked second in the State by PrepCalTrack.

“I feel extremely pleased with the way that we are pro-gressing as a cross country team,” Program Head Jonas Koolsbergen said.

At the Wayne Walker In-vitational, captain and senior standout Lizzy Thomas ’14 beat out a field of over 300 runners in the girls’ over-all division to take home first place by 20 seconds, and led the way for the Wolverines at the Mission League Cluster Meet, notching her fifth and sixth victories of the season, respectively. The Student Ath-

letic Advisory Council named Thomas Athlete of the Month for September.

“I think it was a very apt choice,” Koolsbergen said. “It was a very deserving honor. She had a spectacular first month of the season and is running extremely well.”

Thomas’ performance and those of her teammates have propelled the team. Runners Rachel Porter ’16 and Nicole Araya ’16 joined Thomas in the top 10 at Wayne Walker, while co-captain Monica Nim-magadda ’14 placed 19th over-all.

“We’ve been getting tre-mendous work from people like Nimmagadda, Porter and Araya,” Koolsbergen said. “On the girls’ side, they have all been outstanding this season.”

PrepCalTrack ranked the girls’ team third in Divison 4 statewide.

“It’s exciting,” Koolsbergen said. “It definitely exemplifies what we want to be and what we know we are. Which is a team that can be in the mix in the major championships this postseason. It tells us that we are a legitimate contender, but it also tells us that we have work to do.”

The boys’ team has been powered by an unlikely source: the “Fab Five,” a group of five sophomores comprised of Jack Stovitz ’16, Henry Roskin ’16, Jeffrey Ehlers ’16, Roland Montgomery ’16 and Josh

Friedman ’16. Captain David Manahan ’14, who was battling a shin injury throughout the beginning of the season, is at-tempting to return to his pre-injury form with playoffs rap-idly approaching. Manahan’s fellow captain Ben Weissen-bach ’15 plans to return from a knee injury, which has held him out of the season thus far, in time for the playoffs.

“The season is a constant process of improvement, and the training system is designed to bring out our very best re-sults in postseason races,” Koolsbergen said. “We are on exactly the path that we want to be on to have our best pos-sible performances when it is time to give our best possible performances.”

SPEED: David Manahan ’14 races towards the finish line.

LUKE HOLTHOUSE/CHRONICLE

Cross Country

“ Whatever girls we do bring out onto the course, the philosophy remains the same.”—Maddy Abrahams ’14

Injured runners return to competition


SERVE’S UP: Marielle Bagnard ’14 prepares to serve the ball in a heated match against Marymount Sept. 12. As the starting libero and team captain, Bagnard led the team to a third place finish at the California Challenge in San Diego last weekend. This season is her last playing indoors, as she committed to USC for sand volleyball next autumn.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF BERNARD DILLARD

IN THE BACK ROWMarielle BagnardQ&A with

How long have you been playing volleyball and when did you decide to start playing?

I started at Sunshine [indoor volleyball club] and I was maybe 9 or 10 years old. I started playing because it was in my family, the sport was in my family, and my dad kind of inspired me to play with his passion.

What made you decide to pursue sand volleyball?

What school did you commit to, and what separated that school from your other options?

What are your individual and team goals for your last season with your Harvard-Westlake team?

First of all I love the beach, but second of all I really like the challenge. In sand volleyball you need to be more of a well-rounded player, and that kind of forced me to learn every position to the best of my ability.

I committed to University of Southern California, and I am going there for sand volleyball. I really liked it because first of all I knew when applying to schools I wanted some place warm. I actually did a bunch of indoor vol-leyball camps over the summer and I just realized that I didn’t really like the indoor game as much as I liked the beach game and I just couldn’t really see myself making that big of a com-mitment for indoor even though I like it. I just like beach so much more and I know that I would be way more in to practicing that many times a week, or doing the weightlifting for that sport because I like being on the beach more.

Hands down, I want to win CIF. That better happen. We kind of assumed that we were going to do that last year, and that ended up being a chal-lenge for us, but I doubt it will be a challenge for this team this year. I want to make it as far as we can, so that would mean CIF and State. My sister has a banner up there on the wall in Taper, and I am constantly asked is that my relative, but I’d rather it be is that you, with my name up there on one of the banners. I think in the long term that would be a goal. As a team I just really want to have fun, this is my last indoor season. I really like this group of girls, and I think we have the po-tential to go really far and we really click, and I think that we definitely can do it.

By Audrey Wilson

It is nice because with Harvard Westlake and with any club sport, it’s a big drive, but since I live in the Palisades the beach is literally right down my street so that makes it really accessible to train. I’d say it’s about the same if not more in terms of practice for indoor and club. It’d be more similar to school where you want to do it every day because it’s really important to practice in different wind situations. Weight lifting still comes into play because it is a lot harder to jump and to move in the sand and that being said you need to condition a lot more. People condition a lot for indoor, but sand definitely makes things harder.

How do you train for sand volleyball outside of school and what is the commitment like?

Stats:

Bagnard’s Beach RatingA4

USC’s sand volleyball national rank

NATHANSON’S

October 2013 Issue

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