By JONATHAN SEYMOUR

The new mandatory lunch period did not cause any con-fl icts with student schedules, the upper school deans’ offi ce said.

“We always have con-fl icts, but there were no ex-tra confl icts created because of lunch,” Upper School Dean Sharon Cuseo said. “There might have been a little less fl exibility. We were able to en-sure from the beginning that there wouldn’t be any confl icts resulting from the lunch pe-riod because it was just treat-ed as a course, and the great thing is that we made it a se-mester course.”

In order to prevent con-fl icts caused by semester-long courses, the lunch period can be scheduled during one pe-riod in the fi rst semester and a different period in the second semester.

“I’ve gotten so much posi-tive feedback from parents who couldn’t believe that we didn’t have a lunch before,” Cuseo said. “Some people were just shocked. There have been a handful of parents who have called and said that their chil-dren don’t need lunch, but the school can’t accommodate that. Everyone needs a lunch, and there are no exceptions.”

When the school fi rst an-nounced its plan to introduce mandatory lunch periods this year, the deans received nu-merous complaints from stu-dents and parents alike who believed that the lunch pe-riod would confl ict with their course choices. Most of the concerns were from students worried that they wouldn’t be able to get into the arts class-es that they wanted to take, Cuseo said.

Of 285 students polled by the Chronicle, 82, or 28.87

By HENRY VOGEL

President Rick Commons invested this year’s senior prefects during the Opening Convocation yesterday, where head prefects Grace Pan ’16 and Hunter Brookman ’16 in-structed the student body to embrace the community as a family and to try new things.

The ceremony began with Head of School Jeanne Huy-brechts introducing the con-vocation as an opportunity to bring together both cam-puses and demonstrate school strength through unity as a community.

“Convocation is a link to the past and a connection to our future,” Huybrechts said.

A hallmark of the school is the student leadership, Huy-

brechts added. Commons then took the stage to lead a decla-ration of the student council oath by this year’s representa-tives. The senior prefects were robed by their teacher or staff sponsors.

Pan spoke next, sharing her experience as the younger sister of a for-mer Wolverine. Because they were so simi-lar, Pan said, they were of-ten compared, but instead of taking offense, she decided to work together with her sister to their mutual benefi t. Pan then transferred the same message to the student body,

saying that because Harvard-Westlake is a family, students should be able to help each other to achieve their goals.

“Take advantage of the people sitting next to you,” Pan

said. “Learn from each oth-er.”

Brookman then shared a story about the time he learned a hip-hop danc e routine for his bar mitzvah. While he ad-mitted that he

was scared and constantly feared failing at new endeav-ors, he said students at Har-vard-Westlake should not be afraid to slow down, try new

things and fully experience the school.

“Let us stop, look around and dance to the ever-chang-ing beat at Harvard-Westlake,” Brookman said. “Listening to the rhythm will open us up to infi nite possibilities. For more than just an instant you can become the person you never once imagined you could be.”

Commons took the podium again to remind students of the relevance of the mission statement. He said relation-ships are one of the most im-portant takeaways from stu-dents’ time at the school, and students should be ready to respond, to engage and to be open to inspiration.

The school provided Diddy Riese cookies and water to ev-eryone after the event.

No con� icts arise from lunch period

Convocation unites both campuses

Visions to map out steps towards missionBy HENRY VOGEL

President Rick Commons introduced six visions meant to fulfi ll the mission statement in the next three to fi ve years at the annual faculty meeting Aug. 25.

“Mission is generational — we hope the new statement will last another 25 years,” Commons said. “Visions, in my mind and parlance here, are more specifi c ideas of how to fulfi ll the mission in the near term.”

Commons’ points were:-The pursuit of excellence

will remain a defi ning element of the Harvard-Westlake expe-rience.

-Happiness and balance will become primary values in

the Harvard-Westlake culture and in shaping the experience of students.

-Our commitment to inclu-sion will enable every member of our community to feel an equal sense of belonging.

-Faculty will nurture, inspire, and challenge all students through ongoing commitment to engaging ped-agogy, curricular innovation, and professional growth.

-Harvard-Westlake will fi nd new ways to serve Los An-geles and earn the trust of our neighbors.

-A commitment to char-acter will be an essential and recognizable part of every pur-suit of excellence.

The vision statements are a result of a year of commu-

nicative discussion with fac-ulty, staff, students, parents and alumni. Commons said he spent his fi rst year as presi-dent chatting about the school mission and spent last year chatting about how to fulfi ll it.

“I don’t want people to feel like I’m on a mountaintop thinking of these,” Commons said. “These are all a response to conversations last year.”

The vision statements, which Commons also called Visions for 2020, are designed to focus on areas where the school needs to improve.

“They don’t include every-thing,” Commons said. “There is not a vision for journal-ism, for example. We like it how it is. But when it comes to becoming a better servant

of greater Los Angeles, that’s new stuff. That’s something we want to do. When it comes to happiness and balance be-ing actually a primary value in the way students experience school, that’s a new thing.”

While Commons acknowl-edged that many students learn about their identity and their values from a coach or extracurricular adviser, the plan for the vision statements is to incorporate that learning process into the everyday edu-cation of Harvard-Westlake.

“We’re trying to make it so that when students talk about their Harvard-Westlake experi-ence, they talk not only about excellence but also about what they learned about values,” Commons said.

Los Angeles • Volume XXX • Issue I • Sept. 1, 2015 • hwchronicle.com

HRONICLETHE HARVARD-WESTLAKE

C

Follow the Chronicle @hw_chronicle

SETTING THE TONE: From left, senior prefects Adam Yaron ’16, Shelby Weiss ’16, Jordan Strom ’16, Helene Miles ’16 and head prefect Grace Pan ’16 look on as fellow head prefect Hunter Brookman ’16 addresses the entire student body with his opening convocation speech.

SAMMI HANDLER/CHRONICLE

“Let us stop, look around and dance to the ever-changing beat at Harvard-Westlake. ”

—Hunter Brookmanhead prefect

SUPER SALMON:Superfoods like kale and salmon are becoming more popular, but do they have a real e� ect?

INSIDE

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• Continued on page A3

By Jonathan Seymour

The 2016 March of the Liv-ing trip to Poland and Israel, taking place from May 1 to May 15, will conflict with all AP exams as well as the prom.

Students will be allowed to make up their exams during the AP make-up period during the following week after APs.

They will also have to come home two days early if they want to attend the prom on May 14.

“Every year, the College Board offers a makeup date for AP exams,” Head of Up-per School Audrius Barzdukas said. “Those makeup exams are offered at Harvard-West-lake and we provide proctors. This year will be no different.”

The AP make-up period is one day long unless students need to make up four or more exams, in which case students can take exams over two days, the College Board said.

This means that students who go on the March of the Living must take all of their ex-ams in one or two days almost immediately after they return from Israel.

“This doesn’t seem right to me,” English teacher Jeff Kwit-ny said. “It’s not fair.”

Of 225 students surveyed, 62, or 27.68 percent said that they plan to go on the March of the Living as a senior, and the results were almost exactly the same when students consid-ered the fact that they would have to make up all of their APs in one or two days.

“The situation is really un-fortunate,” Katie Kreshek ’16 said. “[The] March of the Living is such an important trip, and this year some kids will be dis-couraged from going because of the prom and AP conflicts. Having to cram for the AP ex-ams is unfair even with the extension because this trip is not an excuse to party, but in fact a tour of the deadliest con-centration camps responsible for the senseless killing of the Jewish people. It doesn’t af-

fect my decision because I feel so strongly about going, but I know it will undoubtedly affect some people’s decisions.”

The March of the Living will also interfere with the prom, and students who plan to at-tend the trip have been work-ing with Prefect Council to try to find a solution.

Dora Schoenberg ’16 has been working with her parents and Monise Neumann, the Harvard-Westlake represen-tative for March of the Living, to try to find a solution to the conflicts.

“I could not choose be-tween March of the Living, an acclaimed, life-changing expe-rience, and my senior prom, one of the last times our entire grade will be together at Har-vard-Westlake,” Schoenberg said. “Prefect Council planned and booked prom last May on the weekend they usually have it. No one could have foreseen that it would conflict with APs and the always-changing [He-brew] lunar calendar.”

The prom is unlikely to be rescheduled because of how packed the school calendar is.

“Prom, because of the size of our school, has to be sched-uled a year in advance,” Upper School Dean Sharon Cuseo said. “We just scheduled prom at exactly the same time rela-tive to this calendar that we have always scheduled it.”

Students who want to at-tend both events are allowed to leave Israel early.

“After we were made aware of the conflict, we talked about our possible options for mov-ing forward,” Head Prefect Hunter Brookman ’16 said. “We completely empathized with everyone interested in participating on the trip. As far as rescheduling, the biggest is-sue is that we are locked in for the venue. There are also more limitations on venues than ever since many hotels we have worked with are no lon-ger interested in high school events. Additionally, the is-sues with the calendar really

limit our ability to change the date of the prom since there are school events nearly every other Saturday.”

The date of the March of the Living is determined by the date of the Jewish holiday Yom HaShoah, which translates from Hebrew to Holocaust Re-membrance Day, as well as Israeli I n d e p e n -dence Day, called Yom Ha’Atzmaut in Hebrew.

Y o m H a S h o a h takes place May 5, and Yom Ha’Atzmaut will take place May 12.

Both holidays are a few weeks later than they were in 2015, when 23 Harvard-West-lake students missed the two weeks of school right before AP exams to go on the trip.

“Of all of the time during the year to leave, that was the worst two weeks for them to go,” Kwitny said. “When they came back, it suddenly hit me, and I felt angry about it. How could I teach these students and do a good job? It would have been a lot of time and a

lot of work, and so I couldn’t do a good job. It was against my philosophy as a teacher because I didn’t feel like I was able to do a good job teaching them.”

However, Barzdukas said that the school did not have to change its stance on the March

of the Liv-ing even though so many more s t u d e n t s took part this year than in pre-vious years.

“ [ T h e March of the Liv-ing] is not a school-planned or a p p r o v e d trip,” Barz-

dukas said. “[These] absences are unexcused, just as if a student were to go on a fam-ily trip or college visit during school. Students are respon-sible for making up the work they miss.”

Although students were able to coordinate with their teachers to make up work when they returned to school, some teachers were frustrated.

Because only seniors can go on the March of the Living and the trip takes place in the

final weeks of school, some of the students on the trip did not see the need to make up their work when they returned.

“Some of my March of the Living students made up all of their missing work while others did not do so,” phys-ics teacher Jesse Reiner said. “With one exception, my stu-dents who went on March of the Living did pretty terribly on both the unit test that they took in advance of the trip and on the in-class final exam that they took shortly after return-ing. It wasn’t the only time that these particular students struggled with physics, but there is no question that they would have done better had they not missed so much class time.”

More students went on the March of the Living in April or plan to go in the future than in previous years because a Ho-locaust survivor visited class meetings to promote the trip.

“It’s popular every year and we like the program and the way it’s run, and it’s a really good program,” Cuseo said. “We’ll just have to be as ac-commodating as we can given the fact that it’s so much later this year. Let the record re-flect that missing that much school, even for a second se-mester senior, can be very dif-ficult.”

Sept. 1, 2015A2 NewS the ChroNiCle

In the issue

GRIDIRON CAPTAINS: Marshal Cohen ’16, Nick Richmond ’16, Mike Mapes ’16 and Eric Bradley ’16 pose for the cover of the athletic department media guide. Continued on D1

LAB RATS: Eight students studied cancer this summer, dissecting mice brains and assisting graduate students at University of Southern California. A5

D1

GRAND OPENING: After a year of reno-vations, Wang Hall is now available for use. Eighth graders can now enjoy a new lounge and visual arts spaces. A8

HIGH STAKES: The Chronicle follows four students (the Brain, the Athlete, the Artist and the All-Around) throughout their senior year as they navigate the col-lege application process. C1

ABROAD IN CAMBODIA: Nineteen stu-dents visited Cambodia over summer for a photojournalism trip, documenting the ef-fects of genocide and the vibrant culture. B1

News

Arts & Entertainment

Features

Sports

WISHING FOR WOODSTOCK: Music festivals are a growing trend for teenag-ers. Students share their experiences that reveal many of the hidden downsides to these events.

C6

NATIONAL CHAMPS: The boys’ water polo team begins its quest for a third con-secutive CIF Division I title. This year’s roster is different, but their goal remains the same. Young players look to emerge as stars, while seniors adapt to leadership.

D1

the ChroniCle, the student newspaper of Harvard-Westlake School, is published eight times per year and distributed free on both the upper and middle school campuses. There are 727 students at the Middle School and 869 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 chronicle@hw.com 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 Kelly Loeb at kloeb1@hwemail.com. Publication of an advertisement does not imply endorsement of the product or service by the newspaper or the school.

March of the Living dates conflict with AP testing schedule, Prom

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF HARVARD-WESTLAKE ATHLETICS

HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE: The Los Angeles delegation traveled with delegations from 30 countries and Holocaust survivors on last spring’s March of the Living from Auschwitz to Birkenau.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF ELIJAH AKHTARZAD

“Why can’t there be a policy in place to make sure students have a fair shot to do well on these exams? It’s inhumane to make students have to take all those exams in one day.”

—Jeff Kwitny English teacher

hwchronicle.com/news news A3sept. 1, 2015

Teacher trip occurs despite MERS scareBy Layla Moghavem

Fifteen faculty members visited South Korea in June to learn about Korean culture and history in the midst of an outbreak of Middle East Respi-ratory Syndrome in the coun-try.

MERS is a viral respiratory illness that was first seen in Saudi Arabia in 2012. An out-break began in South Korea in May, causing the Centers for Disease Control and Preven-tion to issue a travel notice ad-vising Americans to cancel any plans to visit the country.

Originally, 16 members in-tended to go on the trip, but upon news of the MERS out-break, Upper School Dean Rose-Ellen Racanelli canceled due to health concerns.

The school gave partici-pants the option not to go on the trip or to attend and leave if they felt uncomfortable dur-ing their visit, but all other at-tendees stayed.

One of the hotels that the group planned to stay at on Jeju Island had been shut down and quarantined as a patron of the hotel had been infected with MERS.

“Nobody was allowed in there and the people in there weren’t allowed out, so they put us in another hotel which was very luxe and fabulous, so it worked out better for us,” History Department Head Katherine Holmes-Chuba said. “[The outbreak] didn’t re-

ally negatively affect us at all.”The group did not have to

wear surgical masks or take any other health precautions on the trip, though Holmes-Chuba said she took extra care to wash her hands more often than she usually would.

The participants said that fewer people were traveling to South Korea because of the

outbreak, and as a result, tourist sites were more ac-cessible and significantly less crowded. In addition, partici-pants noted that the locals were especially welcoming be-cause so few tourists came.

“So many people from so many countries stopped their travel to Korea that the Kore-ans were so grateful that we

came,” history teacher Ken Neisser said. “We were very well-received everywhere we went and some portion of that was gratitude of our braving this fear [of MERS].”

On the trip, which was funded by the school’s Gross Global initiative and Gyu Si and Min Sun Suh (Andy ’18), faculty visited historical sites,

museums, geographic sites, traditional villages and a high school in Seoul.

Teachers said they gained a greater and deeper under-standing of Korean art, his-tory and culture, especially pertaining to the Korean War, which has broadened their perspective on teaching stu-dents about Asia

Mandatory lunch did not cause conflicts • Continued from page A1

percent, reported a missing class or class conflict that they attributed to the lunch period.

“Students were complain-ing about the lunch policy primarily because they were afraid that they would no lon-ger be able to take as many courses,” Cuseo said. “They thought they could take more than seven.”

In previous years, there were only two s i t u a t i o n s , one involving physical edu-cation and the other involv-ing directed study language courses, in which students were allowed to sign up for more than seven courses.

“Students could take up to two trimesters of PE or yoga in addition to their seven cours-es,” Cuseo said. “Now we’re not allowing that, but we have added an after school yoga op-tion because of the new lunch period. We are prioritizing the lunch period for everybody.”

This means that all stu-dents who signed up for seven courses and also signed up for PE must now take yoga after school or find an alternative to fulfill their requirement, such as managing a sports team.

However, this change was

unexpected for seniors who had anticipated using their eighth period to take PE.

“I think it’s unfair to me personally,” Su Jin Nam ’16 said. “For the past two years, I’ve been aware that if I left PE up until senior year, I’d be able to take seven classes and take PE during my lunch break be-cause it doesn’t count as a full course with homework.”

Nam would rather use her lunch period to take PE than have a longer school day.

“I think it’s unfair that now I’m suddenly being required to stay after school,” Nam said. “It’s like

I’m being required to have an extended school day in com-parison to other people. It’s not like I’m unwilling to give up my lunch either. I would rather take PE during my lunch time rather than after school just because then I have a longer day. Also, if I want to carpool with anyone, they have to wait for me.”

Because this new manda-tory lunch requires students with seven classes to lengthen their school days, the deans waived the PE requirement for some seniors who had com-pleted all but one or two of their required trimesters and had made noticeable efforts to

complete the requirement. “The reason we did that

is because the afterschool yoga option is popular, and we didn’t want classes to be overloaded because of se-niors who were already close to finishing their require-ments,” Cuseo said.

The only real decrease in schedule flexibility caused by the lunch period has been with directed study language courses, such as Greek, Ital-ian or German, which stu-dents used to be able to sign up for as an additional, eighth course besides their seven normal classes. Now this exception to the seven class rule is no longer al-lowed.

The deans anticipate that the lunch period will be permanent for the foresee-able future, as it promotes a healthier lifestyle on campus.

“It was kind of embar-rassing to say that we had never actually had a lunch period,” Cuseo said. “Peo-ple would say, ‘That’s not healthy.’ This came out of the workload survey, and I think it became apparent that peo-ple were just not eating at a normal or regular time, and I think that this was a normal, reasonable, healthy response to that.”

GLOBETROTTERS: History teacher George Gaskin (top) plays ping-pong with a student at Seoul Science High School. Teachers (left) take pictures of street vendors selling food at an outdoor market. Science teacher Geoff Robertson (right) plays a traditional Korean game.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF HARVARD-WESTLAKE

Six feeder schools with most enrollees1. John Thomas Dye2. Curtis3. Carlthorp

4. Center for Early Education5. Laurence6. Mirman

Admissions gains international interestBy Sammi Handler

Forty-six students from international schools applied this year, an increase over last year when 36 students applied. Five students from foreign countries enrolled.

There are four students from the United Kingdom and one from Switzerland enrolled. Last year, nine stu-dents from foreign schools enrolled, four from the Unit-ed Kingdom, two from China, one from Korea, one from Switzerland and one from the Netherlands.

“Harvard-Westlake is definitely becoming known internationally,” Director of Admission Elizabeth Gregory said.

There have been students from India, Tibet, China, Hungary, Korea, France and Russia interested in applying to grades 7-12.

“The main thing that is important to us is we are not a boarding school,” Gregory said. “We insist that there be a parent that the kid will live

with while they are here. They can’t just come and stay with a friend or hire somebody to live with them. They have to have a parent in the country.”

International applicants have learned about the school through friends who have at-tended and through the web-site, Gregory said. In addition, international students have applied due to the opportuni-ties that the school offers, she said.

Chinese students account for 50 percent of the interest shown in applying.

Gregory also said that while the majority of incoming seventh grade students come from six independent day schools in Los Angeles, this year there are students from 68 different schools.

“We get the top kids from a lot of different schools,” she said. “We continue to have a really strong applicant pool and it becomes more competi-tive every year.”

“We are prioritizing the lunch period for everybody. ”

—Sharon Cuseo Upper school Dean

GRAPHIC BY JESSE NADELSOURCE: ELIZABETH GREGORY

Students intern at Chinese technology, � nancial companies during the summerBy TERESA SUH

A group of students accompanied by two teachers spent two weeks interning in China this summer at the Shanghai offi ce of the Parthenon Group and the Lieuhe offi ce for the Venture Capital Company.

Jed Kronenberg ’17, Hannah Wilen ’16, Theo Velaise ’17 and Jon Nelson ’16 conversed with the workers of Chinese companies about the stock market and investments in China.

“Being in Shanghai for most of June and working in Chinese companies allowed us all to better understand Chinese culture not just from the perspective of a student, but as someone in the Chinese workforce,” Velaise said.

World Languages teacher Tiantian Wang, history teacher Lauren Nichols and the four students all lived with host families that had children their age attended the World Leading Schools Association International School affi liated with Fudan University.

“The whole trip was great,

but my most memorable experience was getting to stay with a host family and talk with them every day,” Kronenberg said. “Getting to live in Shanghai with people who are actually from there was an amazing experience.”

Every day after their internship work ended, the group went sight-seeing, visiting cities like Haiyan in the Zhejiang province where they could practice their oral skills outside the offi ce.

“The trip helped my Chinese skills a lot, as I always spoke Chinese with

my host family and teachers,” Kronenberg said. “Getting to practice speaking Chinese on an everyday basis was hard, but defi nitely helped me improve my Chinese skills.”

Wang offered this chance to her Chinese III Honors and AP Chinese students in the hope that her students would take the opportunity to practice their Chinese speaking skills

with co-workers and local students.

“They have a lot of communication with the local Chinese students, and that helps their language profi ciency,” Wang said. “They gained better understanding of Chinese culture and history and gave them more motivation for their future language study.”

285 debaters participate in summerprogramBy ELLIS BECKER

During the summer, 285 debaters from all around the globe took part in in the fi rst ever Harvard-Westlake Insti-tute for Speech and Debate.

The camp, called “debate-LA,” was an intensive summer camp where students partici-pated in debate classes.

Students from 105 dif-ferent high schools attended the camp from all across the United States, as well as stu-dents from Seoul, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Budapest. Those who did not live in Los Angeles were housed in UCLA dorms and bussed to the Up-per School.

All the coaches from the Harvard-Westlake debate team, including debate pro-gram head Mike Bietz, coached at debateLA. Other Harvard-Westlake coaches included assistant coach and team ad-ministrator Steve Knell and former Harvard-Westlake de-baters now in colleges such as Harvard, Yale and UCLA. Additionally, two coaches from The Harker School and a coach from Palos Verdes High School also participated.

“We had an outstanding

staff of some of the most suc-cessful debate coaches in his-tory along with successful re-cent graduates, including last year’s Tournament of Champi-ons winner,” Bietz said.

Campers staying at UCLA were offered a range of activi-ties in the evening, including SAT and ACT prep, college counseling, additional debate work and presentations from guest speakers. On the week-

ends, students went to movie theaters, Universal Studios and the Santa Monica Pier.

For a less intense experi-ence, many younger students opted for a one-week day camp starting at 9 a.m. with a topic discussion and then partici-pated in mock debates be-tween the campers. There was also a camp for public speak-ing and general argumentation for non-debaters that wished to gain skill in those areas.

Connor Engel ’17 said he had a great experience with the camp and said it was edu-cational.

“I was able to grow as a de-bater and make a lot of new friends,” Engel said. “I appre-ciated that they managed to retain a lighthearted atmo-sphere that prevented stress, and the workload was actually reasonable.”

The camp received positive feedback from students, and

Bietz said he is confi dent in the success of the program.

“As of now I would say the program was a huge success,” Bietz said. “I think we beat expectations in terms of num-bers and reach, but we also re-ceived really amazing feedback from a number of students and parents. My hope is that Harvard-Westlake continues to want to host the program in the future and expand its of-ferings.”

IN TRAINING: Debaters practice their speaking skills during a class at “debateLA.” Students from all over the United States, Seoul, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Budapest participated in the camp, and those coming from out of state were housed in UCLA dorms.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF MIKE BIETZ

“My most memorable experience was getting to stay with a host family and talk with them everyday. Getting to live in Shanghai with people who are actually from there was an amazing experience.”

—Jed Kronenberg ’17 NATHANSON’S

AP Exam Highlights

95 percent of stu-dents scored a 3 or above on an exam

40 students out of 42 scored a 5 on the AP Physics C exam

The school administered 1,820 AP exams last year

100 percent of students who took the AP US or European History test passed

Middle School bans cell phone use before 9thBy BENJAMIN MOST

Middle school cell phone and technology policies are being reexamined at the be-ginning of the second year of the One-to-One laptop initia-tive, which the Upper School begins this year.

The laptop initiative man-dates that all students bring a laptop to school, but Head of Middle School Jon Wim-bish said that rules to ensure proper technology use may be necessary to prevent mobile gaming, online shopping and other distractions.

“I think when we went com-pletely one-to-one on laptops, there was this explosion of technology on campus,” Wim-bish said. “It turned out the majority of our students had

smartphones, so it was more of a two-to-one ratio. We’re trying to fi gure out which of these devices should be used, what they should be used for, and how much they should be used for school purposes, communicating with parents and other effective uses of the technology versus the things that can be distracting and the things that can have a negative impact on the community.”

Middle school students will no longer be allowed to use cell phones on campus until ninth period unless they are using the phone for class with a teacher’s permission or us-ing a phone in a dean’s offi ce to communicate with a family member or coach.

“We’re trying to wrestle with the best way to communi-

cate with students,” Wimbish said. “Probably the best way is through policy and rules, be-cause that’s how things work in a middle school.”

However, Wimbish said the laptop initiative had “incred-ibly positive” results and al-lowed for a more interactive feedback process.

For example, in his English class, Wimbish returns students’ essays on Google Docs and the Hub with comments and gives them an opportunity to message him back with questions or explanations.

Middle school teachers attended technology workshops the last week of August to help promote the laptop initiative’s smooth transition to the Upper School.

SEPT. 1, 2015A4 NEWS THE CHRONICLE

GRAPHIC BY SAMMI HANDLERSOURCE: JEANNE HUYBRECHTS

Website ranks teachers number one in nationBy LayLa MoghaveM

Rankings on Niche.com placed teachers at Har-vard-Westlake at number one among U.S. private schools for 2015.

Niche.com, created by Car-negie-Mellon students in 2002, provides reviews of elementary schools, middle schools, high

schools and colleges in the United States.

The ranking is based on surveys from parents, stu-dents and alumni, the stu-dent-to-faculty ratio, average student SAT and ACT scores and the percentage of students who matriculate to four-year colleges. The school’s overall score was the highest out of

945 U.S. private high schools.Although faculty members

are pleased by the recogni-tion, Upper School Dean Van-na Cairns said such rankings often “simplify a very com-plex process” by putting more weight on statistics than stu-dent feedback.

“What our teachers do ev-ery hour of every day in every

classroom is extraordinary and commendable,” Cairns said. “Yet that factor is not quanti-fiable. Or as much as it can be quantifiable, it is given only 10 percent of the equation here.”

Niche.com also placed Har-vard-Westlake’s academics as the third best nationally after Castilleja School and The Har-ker School.

Juniors, seniors conduct stem cell, cancer research at USC summer internshipBy Jonah ULLendorff

Eight juniors and seniors interned at a Stem Cell Re-search Laboratory at the Uni-versity of Southern California this summer studying cancer cells and cutting open mice brains.

Students spent the first week of the program in a lab learning basic cell culture techniques like pipetting, aspi-rating media and feeding and cultivating cells.

After this, students were assigned to individual labs where they assisted graduate students with their research.

The students who attended the program were Sylvia Sand-ers ’17, Emerson Harris ’17, Sharon Chow ’16, Jonathan Seymour ’16, Jonah Goldman ’16, Hannah Kelson ’16, Roy Dritley ’16 and Alex Kihiczak ’16.

“I did the job because it’s

so awesome,” Sanders said. “I have always wanted to per-form research on cancer, and the fact that I was able to start that dream at such a young age was absolutely amazing. I didn’t think twice about ac-cepting, and I’m so glad I did. It was everything I had wanted and more. It was truly a life-al-tering experience.”

Chow signed up for the program due to her interest in learning more about research and stem cells. She was as-signed to work in Dr. Michael Bonaguidi’s lab, which focused on neurogenesis, the creation of new stem cells in the brain.

“We’re working on two main projects, and the one I am part of is the aging study,” Chow said. “What we do in this project is study the effect of aging on neural stem cells or radial glia-like cells (RGLs) and their fate choice. We har-vest the [mouse] brains, cut them and stain them with

flourescent antibodies with a sparse-labeling technique so the cells show up under an epiflourescent microscope. We then take pictures of the cells with a confocal microscope that takes two to three micron thick photo slices so we can make a 3-D rendering of it.”

After participating in the program during the summer, Chow has considered research as a vocation for when she is older.

Chow was taken by sur-prise that her work required live lab mice that needed to be harvested for her research.

“Personally, I cut and stained a lot of brains over those past eight weeks, which I never expected to do,” Chow said.

Sanders, Goldman and Seymour worked in the Stem Cell Core Facility, a lab in the Eli and Edythe Broad CIRM Center for Regenerative Med-icine and Stem Cell Research

at USC.Seymour assisted a grad-

uate student whose research was to determine the function of a specific protein found in cancer stem cells.

As a result, Seymour was working with varying types of live cancer cells for his intern-ship.

Although Seymour said he can’t see himself becoming a

doctor in the future, he is in-terested in doing research in later on.

“I had no idea what I would be doing until I stepped into the lab on the first day,” Sey-mour said. “In a million years, I would never have seen myself working with cancer, so that was shocking when I learned that that was what I would be doing.”

DANCING QUEENS: Sarah Wagner ’19, Angela Chon ’16, Nicole Kim ’18, Jenny Yoon ’19 (left to right) and Caitlin Chung ’20 perform a traditional Korean drum dance at the Korean American Parents Association’s annual barbecue Aug. 23 for parents, students, faculty and staff. The event also featured student musicians and a video of the faculty summer trip to South Korea.

Korean American Parents Association hosts annual barbecuePRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF MIAE CHON

Visual Arts teacher wins awardBy Lara MikhaiL and ayanna frey

Medina received the Ko-gan Family Award for Innova-tion in Teaching from Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts at the opening faculty meeting on August 25.

Medina has been working as the primary photography teacher at the Middle School and is beginning to teach at the Upper School starting this year.

Established in 2010 by Betsy and Mark Kogan (Ben ’11, Eli ’13), the award is given to a teacher who uses original approaches to improving the teaching process.

For the past three years, Medina has initiated multiple photography projects through-out the Los Angeles area. Proj-ects such as “In/Other Los Angeles,” “Sense of Place” and ‘#WhereAmI’ strive to con-nect a community of students through their photography. His projects have been recog-nized by major photography blogs such as the Los Angeles Times Lens Blog and the New York Times Lens Blog.

Joining the upper school visual arts team, Medina is coming to teach two classes of Darkroom Photography while continuing to teach photogra-phy at the Middle School.

“I am really looking forward to collaborating and working with Upper School Visual Arts Faculty and students. I am also looking forward to follow-ing the progression of visual arts students making the tran-sition from the middle to up-per school,” Medina said.

Medina will be starting ev-ery day at the upper school and by 5th period will be teaching classes at the middle school.

“A change in environment throughout the day will be nice as well .I don’t really see any challenges [by teaching at the Upper School and Middle School] other than the com-mute,” Medina said.

Teacher recognized for dedication to communityBy andrew ahn

Math teacher Beverly Feul-ner was presented with the Carolyn and Marion Hays Award at a joint faculty meet-ing on Aug 25.

The award is given to a Har-vard-Westlake staff member who provides long-term service to the school and influences the

community in positive ways. Head of School Jeanne

Huybrechts commended Feul-ner for contributing far more than what was required and for working for over 32 years at both the Harvard School for Boys and Harvard-Westlake.

She started teaching math at Harvard in 1983.

The award was created by

Harvard School alumni Thom-as and Louis Hays in honor of their parents.

Marion Hays was an assis-tant headmaster, teacher and dorm head at Harvard School from 1944 to 1970, and his wife Carolyn was also active at the school.

Feulner said she was shocked when her name was

called and she discovered she won.

“It was a complete surprise to me,” Feulner said. “There are a lot of people who do a lot for the school, and to even be con-sidered was a huge honor.”

Feulner teaches math courses including Math Anal-ysis Honors, AP Calculus and Algebra II Honors.

SPLIT DECISION: Jonathan Seymour ’16 feeds cancer cells and separates them into petri dishes where they will grow. He was one of eight students who conducted stem cell research at USC.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF JONATHAN SEYMOUR

hwchronicle.com/news news A5sept. 1, 2015

New Faces on Campus

By Danielle Spitz

Former squash and foot-ball coach and English teacher Adam Levine will teach Eng-lish II and English III: Living America.

At the Kent School in Con-necticut, Levine taught elec-tives such as detective fic-tion, music and literature and sophomore, junior and senior English classes. Levine also coached the squash and foot-ball teams.

Levine is interested in the-ater and music, particularly jazz music, he said. He plans

to incorporate music into his lessons.

“It seems like a really warm and welcoming community, and I am excited about con-tributing, but also about being a part of that community in many ways,” Levine said.

By liz Yount

Melissa Wantz will make the commute from Ventura County to Harvard-Westlake each day to lead the upper school communications de-partment, serve as the Chron-icle and Big Red adviser and teach journalism classes.

She graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara with a bachelor’s de-gree in English literature and received her master’s in Eng-lish literature from CSUN.

Wantz previously taught at Balboa Middle School for eight years and later began teaching at Foothill Technology High School where she advised the Foothill Dragon Press website, taught an English class and oversaw technology and com-munications. She developed a

digital bootcamp for the Co-lumbia Scholastic Press As-sociation, where she is also a judge for their national com-petitions and serves as board president.

“We want to transition the way the Chronicle pub-lishes to become more digital first,” Wantz said. “When news breaks, it gets immediately re-leased to the public because it’s all about serving your pri-mary audience.”

Adam Levine: English

Max Tash: Yearbook, BroadcastBy Katie plotKin

After two years of working

part-time livestreaming ath-letic events through HWTV alongside the athletic depart-ment, Max Tash will teach yearbook journalism courses and build a broadcast journal-ism program.

“The HW Broadcast Jour-nalism program, in conjunc-tion with the Chronicle, will be a signature program that high schools throughout the world will want to emulate,” Tash said.

Tash will teach yearbook classes on both campuses.

“As for Vox Populi, we are planning on creating a year-

book that comes alive,” Tash said. “That’s all I’ll say.”

Tash has worked in com-munications at Milken Com-munity School in Los Angeles for the past decade.

He designed and devel-oped the visual storytelling and broadcast journalism pro-grams at Milken.

DANIELLE SPITZ/CHRONICLE

Nadine Eisenkolb: Science

Melissa Wantz: Communications

By noa Schwartz

With more than 10 years of experience in marine and environmental biology, Nadine Eisenkolb joins the Upper School as a new AP Environ-mental Science teacher.

Eisenkolb grew up in a landlocked portion of Ger-many and became interested in marine and environmental biology during a scuba-diving trip to the Canary Islands.

Eisenkolb attended school at the Hilo Marine Science Program, which is often re-ferred to as a “marine biology heaven.”

She then became a re-search assistant at the Scripps Institute for Oceanog-raphy and earned her master’s in marine and environmental biology from the University of

Southern California.Eisenkolb is most excited

to join the school because of the students, she said.

“Especially with Harvard-Westlake, they are so well known for their students wanting to learn and wanting to thrive in their subject areas, so I’m definitely really looking forward to that,” Eisenkolb said.

New Staff at the Upper School

Anne PyleOriginally from eastern

Washington, Anne Pyle started her first year at the Alumni Of-fice Aug. 3.

Pyle previously worked as the assistant to the Director of Institutional Advancement at St. James School in Los An-geles.

As director, she helped with alumni relations, annual giving and fundraising events.

Pyle earned her bachelor’s degree studying communica-tions, graphic design and busi-ness administration at Seattle Pacific University.

Her new job at the Alumni Office is more focused on an-swering questions and keeping their records updated.

Pyle is enjoying working at the Upper School.

“I’m looking forward to get-ting to know everyone, and learning new things from ev-erybody,” Pyle said. “There are so many wonderful people here, and I really want to get to know each and every one of them.”

—Claire Dennis

Ari Engelberg ’89Ari Engelberg ’89 (Jacob

’12) will replace Jill Shaw as Director of Communications on an interim basis, where he will focus on strategically planning the school’s com-munications and marketing approach as well as fulfilling the job’s daily responsibilities, President Rick Commons said in an email to the school com-munity.

Engelberg will temporar-ily hold the position while the administration seeks a perma-nent replacement.

Engelberg worked as an entrepreneur and executive di-rector of Bright Star Schools, a collection of five charter sec-ondary schools in Los Angeles.

He is also a former Har-vard-Westlake history teach-er and assistant basketball coach.

—Jesse Nadel

Greg HilliardGreg Hilliard, former head

of the basketball program, has held the position of Director of Alumni Athletics since last spring and will be working to organize events to reconnect alumni athletes.

Hilliard has coached the boys’ basketball team for 30 years and has led them to nine CIF championships and two state championships.

Hilliard’s main duty in his new position is to create a na-tionwide network of alumni athletes who are more involved in the student community.

“The main thing that I hope will happen is [the network of alumni], since I’ve been here for 30 years and gotten to know so many athletes,” Hill-iard said.

Hilliard also hopes current student athletes can benefit from talking to the alumni.

“I just feel lucky to be able to continue my association with the school for so long, and I hope that I can contribute in a positive way to a whole new area,” Hilliard said.

—Ellis Becker

Sofia Tannenbaum: SpanishBy carmen levine

New Spanish teacher Sofia Tannenbaum hopes to inspire students with her diverse Jewish and Argentinian cul-ture this year when she joins the World Languages Depart-ment, she said.

Born in Bariloche, Argen-tina, Tannenbaum began her teaching career 20 years ago as an English teacher in Bue-nos Aires. When she moved to the U.S., Tannebaum con-tinued her career by tutoring students privately and was in-spired to work with teenagers once she saw the relationships she developed with them.

“I want to have a great re-lationship with my students,” Tannenbaum said. “I want them to find someone they can trust in me and keep that rela-tionship.”

When she is not teaching her students, Tannenbaum enjoys cooking Argentinian food and spending time with

her husband and two trilin-gual children.

Tannenbaum said she hopes to help her students be-come comfortable speaking in Spanish.

“I want to empower my stu-dents and give them the con-fidence to speak in a foreign language,” Tannenbaum said.

She also wants to educate her students about the diver-sity of Latin American culture.

Laurie Levenson: Criminal LawBy Sarah lee

Laurie Levenson (Dani ’17, Havi ’08, Solly ’06) will be teaching Criminal Law and Advocacy in the Kutler Center this year.

Levenson teaches at the UCLA School of Law, where she received her law degree, and Loyola Law School.

She has also been a legal commentator for several news networks and has worked on some major criminal cases.

“Of course, teaching at a high school is different from teaching at a law school, but I plan to treat the students as the professionals that I know they will be,” Levenson said.

Levenson says she looks

forward to working with the students at Harvard-Westlake.

“My goal is to make sure the students understand the criminal justice system and get engaged in the challeng-es facing it,” Levenson said. “They will learn how to try cas-es, plea bargain, argue sen-tences, help people who have been wrongfully convicted and make changes in the law.”Gustavo Godoy: Visual Arts

By hannah cho

Gustavo Godoy, a promi-nent sculptor whose art has been displayed in galleries and exhibitions nationally and in-ternationally, will teach 3-D Art and Ceramics at the Upper School this year.

As a kid, Godoy said he en-joyed using his hands, wheth-er it was fixing bikes or build-ing forts.

With the skills he acquired when he was younger, Godoy was able to draw inspiration for his art.

“I wasn’t afraid to get my hands dirty and use tools, and the basic skills I learned as a kid perfectly complimented my desire to make art,” Godoy said. “With sculpture, I got to

be a problem solver and take advantage of my ability to make things.”

Godoy had been interested in Harvard-Westlake for many years.

Godoy took the job after browsing the Harvard-West-lake website and finding out that the school was looking for someone to teach sculpture and ceramics.

Andy Stout: MathBy connor reeSe

After working as a software engineer for several years, Andy Stout has joined the up-per school math department as a computer science teacher.

An alumnus of Pasadena Polytechnic, Yale and Univer-sity of California, San Diego, Stout always wanted to come back to Southern California.

Stout has taught courses at college and high school lev-els.

For the past four years, he has been working as a soft-ware engineer at Teradata in San Diego.

He will be teaching Design

and Data Structures along with Advanced Topics in Com-puter Science.

“For my first year here, I am going to stick to Mr. Field-man’s syllabus,” Stout said, “But after this year I’ll build upon it.”

LIZ YOUNT/CHRONICLE

NOA SCHWARTZ/CHRONICLE

KATIE PLOTKIN/CHRONICLE

CONNOR REESE/CHRONICLE

CARMEN LEVINE/CHRONICLE

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF LOYOLA LAW

Sept. 1, 2015A6 News the ChroniCle

11 teachers and 3 staff members join the Upper School this year.

HANNAH CHO/CHRONICLE

inbriefPeer Support to hold annual retreat

Members of Peer Support will go on a retreat Sept. 11 to Sept. 13 with counselor and faculty advisor Luba Bek.

This year, approximately 25 senior leaders and 27 ju-nior trainees, along with fac-ulty advisor Kavita Ajmere and upper school dean Celso Cardenas, will travel with Bek to Camp Hess Kramer in Mal-ibu.

“In the beginning, they’re very cautious,” Bek said. “For the trainees, the incoming ju-niors, the level of confidence is kind of low, but by the end of the retreat everyone is like a big family.”

—Josie Abugov

Future Horizons Club volunteers at UCLA

Members of the Future Ho-rizons Club handled sign-ins at the registration desk and encouraged cancer survivors and patients June 7 at the an-nual Cancer Survivor’s Day at UCLA.

The club, whose goal is to teach students about potential careers, decided to volunteer at the event to gain experience in the field of medical care while helping cancer patients.

“We volunteered because it was a great opportunity for us to witness and understand more about being a doctor,” Future Horizons Club presi-dent Eric Han ’17 said.

—Jesse Nadel

Sophomores, juniors to use new sign-in

A new attendance system will soon allow sophomores and juniors to sign on and off of campus using iPads.

Now, students will use an app to digitally check in. This system has been in testing for seniors, however Upper School Attendance Coordinator Ga-briel Preciado hopes that the system will make attendance more accurate.

“It will prove effective in the event of a major emergency,” Preciado said. “It will make a difference.”

Preciado hopes to have the system available by late fall.

—Carmen Levine

School to host Studio City tennis festival

Harvard-Westlake, in col-laboration with the United States Tennis Association and the Studio City Residents As-sociation, is sponsoring a free tennis festival in Studio City Sept. 27.

“It is designed by the Unit-ed States Tennis Association to expose tennis to Studio City residents and to encourage them to engage in outside fam-ily activity,” Director of Com-munication and Public Affairs Stacy Marble said.

The festival will take place at the Studio City Recreation Center.

Harvard-Westlake women’s tennis coach Kristie Gipe and the team will be participating in the festival to assist the peo-ple who attend.

—Jordan Bedikian

Science teacher completes credential, will teach chemistry

Teachers who previously taught at the Upper School, either full time or temporarily, return to campus to teach Science and English classes.Back At It

By Elly Choi

Chelsea Stewart will join the upper school science de-partment and teach chemis-try this year after instructing Pharmaceutical Biochemistry to graduate students at the University of California, San Diego.

Stewart was also the head tutor at Reality Changers, a program that assists students with homework and introduc-es first-generation college stu-dents to prospective careers.

Stewart earned her B.S. in

Biochemistry and Microbiol-ogy at the University of Wash-ington.

Although she has taught college kids before, teaching younger kids appeals to her. As a student, Stewart said chemistry was one of her fa-vorite subjects.

“Chemistry was always fun. We got to do cool demos, and I’m a visual learner, so that appealed to me,” Stewart said. “It’s amazing what you can find out about the world by studying simple, chemical reactions.”

By DaniEllE Spitz

Heather Audesirk will re-turn to the science depart-ment after first coming to the Upper School last spring.

Since last teaching, Aude-sirk has completed her single-

subject teaching credential in chemistry at Asuza Pacific University.

Audesirk will teach Chem-istry and Chemistry Honors in the upcoming year.

Before becoming a teacher, she was a tutor for the Harvey

Mudd Academic Excellence program, which gave her ex-perience working with young students.

“It’ll be nice to have [the students] have one set of classroom policies and proce-dures rather than those from

like three different teachers, which I know was really rough on everyone last year,” Aude-sirk said. “I’m really excited to start fresh, have everyone from the beginning and be able to make sure that every-thing runs smoothly.”

By niColE Kim

Darcy Cosper will return to the Upper School English de-partment as a full-time teach-er this year after previously filling in as a substitute last semester for Maura Roosevelt. Cosper has also substituted for English teachers Eric Sch-

rode in 2008 and Laurence Weber in 2010.

Over the summer, Cosper started an online literary mag-azine called the Offing, which publishes creative writing that belongs to a variety of genres ranging from poetry to nonfic-tion.

According to the Offing’s

website, the magazine is “a place for new and emerging writers to test their voices, and for established writers to test their limits”.

Prior to assuming the po-sition of Editor-in-Chief of the Offing, Cosper was the online editor of another literary mag-azine called the Swink from

2004 to 2012.However, Cosper said she

wanted to return to Harvard-Westlake because of “the ex-ceptional students and fac-ulty.”

She said she is looking for-ward to getting to know new students in her sophomore English classes.

Former substitute teacher hired to teach English full time

By Kami Durairaj

Sara Cohen joins the Upper School English department af-ter serving as a visiting fellow at Drexel University’s Great Works Symposium.

Cohen, who earned a Bachelor of Arts in Compara-tive Literature at Occidental College and both a Master of Arts and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at UCLA, hopes to utilize her knowledge of differ-ent styles of literature in her classroom.

Not only does Cohen have an extensive background in Jewish and Yiddish literature, she has also studied pop cul-ture in literature.

In the past, she devel-oped several elective courses around the topics of ghost sto-ries, monsters and zombies in literature.

“I can see the ways that different literatures are in dia-logue with each other,” Cohen said. “I have a unique perspec-tive that offers a lot of context because I never worked with just English literature, but with multiple languages.”

Cohen will teach English II and English III: Living in America.

During her move from Phil-adelphia, she took a road trip through New England, visiting landmarks of famous writers, an experience which she hopes to incorporate this experience in her English III class.

Cohen said she looks for-ward to joining the English department and collaborating with other teachers to create unique lesson palns.

By ClairE KEllEr

Engineer Deniz Armani will be taking over for phys-ics teacher Karen Hutchin-son to lead the Robotics Club during the school year and in their competitions beginning in January.

Armani previously worked

at Glenair Inc. as the Director of Research and Development, where he identified and devel-oped new products and tech-nologies before the company brought them to the commer-cial market.

“I really love engineer-ing, and so I am excited for the interaction with the club

and helping introduce them to what its like engineering professionally and in the real world,” Armani said.

The robotics team began preparing for the season over the summer, meeting on cam-pus and video chatting with other students who were not available in order to include

everyone in their work. “We are heavily interested

in improving the pre-season education and training,” Jo-nas Hirshland ’16 said. “We are also talking about compet-ing in another set of competi-tions that happen earlier in the year, mainly to practice for our real season.”

English teacher comes back to school after year of writingBy KatE SChragE

Former teacher Ariana Kelly will return to the English department this fall after one year away from school.

Kelly departed from the school following the 2014 school year in order to com-plete her debut non-fiction book, “Phone Booth,” set to release Sept. 15.

“I spent the majority of my time away from school re-searching and writing,” Kelly

said. “The time away really gave me room in which to breathe and think, reassess and regroup.”

Though Kelly hadn’t ex-pected to return so quickly, she said that her decision to do so was due to her passion for her job.

“Besides writing, which re-quires me to figure out what I really think, I’ve never found a more compelling or worthier job than teaching,” Kelly said.

While she is excited to come back to Harvard-West-

lake, Kelly expressed some concerns regarding her career as an author.

“I do worry about finding

time to write,” Kelly said. “But if the need to write is strong enough, and it is for me, I will always find time for it.”

KATE SCHRAGE/CHRONICLE

hwchronicle.com/news news A7sept. 1, 2015Sara Cohen: English

Chelsea Stewart: Science

Deniz Armani: Robotics

CHELSEA STEWART/CHRONICLE

KAMI DURAIRAJ/CHRONICLE

By LayLa MoghaveM

The new Wang Hall is open at the Middle School after a year of renovations.

Wang Hall, previously Reynolds Hall, has a new eighth grade lounge. In years before the renovation, eighth grade students spent their free time in the hallways by class-rooms or in their deans’ offices. The teachers and deans found this arrangement disruptive to their classes and meetings.

“Before, part of the eighth grade deans’ job was to go outside and yell at the kids to be quiet then go inside to fin-ish their conversa-tion,” Head of Middle School Jon Wimbish said. “So we’re try-ing to ameliorate that a little bit [with the new lounge].”

A new space un-officially called the “den,” a play on the idea of a wolverine den, holds tables and chairs on the second floor for students to use to work on homework or class projects.

Eighth grade lockers are now on the second floor, fac-ing the senior garden, with a canopy installed to protect them from rain. Now that the lockers no longer line the walls indoors, Wimbish said that the

hallways have opened up.Visual arts classrooms are

now spaces that are specifical-ly designed for art classes as opposed to the Reynolds Hall arts classrooms, which were previously science labs. World Language classrooms are now larger.

The bottom floor contains classrooms for Human De-velopment, and the first floor holds World Languages class-rooms. The second floor holds mostly history classrooms and a few visual arts classrooms, and the third floor consists

mainly of visual arts classrooms, as well as a few history class-rooms and a gallery.

In addition to the Wang Hall reno-vations, the Middle School converted two classrooms in Seaver Science Center into “maker spaces” called the STEAM (science,

technology, engineering, arts and math) room and the Incu-bator.

“We took a lot of our hands-on clubs and put them in this classroom called the STEAM room,” Wimbish said.

The Incubator is meant to be a designated place where science teachers can experi-ment with new labs that could be used in lessons.

Grass replaces trailers, history offices renovated

Wang Hall opens, classrooms converted

By SaMMi handLer

Two trailers outside Rugby Hall were removed during the summer because of “a de-sire to return green space to the general community,” Vice President John Amato said.

Teachers and students used the trailers as classrooms during the library renovations four years ago, and they re-mained in place after the con-struction was completed in 2012.

The English department had used the trailers as tem-porary classrooms, so they had to relocate classes to ac-

commodate the change.It was determined that the

trailers were no longer needed so they were replaced with ar-tificial grass, Amato said.

“Rugby is pretty packed to the gills most of the day, so we have teachers also teaching in Kutler and Chalmers,” English Department Head Larry Weber said. “We haven’t had a teach-er teach in Chalmers for a long time.”

The history office was also renovated this summer with new smaller desks in a new configuration, history teacher Ken Neisser said.

The history classrooms and office were also painted.

Senior self-publishes fantasy novel, ‘Code!’By ethan Knight

Elizabeth Anne Rao ’16 published her book “Code!” on July 11 using the online pub-lishing site Outskirt Press.

Her book is about a group of people who receive super-powers from a mysterious man, claiming to be a thera-pist that grants wishes. The protagonists later realize that

the negative aspects of their new powers outweigh the ben-efits.

“Their actions and deci-sions are illogical, and I want-ed to try and present how eas-ily people, especially young people, can lose sight of reality and logic,” Rao said.

As a child, Rao often day-dreamed, becoming so at-tached to her imagination that

she channeled it into writ-ing as a way of recording her childhood dreams.

One day while browsing the Internet, Rao discovered the concept of supplements that could give people super-human abilities. This inspired her to think about the negative effects of these superpowers, and thus “Code!” was born.

Rao spent her free time

writing the book.“Balancing school with

writing was difficult, and I would go weeks or months at a time completely ignoring my book in favor of school work,” Rao said. “Obviously, this hin-dered my writing, and I had to cut off the book without wrap-ping up all the loose ends.”

Rao said she plans to write a sequel.

OUT WITH THE OLD: Administrators ordered the addition of a new sign on a wall in Taper Gym to reflect the change in the Mission Statement last school year. The sign, added during the summer, highlights the four key aspects of the school’s goals.

New sign in Taper Gym reflects Mission StatementEMILY RAHHAL/CHRONICLE

inbriefAlumni go to “Friday Night Lights” event

Alumni living in the Los Angeles area supported the Wolverines against rival Loyola Cubs at the football game last Friday after a dinner and a re-ception in the Feldman Horn gallery as part of the “Friday Night Lights” event.

“We have done this in the past, and our goal is to engage and reconnect with alumni and invite them back on cam-pus to see friends and facul-ty as well as enjoy a football game,” Director of Advance-ment David Lee ’89 said in an email.

— Sabrina de Brito

Annual Giving reaches a record $7.7 million

Parents, alumni, faculty and staff donated a record of $7.7 million to Annual Giving last year, the most for an in-dependent day school in the country, according to Head of External Relations Ed Hu.

Faculty and staff had 100 percent participation. Ninety-three percent of parents par-ticipated, along with 22 per-cent of alumni.

— Sammi Handler

Information Tech doubles bandwidth

The Computer Service de-partment changed its name to Information Technology.

“Mostly because Computer Services for many years now has not really been accurate as we work with a lot more [as-pects of] technology than just computers,” Director of Infor-mation Technology Dave Ru-ben said of the name change. “It’s a very old name so we thought we would modernize it, and information technology is a little more accurate and more up to date with what we actually do.”

In addition, there is now double the internet bandwidth available for students on the upper school campus.

“Now that all students are bringing their own laptops, we will have an additional 300 computers all accessing the same wireless,” Ruben said.

— Ayanna Frey and Anthony Weinraub

Library now loans laptops to students

An update to the laptop program will allow students to take and use the borrowed devices outside of the library and to their classes due to the One-to-One program neces-sitating the use of laptops for every class.

Library loaners can be used when a student cannot bring his or hers for several days, but they will be directed to Computer Services if they need one for a week or more.

“It gives students some freedom to move around the library — and now campus — and choose a place to work that will suit the level of focus they need to get their work done,” Head Upper School Li-brarian Shannon Acedo said.

— Claire Keller

GOING GREEN: Students converse in the open grassy area that has replaced the trailers that were previously outside of Rugby Hall.

INDU PANDEY/CHRONICLE

nathanson’s

Jon Wimbish

Sept. 1, 2015A8 NewS the ChroNiCle

Editors in ChiEf: EugEnia Ko, HEnry VogEl

Managing Editors:angEla CHon, BEnjamin most,

jonatHan sEymour

ExECutivE Editors:saCHa lin, KElly riopEllE

PrEsEntations Editors:su jin nam, pim otEro

ads and BusinEss ManagEr:KElly loEB

assistant ads and BusinEss ManagEr:

oliVEr riCHards

nEws Managing Editor:ColE FEldman

nEws sECtion hEads:sammi HandlEr, layla mogHaVEm,

jEssE nadEl

nEws CoPy Editor:jaCKson noViCK

nEws assistants:gaBi BErCHtold, maddy daum, ClairE dEnnis, Brittany Hong, Emory Kim, indu pandEy, noa

sCHwartz, daniEllE spitz

oPinion Managing Editor:jonaH ullEndorFF

oPinion CoPy Editor:lExi BowErs

oPinion sECtion hEads:HananH CHo, Kami durairaj

oPinion assistants:ayanna FrEy, ClairE KEllEr, jiwon parK, antHony wEinrauB, mattHEw

yam

fEaturEs Managing Editor:sHaron CHow

fEaturEs sECtion hEads:saBrina dE Brito, CarmEn lEVinE,

liz yount

fEaturEs assistants:josEttE aBugoV, niColE Kim, sopHiE

lEVy, Kitty luo, jadEnE mEyEr, alEna ruBin, KatE sCHrag, alExa

zuriFF

a&E sECtion hEads:laurEn Kim, tiFFany Kim,

KatiE plotKin

a&E assistants:jaCquElinE ayastas, Ellis BECKEr, isaBEllE EsHagHi, saraH lEE, Caty

szEto

hEalth & fitnEss sECtion hEads:EsHaniKa CHaudHary, sopHiE CoHEn,

Claudia wong

hEalth & fitnEss assistants:soFia guillEn, KristEn Kuwada

sPorts Managing Editor:BEnnEtt gross

sPorts sECtion hEads:juliana BErgEr, zaC HarlEston,

jaKE liKEr, dario madyoon, Carina marx, rian ratnaValE

sPorts assistants:Eli adlEr, oliVEr aKHtarzad,

andrEw aHn, jordan BEdiKian, Elly CHoi, EtHan KnigHt, sam mCCaBE, taVin nortH, aaron parK, adam yu

sPorts PhotograPhy:CamEron stinE

PhotograPhy assistants:Emory Kim, Kitty luo, jadEnE

mEyEr, lara miKHail,alExa zuriFF

CrEativE dirECtor:ViVian lin

Cartoonist:mady madison

wEBMastErs:CarmEn lEVinE, CamEron stinE,

Bryant wu

onlinE sECtion hEads:joE lEVin, Emily raHHal, oliVEr riCHards, jEan sandErs, Bryant

wu

wEB assistants:Eli adlEr, ClairE KEllEr, mattHEw

yam

MultiMEdia and PodCast ManagErs:

joE lEVin, Connor rEEsE

advisEr:mElissa wantz

tHE CHroniClE is the student newspaper of Harvard-Westlake School. It is published eight times per year. Unsigned editorials represent the majority opinion of the seniors on the Editorial Board. Letters to the editor may be submitted to chronicle@hw.com 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. Advertising questions may be directed to Kelly Loeb at kloeb1@hwemail.com. Publication of an advertisement does not imply endorsement of the product or service by the newspaper or the school.

HRONICLEtHE HaRvaRd-wEstLakE

Los Angeles • Volume XXV • Issue 1 • Sept. 1, 2015 • hwchronicle.comC

Maintaining our Core ValuesFor the past year now, anyone who drives

down Coldwater Canyon can see that our neighbors are unhappy with us.

Along the way to a school that prioritizes integrity and purpose beyond ourselves, signs emblazoned with hurtful phrases like “Stop Harvard-Westlake’s Destruction of the Coldwater Canyon” paint us as some sort of evil vying for our private parking garage without a thought for our neighbors or the environment.

One of President Rick Commons’ new vision statements is to “find new ways to serve Los Angeles and earn the trust of our neighbors.” We are prioritizing our relation-ship with our neighbors more than ever before. Although we are certainly not the kind of school that many of the signs make us out to be, we students haven’t always been the perfect neighbors, and it’s time to change that.

We have seen some of our classmates block driveways when they park on Halkirk, leave trash on nearby lawns and speed up the center lane on Coldwater.

The actions of only a few students have reflected poorly on the entire community —students, teachers and administrators —and they are not representative of Harvard-Westlake as a whole.

Upper school students do more than 10,000 hours of community service each year. We have invited local residents to use our track and pools, hosted training for the Special Olympics and planted trees with TreePeople. We value our community.

Sometimes it’s easy to get distracted defending ourselves against neighbors with “Stop Harvard-Westlake” signs on their lawns and forget where they are coming from.

There is also no doubt that some stu-dents are disrepectful towards neighbors in response to these signs. When the com-plaints start to feel like personal attacks, it can be difficult for us to look at the bigger picture.

At the end of the day, however, it is a matter of respect. While we are first and foremost a part of Harvard-Westlake, we are also members of a larger community and will continue to be for years to come.

While the benefits of a parking structure may be clear to us, it is at the core of our values and beliefs to respect the opinions of those whom our decisions will affect and, more importantly, treat others, especially the neighbors, with the values we have al-ways strived for.

The minute we allow our character to be compromised by what has become a politi-cal tiff, we lose our integrity.

Regardless of the matter at hand, and however many wounding pitchforks may seem to come our way, we have to rise above.

It’s a new school year, a new beginning, and it is time for students to do better. What we really only have control over is how we carry ourselves. No matter how this conflict tests our character, we have to stay true to what we believe in.

editorial

MADY MADISON/CHRONICLE

OpINIONThe Chronicle • Sept. 1, 2015

MADY MADISON/CHRONICLE

Sept. 1, 2015A10 OpiniOn the ChrOniCle

One of the reasons I kept going back to Laurel South summer

camp year after year until two years ago was because of how receptive the staff was to constructive criticism and hearing the campers’ thoughts and suggestions each summer.

At the end of August, just as the camp was about to adjourn, the director would give each camper a survey to fill out. What my friends and I enjoyed was that the camp di-rectors read all of these slips and listened to what both our favorite and least favorite parts of each year were.

The director actually responded to our complaints too; he changed the food in the dining hall and added and subtracted new activities each year to fit the interests of the kids at camp.

One year several of my peers and I wanted Ultimate Frisbee as an activity. We simply put our request on the survey, and when we came back the next summer, it was an option as a sport.

I think that if Harvard-Westlake were to implement a survey similar to the one at my camp, the students would have a better experience each school year. A simple ques-tionnaire asking for ratings on teachers, cafeteria foods and extracurricular activities would improve daily life at school.

The surveys would not require a committee to review the data, nor would it take years to implement. All of the data could easily be summed up and analyzed by President Rick Commons or Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts.

The administration would not necessarily have to hire and fire teachers or even put them on probation based solely on survey results. It could just be a way for the school to get teacher evalua-tions or suggestions for new sports from the students.

I am not suggesting that every student be obligated to fill this out or that there would be any penalty for not doing the questionnaire.

The other way that stu-dent life could be bettered would be to add a day after the end of school for students to say their summer good-byes.

On the last day of school, once everyone has completed their finals, it would be ben-eficial for both the students and teachers if there were a few hours to celebrate the accomplishment of finishing a long, arduous school year.

Personally, last June, I ran to my car in the pouring rain after my English final and went home through the torrential weather.

There was no closure to my junior year, just a nap.

Horace Mann School in New York sets aside a few hours for their students and teachers to mingle at the end of the school year.

I think Harvard-Westlake students should adopt a simi-lar practice and allow stu-dents to say goodbye after the last final on the Wednesday that school ends.

Student Council could be in charge of organizing the event, with input from what the student body would like to have on that day. It could just be a couple of food trucks on the track and some games on the field.

The Middle School, for ex-ample, has field trips to Uni-versal Studios, Six Flags and Disneyland for their students to close out the school year.

While the seniors have a retreat that ends before graduation, the sophomores and juniors do not have any opportunity to reflect on their year with their friends or give their teachers a last goodbye.

All I want for my fellow Wolverines is for everyone’s voices to be heard and a chance for students to have a memorable last day.

Some change is for the betterBy Bennett Gross

By Sammi Handler

Time and time again failure is seen as an es-sential stepping-stone

for success. So I find it strange that we

have such a high expectation for success and scarcely any room for failure. Providing a more stable safety net for stu-dents could help lessen stress this year.

I really started to wonder about this when my ninth grade history teacher warned our class that he expected our first test to be a “bloodbath.” He told us that we needed to get used to receiving bad grades before the difficulty of history class increased sopho-more year.

My teacher’s warning just made us study harder to avoid an apparent slaughter of our college dreams. Conse-quently, we were unsuccessful in understanding the crux of his message: We will fail, so we might as well learn how to deal with it now.

Students, parents and teachers tend to have a “fail-ure is not an option” attitude. That approach is beneficial in Apollo 13 situations, but we are just trying to graduate

from high school.A common discussion

topic among students and administration is how to alle-viate the pressure and stress caused by the workload. The New York Times reported July 27 that the suicide rate for 15- to 16-year-olds increased from 9.6 deaths to 11.1 per 100,000 from 2007 to 2013, and that more than half of college-age counseling clients had severe problems with anxiety and depression.

We could lessen the stress this year by accepting failure and being permitted to do corrections to earn a few more points and actually compre-hend the subject. We could analyze our errors and work with teachers to prove that we know the material.

Teachers allow students to meet with them after a bad test or quiz, but in most cases the grade stays the same. If there was the possibility of a slight boost, students would be more apt to make appoint-ments and fix their errors.

No one should choose to fail. That would simply be poor judgment. But failing is ultimately a life lesson that

has so many more real-life ap-plications than knowing that President John F. Kennedy’s plan to oust Fidel Castro was called Operation Mongoose. By the way, that plan failed.

At the moment there is very little room for slip-ups. A bad grade on a test will always be there to weigh you down at the end of the year, even after you have managed to pick yourself back up. Any-thing below a B+ is practically considered to be an eighth deadly sin, except we don’t have any sure-fire way to repent. On top of that, some classes scale certain tests while others do not, and some teachers drop an uncharac-teristic test grade while others take off points for not signing the Honor Code.

While inconsistencies in teaching style cannot be fixed, a safety net allowing more chances to do corrections could make up for them.

Let’s make failure an op-tion so that one “bloodbath” in history class will no longer squander our dreams of going to a certain university.

Failing is really an essen-tial part of success.

Leave some room for error

MADY MADISON/CHRONICLE

By Liz Yount

A space for debate

Last year students had the privilege of hearing from several speakers who

brought us inspiring messag-es of acceptance, struggle and perseverance. Terrence Rob-erts, a member of the Little Rock Nine, shared his experi-ences with the desegregation of schools and explained how racism is a persistent sys-temic issue.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti ’88 encouraged us to become more involved members of the community at school and throughout the city, and activist Jackson Katz sparked a heated school-wide debate when he challenged students to view sexism and gender violence as more than

just a women’s issue.Each of these speakers

provided insight that influ-enced daily conversation and debate around campus. My hope is that we don’t stop having these conversations just because a speaker isn’t standing in front of us.

At Harvard-Westlake, we are clearly in a location of privilege, and each day we ought to use that platform as a way to initiate discussions regarding these issues, even if there isn’t an assembly to guide us.

This past year, a compel-ling speaker would ignite a flame fueling meaning-ful debates across campus, but after a couple of days, it

would seem as if the speaker were never there.

A prerequisite to creating dialogue on campus is being educated on both sides of ev-ery issue. I am on the debate team at school, and we are re-quired to prepare arguments on both sides of our topic.

This is how I strive to ap-proach every issue, whether it be political, social or familial. Only after I am familiar with multiple perspectives on a subject do I feel comfortable debating it in a formal setting or discussing it casually with my friends.

I challenge all members of the community to learn more about the viewpoints that fun-damentally contradict their

own. Read an article from that news source you always brush off. Take the time to really comprehend why your peer’s opinion is incompatible with your own. By under-standing the opposing argu-ment better, you can more confidently defend your own, and if you feel slightly uncom-fortable or irritated reading material you don’t agree with, don’t worry, that’s a common side effect of learning.

Once we become a com-munity that brings multiple perspectives to every issue, we can have educated and productive campus debates. We ought to be in a constant state of discussion. We cannot afford to be complacent in the

face of injustice. Let’s continue to challenge

the misconception of America as a post-racial society, even if Terrence Roberts isn’t here to provide insight. Sexism and gender violence didn’t sud-denly stop being relevant just because we went on summer break. We still have an obliga-tion to give back to our com-munity and city, and there is a litany of other issues in our society that also warrant our attention.

I urge everyone to make a conscious effort to embody the ideals brought to us last year by the speakers and to use our platform as a way of initiating the type of conversa-tions that lead to change.

Students should keep relevant debates going, even when there is no guest speaker telling them to do so. Understanding both sides of a social issue is crucial to initiating productive conversations.

hwchronicle.com/opinion opinion A11Sept. 1, 2015

Every year we hear that journalism is a dying profession. Even though

our traditional 32-page print paper has set the standard for high school journalists across the country, the time has come to accept that much of our readership would rather receive news through other media .

Last year, the Chronicle staff breathed life into the Twitter and Facebook ac-counts by live tweeting more sports events and constantly posting stories from the Facebook account and to the Chronicle website (hwchroni-cle.com).

This year, we plan to take the necessary next steps to

improve our digital presence on the rapidly evolving jour-nalism frontier.

Though our website has achieved recognition for its coverage and design, look for a website relaunch this fall to make the interface even more user-friendly on devices rang-ing from iPhones to desktop computers. We will also pro-vide HWTV Chronicle sports, and livestreaming of many important events.

With a full digital team, we plan on bringing our reader-ship more live streams, regu-lar updates to the site and more interactive mediums of communication, such as video reporting and sound clips.

We will also continue the

digital push into the world of social media started by last year’s staff. With a Chronicle Snapchat account (@hw_chronicle), a separate Twitter account for the sports section (@chroniclesports) and a re-vamped Instagram presence, look for more personalized and in-depth live coverage of sporting events and activities around campus.

Our goal when we created these social media accounts was to find a way to bring our readership into the stories we are covering.

We will still have the tradi-tional text stories both online and in the print issues, but all these different social media accounts and the new website

will enable us to to bring life to the events we cover.

Despite all the change, however, the basic idea stays the same. Our job is spread-ing honest and relevant news to our audience. With one of

the biggest staffs in recent years, we have the personnel to accomplish this goal. As readers, keep your eyes and ears open because exciting changes are happening this year at the Chronicle.

Letter from the Editors

By Eugenia Ko and Henry Vogel

quadtalkThe Chronicle asked:

Connecting in new ways

SPREADING THE NEWS: Editors in Chief Eugenia Ko ’16 and Henry Vogel ’16 hope to expand to other media platforms.

JONAH ULLENDORFF/CHRONICLE

“How can the student body improve its interactions with our neighbors?”

“I think we are fairly respectful. My peers always make a strong effort to be as considerate as we can when we are in and around the school, especially around the neighborhood. We attend school here, they live here, and we try to respect that.”

—Adam Hirschhorn ’16

“From my understanding we have been pretty respectful for quite a few decades. I don’t know of any incidents in my memory that we have been disrespectful, but if so, I would just like the administration or the neighborhood to tell us exactly what the certain grievances are besides parking on their side.” — Jordan Brown ’16

“Do you think Harvard-Westlake students are respectful to our neighbors?”

HANNAH CHO/CHRONICLE HANNAH CHO/CHRONICLE

HANNAH CHO/CHRONICLE

HANNAH CHO/CHRONICLE

314 students answered a Chronicle poll Aug. 27

Yes

219 No

99

“I think that Harvard-Westlake stu-dents are respectful to their neigh-bors, but I always think that we can be more respectful. It is a big school, and there is a lot of traffic, and so I think doing everything we can to make our neighbors happy is the best way to go.”

— Keller Maloney ’18

“Sometimes we can be disrespectful of our neighbors, but respecting prop-erty boundaries is really important, especially when walking to and from Starbucks and Ralphs. When we are walking on their property, we have to realize that other people have their own opinions about Harvard-Westlake that we may not agree with.”

— Jordan Brown ’16

Sept. 1, 2015A12 exposure

Seniors reunited at the Senior Barbecue Aug. 27 to begin their final year as Wolverines. Head of the Upper School Audrius Barzdukas told the Class of 2016 that it would be remembered as the happiest class in school history.

HEADING TO THE RANCH: The senior class and teachers line up for lunch from Wood Ranch Grill.COLE FELDMAN/CHRONICLE

SUMMER’S END: Yoko Everard ’16 and Gabe Golob ’16 reminisce on the fire road about their summer experiences.

COLE FELDMAN/CHRONICLE

DEAR EMBRACE: Emma Caragozian ’16 and Dora Schoenberg ’16 embrace after Caragozian returned to campus after a year with School Year Abroad.

COLE FELDMAN/CHRONICLE

ROUND TABLE: Ryan Ruiz ’16, Ian Watts ’16, Izzy Frankel ’16, Jordan Pulaski ’16 and Andrew Vanderschans ’16 enjoy the barbecue together on the quad. Wood Ranch Grill provided tri-tip sandwiches, cheeseburgers and grilled chicken breasts as well as an assortment of sliced fruit, coleslaw and cookies.

COLE FELDMAN/CHRONICLE

FOOD AND FRIENDS: Robert Iancu ’16, David Strauss ’16 and Augustin Letelier ’16 catch up with science teacher Nate Cardin. The faculty reunited and ate with the senior class during the barbecue.

COLE FELDMAN/CHRONICLE

Class celebrates beginning of the end

Arts & EntErtAinmEnt The Chronicle • September 1, 2015

Lights, Cambodia, Action

By Jean sanders

Standing in Junom, the village where his moth-er lived after the Khmer

Rouge took her family’s home, William Chow ’17 took out his camera and begins to film the scenery. Chow’s mother is a survivor of the Cambodian genocide that began in 1975, and Chow wanted to tell her story. He said it felt incredible to be in the exact place where his mom lived during that time in her life, and he was able to understand her experiences in a new light.

“My mom always talked about Cambodia in terms of how affected she was from the genocide, and I went to Cam-bodia expecting a stricken and poor country,” Chow said. “After I started meeting and talking to all the local people, I realized how human and simi-

lar to me they are.” Chow was one of 19 stu-

dents who attended HW! Go’s Digital Storytelling Adventure trip to Cambodia. Students on the 11-day trip visited the cities of Phnom Penh, Battam-bang and Siem Riep. The goal of the trip was for each student to create a short documenta-ry focusing on one aspect of Cambodian life.

After learning that sex traf-ficking is the second largest industry in Cambodia, William Park ’17 decided to attempt to shed light on the problem. Park recognized that people his age and younger were be-ing forced to become sex work-ers, and visiting the country allowed him to see firsthand the issues they face every day.

“The process of filming and interviewing allowed me to at the very least spread some awareness to the troubles

happening in Cambodia,” Park said.

Gaulke and visual arts teacher Joe Medina chaper-oned the trip, along with tour organizer Alethea Paradis and journalist Jeff M a c I n t y r e . Students also visited various historical sites such as the Killing Fields, the Angkor Wat and the Royal Palace.

“I didn’t know that much about Cambodia before,” Marina Weidmann ’17 said. “This trip made me much more aware of the history and the environ-ment in the country.”

Much of the trip was fo-cused on understanding the impact of the Cambodian

genocide on the people.“I’ve never been to a place

so affected by one thing,” Weidmann said. “Everyone you talk to is affected by it in some way.”

S tuden t s learned that the arts was one area of C a m b o d i a n life that was largely di-minished by the genocide. They attend-ed several performances sponsored by

a program called Cambodian Living Arts, which aims to re-store the arts that were wiped out by the genocide. Henry DiNapoli ’17 decided to focus his documentary on the work done by CLA.

“I was able to interview

current and former students,” DiNapoli said. “It was really cool to see what they had to say about the work done by the organization.”

Many students felt their perception of Cambodia and the world was changed as a re-sult of the trip.

“A country that we only know through what we learn in history class has so much more to offer,” Cole Kawana ’16 said.

Others found that what they had previously thought about Cambodia was incor-rect.

“We thought these people might be very sad because they don’t have much,” Sebas-tian Ko ’19 said. “But when we went there, we saw that they were happy. I learned that even without a lot of material possessions, you can get en-joyment out of life.”

RETURN TO THE PAST: Arn Chorn-Pond shows students around Battambang, his home town. Pond is a survivor of the Cambodian genocide and a human rights activist committed to the preservation of Cambodian music. Prior to the trip, Chorn-Pond visited the Upper School on April 13 to be interviewed by students.

TERESA SUH/CHRONICLE

Nineteen students traveled to Cambodia on the summer digital storytelling adventure trip. From visiting temples to exploring the Killing Fields of the Cambodian genocide, students learned about the rich history and complex culture of Cambodia.

“After I started meeting and talking to all the local people, I realized how human and similar to me they are.”

—William Chow ’17

By SaBrina de Brito

A revival of the five-time Tony award-winning musical “Assassins” opened Aug. 21 to positive critical reviews.

The show runs through Sept. 27 at the Pico Playhouse in Los Angeles.

The musical is being pro-duced by Red Blanket Produc-tions, a company started by primary producer and actor Zach Lutsky ’93 and director Dan Fishbach ’94.

“[‘Assassins’] is a commen-tary on the realization that the promise of the American dream is not reachable for most peo-ple,” Lutsky said. “[The show portrays] people coming to terms with the fact that, in a lot of ways, the promise of the American dream is unrealistic or even a lie.”

The musical illustrates the lives of nine people who assas-sinated or attempted to assas-sinate past US presidents.

Written by Stephen Sond-heim and John Weidman, the show takes the audience through different decades in order to watch criminals from various time periods meet, in-teract and influence one an-other.

Will Adashek ’01 super-vised lighting design, Lili Fuller ’05 was the choreographer and Middle School Performing Arts Teacher Alex Kolmanovsky de-signed the set.

Upper school dean Adam Howard ’93 plays the role of Leon Czolgosz, who assasinat-ed President William McKinley in 1901.

“I was drawn to Czolgosz both musically as well as to

his seemingly timeless frustra-tions,” Howard said. “Czolgosz may have been a figure from the end of the 19th century, but his issues with govern-ment and socio-economic re-striction seem very relevant to some of the anger we see to-day.”

Lutsky plays John Hinck-ley, who attempted to assassi-nate President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

He said he hopes that other alumni will come see the final production, as it represents how far one can go with con-nections made in the Harvard-Westlake community.

“I think only Steven Sond-heim would have the brilliance to make a musical about peo-ple who kill presidents, and yet it is funny and powerful and moving,” Lutsky said.

“The themes of [‘Assassins’]and the power of it is in not trying to sympathize or forgive these people through Ameri-can history, but maybe just try to understand how it could have happened.”

The musical received posi-tive feedback from the theater community.

“Producers Dan Fishbach and Zach Lutsky courageously and memorably make ‘Assassins’ their own,” critic Don Grigware wrote on a theater review website called broadwayworld.com two days after opening night. “It may not be one of Sondheim’s best musicals, but it is surely thought-provoking, bizarrely entertaining and worthy of your attention. This production of the musical is as good as it gets.”

KILLER ACTING: Faculty and alumni perform a musical number in the critically acclaimed production of “Assassins” in the Pico Play-house. Upper School Dean Adam Howard (third from right) plays Leon Czolgosz, who assasinated President William McKinley in 1901.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF ADAM HOWARD

By Sarah Lee

The middle school and up-per school choirs will take part in several bonding activities this year in order to create a better sense of a choir commu-nity on both campuses.

Performing arts teach-er Rodger Guerrero said he wanted students at the Mid-dle School to see where being a part of the choir program could take them, and he wants all choir students to feel safe in the community because it increases the quality of their performances.

“If they get to know each other, then they’re more open to breaking down their per-sonal walls, and the music is expressed and performed bet-ter when the kids are willing to express who they really are. So if this is a safe space, then the kids will go out on a line and give their all no matter how much of themselves they have to reveal,” Guerrero said.

Guerrero plans to have a rehearsal day on the middle school campus followed by games, a mentor program be-tween choir students in the seventh grade and twelfth grades, rehearsals for boys in the middle school choirs at the Upper School and rehearsals for Bel Canto at the Middle School.

“Performing arts should be a place where you really make lifelong friends,” Guer-rero said. “So this is just kind of a way to enhance that so no kid feels like they’re alone. If they’ve got something really tough going on in their lives, whether it’s with regards to their classes or with other teachers or students or even with their parents, they have some friends in choir that they see every day that they can re-ally rely on and go to.”

By Kami durairaj

Jonah Platt ’04 will make his Broadway debut Sept. 15 as Fiyero, the male lead in “Wicked,” and his brother Ben Platt ’11 will perform the titular role in an off-Broadway production of “Dear Evan Han-sen.”

Jonah Platt will perform in the 12th anniversary of the musical “Wicked,” which made it’s debut in October 2003.

His father, Marc Platt, was the original producer of the hit musical, which is the 11th longest-running Broad-way show in history.

“I’m very excited to be able to devote my full energy to and receive a paycheck for the pursuit I love the most,” Jonah Platt said in an email. “It’s a rare and beautiful thing to be able to do what you love for a living, and I’m incredibly

grateful and excited for the op-portunity.”

Jonah considers his time at Harvard-Westlake as one of the factors that has inspired his career.

“Many teachers and fac-ets of [Harvard-Westlake] life helped to grow my stage confi-dence and deep love for musi-cal theater,” Jonah Platt said.

The Grammy and Tony award-winning musical tells

the unknown backstories of the witches of Oz -E lphaba , the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda, the Good Witch.

Jonah Platt has previously acted in “Hair,” “Scream: The Unauthorized

Musical Parody,” “American Idiot,” “Floyd Collins” and “Bare” and has worked on NBC’s “Parks and Recreation” as well as Fox’s “Family Guy.”

His brother Ben will con-tinue his role as the main

character in the musical “Dear Evan Hansen,” which origi-nated at Washington’s Arena Stage this summer.

After the musical received strong reviews, it was select-ed to run at New York’s Sec-ond Stage Theatre during the spring 2016 season.

Directed by Tony Award nominee Michael Grief, the musical follows the story of high school student Evan Hansen, who is on the verge of

realizing his dreams — if a pri-vate letter gone viral does not ruin his chances.

Ben Platt is also known for his performances in the mu-sical comedy “Pitch Perfect” movies and his role in “Ricki and the Flash” with Meryl Streep.

His other musical credits include the lead role of Elder Cunningham in “The Book of Mormon” in Chicago and on Broadway.

Platt brothers to starin New York musicals

Sept. 1, 2015B2 ArtS & entertAinment the ChroniCle

By eLLiS BecKer

Upper School Visual Arts Head Cheri Gaulke won the California Community Foun-dation Fellowship for Visual Arts award for a successful career.

The award, funded by the CCF, has provided artists funds to build their careers since 1988.

The foundation has given $2.5 million to over 250 artists working in Los Angeles.

Gaulke was one of 22 win-ners that will receive a grant from the foundation.

“I feel deeply honored to re-ceive this award,” Gaulke said. “I got the call in the middle of shooting a film project, and we were working very hard, and when I heard I just started cry-ing. It made all the hard work worth it.”

As well as receiving the award, she was granted $20,000 for future projects. Gaulke said she will use the grant as an opportunity to step back and take a look at what she is really passionate about.

Critics praise alumni revival of 5-timeTony award-winning musical ‘Assassins’

Guerrero plans inter-choir collaboration

Gaulke wins CCF Fellowship

“ I’m very excited to be able to devote my full energy to and receive a paycheck for the pursuit I love the most.”

—Jonah Platt ’04

WICKED SINGING: Jonah Platt ’04 performs as Fiyero in “Wicked” on Broadway. Ben Platt ’11 will be off-Broadway in the spring.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF JONAH PLATT

By AdAm Yu

Auditions began Monday for the upper school theater department’s 2015 fall musi-cal “West Side Story”.

The musical is about gang warfare, but it is based on Wil-liam Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” and was written by Stephen Sondheim.

Singing auditions are slat-ed for today, acting auditions are scheduled for tomorrow, and dance auditions are set for Thursday. Makeup audi-

tions and callbacks will be held on Friday.

The musical will be co-di-rected by Ted Walch and Mi-chele Spears. Daniel Faltus will serve as the musical direc-tor.

There will be an invited guest preview on Nov. 5 at 4 p.m.

Regular performances will be on Nov. 6 at 8 p.m., Nov. 7 at 8 p.m. and Nov. 8 at 3 p.m. All of the shows will be performed in the Rugby Audi-torium.

Auditions begin for ‘West Side Story’ production

By TiffAnY Kim And JAcKson novicK

The All-American High School Film Festival selected 26 Harvard-Westlake student-made films to be shown Oct. 9-11 in Times Square, New York City. A group of represen-tatives also visited the school to screen films and network with students.Visual Arts De-partment Head Cheri Gaulke has submitted films every year since the first festival in 2013.

“Ten films right off the bat [were] from our digital story-telling adventures,” Gaulke said.

“They took five Rwandan and Cuban documentaries. I just think it’s because we have a lot of programs here, and those programs are really strong.”

More Harvard-Westlake films were recognized this year than in previous years.

There were five Cuban documentaries, six Rwandan documentaries, six films from the Harvard-Westlake summer camp, three Righteous Conver-sations Project films and seven videos from video art classes.

“I think that telling stories is very important, but person-ally, I’m interested in telling stories that will change the world,” Gaulke said.

“I’m interested in empower-ing students to help someone tell a story who can’t tell their own. I’m interested in our stu-dents getting the skills to be good storytellers, to serve the world and to make the world a safer place so that we can learn from these tragic histori-cal moments.”

All-American High School Film Festival premieres student features

hwchronicle.com/A&e Arts & entertAinment B3sept. 1, 2015

ON DISPLAY: Samantha Ho ’16 stands next to Congressman Brad Sherman under her pas-tel self-portrait titled “Pointilism Study” that is currently displayed in the Capitol Rotunda.

Capitol Rotunda displays student portraitPRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF SAMANTHA HO

Cuba Documentaries:“Being Cuban”

Quinton Simmonds ’17Cameron Stine ’17

“Dear America”Sammi Handler ’17Lauren Kim ’17

“Embargo on Love”Lauren Rothman ’17

“Love and Music”Sophia Dienstag ’17Ryan Finley ’16Sarah McAllister ’15

“Stealing Home”Justin Ciccone ’17Joe Levin ’17Michael Stokdyk ’17

Rwanda Documentaries:“Children of the Genocide”

Nina Milligan ’16“Cut the Tall Trees: The Killing Power of Words”

Noah Bennett ’15Max Cho ’15

“I Am Kizito”Mike Mapes ’16

“Reweaving: Rwanda After Rape” Katherine Calvert ’15

“The Kindness of Strangers”Cole Kawana ’16

“The Rhythm of Healing”

Imani Cook-Gist ’15The Righteous Conversations Project:“Curt Lowens: A Life of Change”

Justin BinderAugust BlumRobert CarlsonLevi GlaserGeorge KhabbazKayla MossanenTammy Shine

“It Shouldn’t Be This Easy” Trey CarlisleNed JacobsConnor Reese ’17 Cameron Stine ’17

HW Video Art:“An Irish Airman Foresees His Death”

Javier Arango ’16 “Bernice Bobs Her Hair”

Delilah Napier ’15 Danielle Stolz ’15Marianne Verrone ’15

“Bucket” Dora Palmer ’15

“Fashionably Late” Kaira Murakoa-Robertson ’16

“Gray Matter” Henry Quilici ’15

“Heartless”Delilah Napier ’15Danielle Stolz ’15

“Ways of Talking” Tiana Coles ’16

HW Summer Film:“Deep End”

Youna Choi ’17Griffin Gunn-Myers ’19Mat Major ’17

“Emergency Stop (The Cycle of Violence)” Juli FreedmanBecca Frischling ’19Jess Grody ’19

“One Nation Under Mike”Vera AbramsAugust HartwellJessica Miner

“Quote Unquote”Nicole Bahar ’18Joji BaratelliNoa Schwartz ’18

“The Monster Within”Angela Soyean Chon ’16George KhabbazDora Schoenberg ’16Jordan Seibel

“Triforce of Desire”Lauralee Harper ’16Brad PickensIsaac SageZara Schuster

All-American High School Film Festival Featured Films

SOURCE: CHERI GAULKEGRAPHIC BY ELLIS BECKER AND TIFFANY KIM

Or subscribe to the print edition by sending a check for $20 to the Chronicle, attention Melissa Wantz, 3700 Coldwater Canyon, Studio City, CA 91604. If you want a second subscription for col-lege students or grandparents, each additional

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By Teresa suh

In 1975, Cambodia faced a genocide that killed more than 20 percent of its population. Headed by Pol Pot, the Khmer regime murdered, brutalized and dehumanized its own peo-ple. Schools were turned into prisons and torture centers that held the elite members of Cambo-dian society.

Just 30 years later, I was given the opportunity to visit a country that has endured such hardships to see the culture and to meet a few of the people who survived the genocide or had fam-ily members who were killed during the genocide.

The first day, we visited Cambodia Living Arts to watch a performance by students. After spending time with the students, a couple of the oth-er students and I talked to the head of that group. We had our group leader, Chhon Ch-hea Yut, translate for us. Sur-prisingly, the one who broke down during the interview was not the head herself, but our group leader. She told us that all Cambodians felt the agony experienced during the geno-cide as one community. It was something absolutely unfor-gettable.

What I struggled with during this trip was seeing some of the Cambodians stuck

in the past and letting it hold them back. The atrocities they experienced are truly unfor-gettable, but seeing some of the Cambodian people on the streets begging, unable to move on and hearing how terrible the genocide over and over was frustrating for me. As someone who gets joy from

helping others, being helpless in this situa-tion was unbearable. However, there were two people that were able to channel their sorrows into some-thing beautiful.

Muoy was one of the most blessed peo-ple I have ever met. As a child, Muoy lived fairly well and was

sent to study abroad. During her studies abroad, the Cam-bodian genocide commenced and her family members were victims of it.

While abroad, she learned the importance of equal ed-ucation because her school provided equal education for people of all socio-economic classes. She was devastated by the loss of her family but decided she wanted to build a school and do something she could fully invest herself in. She gave up everything to start her school.

People said she was crazy, but Muoy pushed through. Even through the times where it seemed like her idea would fail, she tried harder and was able to get the funding from

generous donors. Her school is currently

flourishing and growing even bigger, with many volunteers from Europe and Australia. Her story was moving and in-volved many hardships, but ultimately she was able to move on from them and return to her home country to provide opportunities for the young Cambodian children.

Arn Chorn Pond was a child soldier in the Khmer Rouge during the Cambodia Genocide. His experience was first-hand.

Music for Arn was some-thing that both destroyed and healed him. When he was in the Khmer Regime, he was told to play music for the prisoners to mask the sound of the kill-ings so that they would not know the terrible things that the Khmer Regime was doing.

D u r i n g the genocide, people were under the im-pression that the Khmer Regime was saving them from their current soci-ety, but in reality they were well on their way to becoming a dictatorial society.

When the reign of the Khmer Rouge was over, Arn went to America where he was bullied for being different. And yet despite these hardships,

Arn is one of the friendliest and kindhearted people I’ve ever met.

When Arn finally got the courage to return to the land he felt so much shame in, he opened up his Magic School Bus, which was a bus he rode in with a couple other musi-cians from Cambodia Living Arts to perform live concerts for people who had never heard live music before.

For Arn and many oth-ers, music is a way for them to show and relieve their dis-tress, shame and sorrow. He can’t put into words how terri-ble he felt during the genocide and playing music was his way of finally being able to express it. Arn is moved by people tear-ing up just hearing him play

his flute.This trip has

made me want to share the strength music can give to peo-ple. Seeing art-ists from Cam-bodia Living Arts like dancers, smote singers and instrumen-tal players, has

furthered my belief that music is the one thing that can help everyone.

There’s no language bar-rier, no judgment, but rath-er the sharing of feelings and reminiscent memories of the carnage of mental and physi-cal horror, as well as the relief and triumph after.

nathanson’s

Teresa Suh ’17

Sept. 1, 2015B4 ArtS & entertAinment the ChroniCle

AIDING GROWTH: Maya Hinkin ’18 and William Park ’17 (second and third from left) sit in on an art class and interact with Cambodian students and their teacher, a volunteer from England. Students at this school attend a variety of classes every day, including English, art and physical education.

TARIN NORTH/CHRONICLE

PUPPY LOVE: William Chow ’17 holds a snoozing puppy found one morning at the Tonle Bati School in the rural areas of Phnom Penh.

TARIN NORTH/CHRONICLE

PLAYTIME: William Park ’17 and Teresa Suh ’17 push a Cambodian girl on the swings during a recess when students distributed gifts to children.

TARIN NORTH/CHRONICLE

Teresa Suh ’17 reflects on her experiences from her 11-day trip to Cambodia. The stories of genocide survivors have taught her the healing power of music.Music as Medicine

“For Arn and many others, music is a way to show and relieve his distress, shame and sorrow.”

—Teresa Suh ’17

By Sacha Lin

The Artist:Most days, Homer* ’16

walks home from school on Ventura Boulevard or Moor-park Street. It gives him 45 minutes to think or listen to his favorite kinds of music: classic rock, film scores and Broad-way show tunes. When he gets home, he does his work in si-lence because that’s the way he always has, he said.

Homer loves theater, film and music, maybe because his father works in the entertain-ment industry, he said. Recent-ly, the auditions for West Side Story have been on his mind.

During the summer, Homer did a two-week choir program at Idyllwild Arts, worked as a host at California Pizza Kitch-en, wrote the first draft of his college essay and filled out half of the Common App.

Homer would like to go to a small-to medium-size liber-al arts school with a good arts and history program because he is interested in historical fiction work.

“I’ve always been a huge fan of writers like Dan Brown and Michael Craig who have been able to blend history and sci-ence into thriller novels,” Ho-mer said.

For now, his top choices are

Northwestern University, Ken-yon College and Wesleyan Uni-versity, three schools that meet his requirements.

The All-Around:When her summer break

had just begun, Virginia* ’16 found it hard to relax.

“If I just sat still and watched a couple hours of TV, I’d get so anxious that I’d have to get up and go take a walk just because I could not stand being unproductive,” Virginia said.

Although it got easier for her to unwind later that sum-mer, Virginia still kept herself busy with a number of activi-ties. She was a counselor at a program for minority children, she volunteered at a hospital, finished up old paintings and did cross country training.

Virginia also did some work on her college essay and list of extracurricular activities and has launched her art supple-ment page online.

Most of the schools she has been looking at are liber-al arts colleges and Ivy League schools, though she also likes Johns Hopkins University and Duke University, schools she saw during the school orga-nized college tour trip last year.

“I think I still have a lot of work to do in terms of figuring

out what school I would see myself at,” Virginia said.

The Athlete:When eighth period ends

on a typical school day, Willa* ’16 quickly goes to the locker room, changes, puts on her shoes and mentally prepares herself for two hours or more of lifting, conditioning on the track or basketball practice in the gym.

Willa has come a long way since she first started to shoot hoops in kindergarten, playing at travel tournaments in front of college recruiters in July. She talked a little with Divi-sion II and III coaches after her games, but she had most of her conversations with recruit-ers through e-mails, calls and texts in August.

To keep in shape during the summer, Willa trained with coaches once or twice a week and did sprints around her neighborhood.

Willa wants to go to a liberal arts college because she wants to keep her options open for the future. She is curious about human anatomy, but she is not yet sure what she would like to major in.

“Coming from the athletic world, I’m interested in what happens to our bodies when they break down or when

they’re sore,” Willa said.

The Brain:The ability to problem solve

effectively is important to Aus-tin* ’16, which is why he dis-cussed current events every week with the Society of Global Affairs and competed in Ethics Bowl last year.

“I like to think that every-thing I do is related to problem solving because I think that’s what you do in a career,” Aus-tin said.

During the summer, Austin spent a week at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, learning about possible majors and career op-tions in engineering. He also did a two-week program at UCLA, where students find connec-tions between visual arts and the sciences. Austin found the program at UCLA particularly relevant because he is interest-ed in doing both fine arts and engineering in college.

In addition to taking AP Bi-ology, AP Physics C: Mechanics and AP Studio Art, Austin will be in four other AP classes.

Austin would like to do the Brown-RISD Dual Degree Pro-gram, so he plans to apply ear-ly to Brown University and lat-er to the Rhode Island School of Design if he is admitted.

*Names have been changed

Meet the Playershighstakes

Four new faces evaluate their hands in preparation for the challenges of college admissions. They do not know what lies in store, but they are willing to place their bets.

FeaturesThe Chronicle • Sept. 1, 2015

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY VIVIAN LIN

HWCHRONICLE.COM/FEATURES FEATURES C3SEPT. 1, 2015

BY JESSE NADEL

Elly Choi ’18 watched as a pro-cession of brightly dressed Peru-vians walked from an ancient sun temple through the city of Cuzco singing in the Incan language. At this moment, she realized that this is why she came to Peru.

Inspired by her ninth grade Spanish teacher, Anamaria Aya-la, Choi decided to apply for the Iberian and Latin-American Stud-ies Fellowship, which she used to travel to Peru to study the Inti Raymi, the festival of the sun god.

“The main goal was to study the Inti Raymi, the festival of the

sun god, but while I was there, I also tried to see what the daily lives of the people there are like,” Choi said.

During her two-week trip to the South American country, Choi traveled between four cities, Lima, Cuzco, Ica and Nazca. Traveling throughout the country and expe-riencing different cities there al-lowed her to learn about the coun-try, Choi said.

“I thought it was a really ed-ucational experience,” Choi said. “I learned much more about the culture than I could have from a book. I felt that I was directly im-mersed in these people’s lives.”

BY CARINA MARX AND OLIVER RICHARDS

Cameron Stine ’17 said he was amazed when people in Mexico completely opened up to him.

“It was amazing to me how proud they were of their story and how proud they were to tell it,” Stine said.

Stine traveled to Oaxaca City, Tlacolula, Teotitlan, Yanhuitlan and Apoala as a part of the Har-vard-Westlake Iberian and Lat-in-American Studies Fellowship program. He spoke to indigenous Zapotec and Mixtec people, learn-ing about the culture and prob-lems plaguing the area.

“I recorded their stories and re-corded them speaking in their na-tive languages,” Stine said. “These were some of the poorest people on the earth and coming into their

homes was truly special.”Stine wrote a 20-page paper on

the dying culture of the natives, post-9/11 immigration reforms and discrimination. He divided the paper into the stories of individu-als and his own stories to try to convey the experiences that are being lost to prejudices against their people. For Stine, however, going to the Guelaguetza celebra-tion was the most memorable por-tion of the trip.

“The Guelaguetza is a festi-val held in Oaxaca City in which all the counties in Oaxaca send a group of people to dance,” Stine said. “For many of the dancers, this is their fi rst time in a big city, and displaying their beautiful, col-orful culture was amazing. They were so proud of their dances, and they were the best dancers I have ever seen.”

BY JOSIE ABUGOV

Truth Cole ’16 spent a week in Italy for her Junior Summer Fel-lowship. She stayed in Murano, a group of islands in the Venetian Lagoon, for the majority of her trip.

Her project, “Exploring the Dying Art of Glass in Murano”, al-lowed her to tour glass shops and museums in the region.

“I also did a workshop and blew some glass which was a really

awesome experience,” Cole said.During her visit, Cole viewed

the Glasstresse, an exhibit dedi-cated solely to glass. In addition to her project on glass, Cole also at-tended the world-renowned Venice Biennale Art Festival. Fifty-three countries participated this year, selecting one artist to represent their nation and display their work in the festival.

“My favorite part of the trip was defi nitely seeing all of the art at the Venice biennial,” Cole said.

EXPLORING A DYING ART: In Venice, Truth Cole ’16 attended an art festival in Venice, where she saw art from 53 different countries.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF TRUTH COLE

MI CASA ES SU CASA: Cameron Stine ’17 explored the native culture of Mexico and how prejudice has plagued the lives of many in Oaxaca City, Tlacolula, Teotitlan, Yanhuitlan and Apoala. He had the opportunity of speaking to indigenous Zapotec and Mixtec people.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF CAMERON STINE

FELLOWSHIP FESTIVAL: Elly Choi ’18 went to Peru for Inti Rami, the festival of the sun god. She interacted with indigenous people and learned about Peruvian culture.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF ELLY CHOI

BY KRISTIN KUWADA

Ara Mahseredjian ’16 retraced Don Quixote’s steps in Spain af-ter receiving the Iberian and Lat-in-American Studies Summer Fellowship. Mahseredijian was among six upper school students who received summer grants.

“I thought it would be fun to go on this adventure to fi nd a less touristic route and to fi nd a more authentic and realistic route,” Mahseredjian said.

He traveled with his family to their fi rst stop, Toledo, for two days and later visited a small town called Daimiel. He was pleasantly surprised by how welcoming ev-eryone was.

“It was a more local community

as opposed to being in a big city,” Mahseredjian said.

During the rest of his trip, he traveled from village to village, just as Don Quixote had in the nov-el. The biggest shock that he en-countered in this experience was witnessing how many small towns revolved around Don Quixote.

“There are references to him everywhere. The streets are named after him. Everyone knows who he is, and everyone knows the book. I defi nitely wasn’t expecting that,” Mahseredjian said.

He is creating a PowerPoint presentation for his previous Spanish Literature teacher and is currently writing an article for the Babel, the upper school foreign language magazine.

LIFE-SIZE FICTION: Ara Mahseredjian ’16 fi nds a statue of Sancho Panza, Don Quixote’s squire, in Alcazar de San Juan.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF ARA MAHSEREDJIAN

ELLY CHOI ’18, PERU

ARA MAHSEREDJIAN ’16, SPAIN

CAMERON STINE ’17, MEXICO

TRUTH COLE ’16, ITALY

SEPT. 1, 2015C2 FEATURES THE CHRONICLE

BY TIFFANY KIM

A boy with a toy doctor kit in hand approached Victoria Keating ’16 to give her her daily thousand shots in a span of a couple of sec-onds.

“The problem was, the fi rst time [the boy gave me a shot], I pretended that the shot hurt by making a noise,” Keating said. “So then, every time we played, it would be a game of how hard we could push the toy shot into my arm until I made a noise.”

As part of her Global Initiative Asia Student Fellowship, Keating spent time with orphans at the Beijing China Care Home, a fa-cility for orphans with conditions such as cleft palates or heart con-ditions that need surgery.

“It was special because as we had all been adopted, the cause was close to our hearts in the sense that these were also children who were like us at one point,” Keating said.

The trip included both volun-teering and sightseeing to explore

Chinese heritage. Because Keating speaks Chi-

nese, she worked with a large group of children.

“Working with the kids was the best [part of the trip],” Keating said. “When you work with kids that young, each day is different because they’re so energetic and

creative.”She also visited the Great Wall

of China and an orphanage in Tianjin.

“The kids also really inspire you because even when they have these conditions or diffi culties, they are still kids at heart and just as happy,” Keating said.

BY SABRINA DE BRITO

Kaira Muraoka-Robertson ’16 studied deforestation in the Hi-malayas and assisted in medical clinics in rural Nepalese villages this summer under the Global Ini-tiative Asia Student Summer Fel-lowship.

As part of a program known as Global Crossroads, she worked in a local nursery in Chitwan for the fi rst week of the trip studying the effects of deforestation during the day and living in the home of a native Nepalese family at night. On days off, she taught children English at both an underprivileged orphanage and nearby elementary school.

“I got to meet tons of really

amazing kids,” Muraoka-Robert-son said. “The orphanage was fan-tastic. I learned a lot about their culture, too.”

She spent the next week in the country’s capital, Kathmandu, ob-serving standard healthcare and surgery procedures in a hospital.

She spent one day actively helping out at a walk-in clinic, dis-tributing medicine to patients of all ages.

Afterwards, Muraoka-Robert-son spent time in the Chitwan National Forest before going on a four-day backpacking trip in the forest surrounding the Himalayas.

She plans to type up and com-pile her journal entries from the trip and put together an online photo log documenting her trip.

7 students traveled the world on grants, learning about di� erent cultures and traditions through research and volunteer work.

All Aboard the Fellowship

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF KAIRA MURAOKA-ROBERTSON

DOCTOR’S ORDERS: Kaira Muraoka-Robertson ’16 assists in a medical clinic in Kathmandu. She handed out medicine to patients.

BY SAMMI HANDLER

Cami Katz ’16 stood among thousands of Tibetans and watched as a 40-meter-long can-vas painting of the Buddha was

unveiled to kick-start the Shoton Festival, a weeklong celebration commemorating the end of the monks’ summer of praying.

Katz studied Tibetan culture during the summer for her proj-

ect, “Camila Katz, A Window into Mysterious Tibet: Bringing Tibet-an Culture and Lifestyle to the HW Community Through Visual Me-dia,” after she received the Global Initiative Asia Student Summer Fellowship.

She was in Tibet from Aug. 4 to 14 and spent most of her time in the capital, Lhasa.

“I learned so much about Ti-betan culture and how Buddhism works,” Katz said. “It brought me to understand a lot more about the Chinese government.”

Katz visited monasteries, re-ligious sites and a school for the blind. She said that although the Chinese have modernized Tibet, people still live very primitively.

“There’s still a ton of nomads and shepherds and yak herders and people that live really primi-tively,” she said. “What happens with them is they basically live off of themselves. They have a really harsh lifestyle. The positive thing is that there are a lot of foreigners who want to help Tibetans.”

TREATS IN TIBET: Cami Katz ’16 (third from left) passes out candy and chocolate to blind children at a Tibetan school as part of her volun-teer work.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF CAMI KATZ

HELPING HAND: Victoria Keating ’16 and a Chinese boy play with bubbles at the Beijing China Care Home during her fellowship.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF VICTORIA KEATING

VICTORIA KEATING ’16, CHINA

CAMI KATZ ’16, TIBET

KAIRA MURAOKA-ROBERTSON ’16, NEPAL

BY JESSE NADEL

With music blasting from speakers and members of the school and Studio City

community cheering them on, Cu-ban and Czech Special Olympics athletes marched down the Ted Slavin Field in a procession to the quad.

There, American sta-ples – hamburgers, water-melon and pies – awaited them.

Volunteer Katie Kreshek ’16 watched from her ice cream sundae booth as the athletes and their families enjoyed a meal.

They ate while listening to speeches and a guest performer who sang and played guitar.

“The Special Olympics is such an amazing program that brings people from all over the world together to celebrate each other’s differences,” Kreshek said. “When I heard from my friends on Commu-nity Council about the event, I knew that I wanted to help out in any way that I could.”

After dinner, the athletes and coaches formed a long line down the side of the quad and waited for the ice cream sundaes made and served by Kreshek and other students.

The volunteers smiled as they handed out the sundaes, receiving a “Gracias” or “Dekuju” in return from the grateful and happy delegates.

“It was great seeing and inter-acting with the athletes even though most of them didn’t speak English,” volunteer Lola Clark ’17 said. “They all seemed so excited to be there and it made the language barrier irrele-

vant.”This was the fi rst time

that Los Angeles hosted the Special Olympics.

The students and school jumped at the op-portunity to get involved.

These particular festivi-ties were part of the Studio City host town community barbecue on the school’s campus.

The school welcomed more than 150 Special

Olympics athletes and coaches to Los Angeles July 23, in keeping with President Rick Commons’ goal of achieving a “purpose beyond our-selves.”

“This event stemmed from the Mission Statement phrase ‘purpose beyond ourselves.’ I think that isn’t just about kids doing more commu-nity service but also about how the school becomes involved in the city community,” Commons said. “It was a great event for the athletes, com-

munity and for the school.” The school aimed to fulfi ll Com-

mons’ objective through this event.In the days following the celebra-

tion, the athletes from Cuba and the Czech Republic utilized the campus for training before the games began.

Badminton players used the gym, swimmers trained in the pool and gymnasts practiced in the dance studio.

“It is an honor for us to make our facilities available to the Special Olympics, the athletes and the Studio City community,” Commons said in a press release.

The events hosted on campus, however, were not the only ways that students became involved with the weeklong athletic tourna-ment that ran in Los Ange-les from July 13 to Aug. 2.

Eric Han ’17 watched as the Costa Rica and Denmark hand-ball teams began a match at UCLA.

After several passes, the Costa Rican team scored a goal, and Han and the other members of the Fu-ture Horizons Club stood up and cheered, holding a handmade sign in support of both teams.

After reaching out to the Spe-cial Olympics volunteer organizer, the club was designated to lead in cheering for team handball, volley-

C4 FEATURES THE CHRONICLE SEPT. 1, 2015

MELTING POT: Cuban athletes and Harvard-Westlake students pose together under a colorful balloon arch on the bleachers by the Ted Slavin fi eld. The school hosted over 150 training athletes from both Cuba and the Czech Republic.

ALL PHOTOS PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF STACY MARBLE

HOT OFF THE PRESS: President of Harvard-Westlake School Rick Commons talks to a CBS2 reporter about hosting the Special Olympics athletes. Men and women representing the Cuban teams stand behind him.

TRAINING BEGINS: Cuban athletes pose for a group photo on the upper school campus near Ted Slavin Field before training in the pool, gym, and dance studio facilities. Teams practiced a variety of sports including handball, swimming, track events and more.

A SPECIAL OCCASION Special Olympics athletes from across the

globe trained at the upper school campus in preparation for the 2015 World Games

NATHANSON’S

Katie Kreshek ’16

munity and for the school.” The school aimed to fulfi ll Com-

mons’ objective through this event.In the days following the celebra-

tion, the athletes from Cuba and the Czech Republic utilized the campus for training before the games began.

Badminton players used the gym, swimmers trained in the pool and gymnasts practiced in the dance studio.

“It is an honor for us to make our facilities available to the Special Olympics, the athletes and the Studio City community,” Commons said in a press release.

The events hosted on campus, however, were not the only ways that students became involved with the weeklong athletic tourna-ment that ran in Los Ange-les from July 13 to Aug. 2.

Eric Han ’17 watched as the Costa Rica and Denmark hand-ball teams began a match at UCLA.

After several passes, the Costa Rican team scored a goal, and Han and the other members of the Fu-ture Horizons Club stood up and cheered, holding a handmade sign in support of both teams.

After reaching out to the Spe-cial Olympics volunteer organizer, the club was designated to lead in cheering for team handball, volley-

ball, badminton and table tennis, Han said.

While the Future Horizons club volunteered at the games them-selves, Lena Kadogawa ’18 volun-teered for the games before they offi -cially started.

Her job was to sort and prepare the athletes’ luggage to be shipped from Cal State Los Angeles to Uni-versity of California Los Angeles,

where the competitors would be staying for the duration of the event.

She settled into a clos-ing rally where performers sang and danced for the athletes, preceding videos that were shown to say goodbye to the athletes and wish them luck with the rest of the competition.

Kadogawa said that she decided to volunteer because of her admiration

for the Special Olympics organiza-tion.

“I really support the Special Olympics, because I think it won-derfully brings people together of different cultures and nationalities and offers great opportunities to those with intellectual disabilities through sports, something that all people can enjoy and appreciate,” Kadogawa said. “It celebrates diver-sity.”

Other students attended the event, not as volunteers but as spec-tators to simply watch the teams play and cheer them on.

Cate Wolfen ’17 was volunteer-ing at Freedom School when she at-tended the games with campers as part of the camp’s activities.

Freedom School is a summer camp that teaches reading to under-privileged children.

“I think it was a cool experience because it was such a supportive environment with a sense of mutual respect,” Wolfen said. “The Freedom School kids really liked it because they got be up close to and interact with the athletes. For example, a lot of the kids who want to play soccer when they get older went up and got to talk to one of the soccer players despite any language barriers they had.”

Whether they were volunteering at the Special Olympics or simply watching the games, the students said that they were inspired by the event and honored to be a part of it.

It was an experience that they will not soon forget, they said.

“All of the athletes had stories of persistence and hard work behind each of their performances,” Han said. “They really inspired us, so we wanted to be there to cheer them on and inspire them to greater heights in turn.”

FEATURES C5HWCHRONICLE.COM/FEATURESSEPT. 1, 2015

The school hosted more than

150Special Olympics

athletes

Athletes trained for events such as

HandballSwimmingBadmintonGymnastics

The school hosted athletes from

Cuba

The Czech Republic

and

LOGO PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF THE SPECIAL OLYMPICS

A SPECIAL OCCASION Special Olympics athletes from across the

globe trained at the upper school campus in preparation for the 2015 World Games

NATHANSON’S

LenaKadogawa ’18

ILLUSTRATION BY VIVIAN LIN

SEPT. 1, 2015C6 FEATURES THE CHRONICLE

Music festivals are heavily glamorized through social media, and many concert attendees ignore the imminent dangers of panic attacks,

theft, overdoses and sunburns.

By SHARON CHOW AND PIM OTERO

As the sun shone down on thousands of festival attendees at FYF Fest Aug. 22, Alex Grande ’16 felt the crowd gathered in front of Kanye West’s stage gradually begin to op-press her.

“There were bodies on top of bodies of people, and there was literally no space to move, and it was really hard to keep myself up,” Grande said.

Although Grande said the size of the crowd was already a concern before entering the chaos, she still attempted to push her way to the front. As a result, after several songs, Grande said she began to feel threat-ened in the cramped space.

“I sort of freaked out and started scream-ing and crying,” Grande said. “I needed to get out, and some people helped me up so that I could crowdsurf out.”

These types of experiences are not rare. Stampedes at music festivals are often re-ported by major news outlets. The Miami New Times reported in August that a securi-ty guard was hospitalized with a broken leg and severe brain hemorrhaging after being trampled by a large crowd at the Ultra Music Festival.

In 2010 18 people were killed and around 100 people were injured at the Love Parade, a German music festival, when a stampede inside of a tunnel leading into the event broke out, according to The Guardian. In April, Aljazeera reported a music festival stampede that occurred in the Democratic Republic of Congo caused by a power outage that killed more than 20 people.

However, the dangers of music festivals are some-times overlooked in favor of more exciting aspects, such as seeing a popular artist perform up close. This con-tributes to the glossy music festival stereotype students possibly develop because of social media.

“I don’t know what I expected at the Mac DeMarco concert last year at FYF. I was at the front and it was honestly the worst ex-perience,” Truth Cole ’16 said. “A lot of his fans are crazy, everyone was moshing, and I had to get out by the second song. It was horrible.”

According to Nielsen Media Research, 32 million people attended at least one music festival in 2014. Accurately envisioning the sheer size of crowds can escape ticket buyers until actually ar-riving at the festival, cul-minating in panic attacks similar to Grande’s. Festi-val goers can also experi-

ence physical harm from others dancing in close proximity.

“During Run the Jewels at FYF, I had gotten separated with a lot of the people I was originally with,” Tiana Coles ’16 said. “I was shorter than a lot of the guys there, and some person’s shoulder hit my bottom lip to my tooth, and it started bleeding and swelling up really fast.”

Music festivals may achieve a euphoric and carefree image due to the phenomenon of “herd mentality.” In a study issued by the University of Leeds, “herd mental-ity” is defi ned as the phenomenon where many people make similar decisions based upon the actions of a small subgroup. Herd men-tality factors into venues such as mosh pits, where energy exerted by a few attendees causes a large group to mimic the same carefree behavior, sometimes resulting in chaos, violence and theft.

“A big part of the excitement was the people you’re surrounded with,” Coles said. “You fi nd yourself getting into [the music] more, and when I was there in the moment, it was the most fun I’ve ever had.”

Theft is a concern with all festivals, whether attendees choose to sleep on fes-tival grounds overnight or stay only for the day. Online forums sponsored by music festival event organizers warn attendees to wear bags with extra straps and locks that remain in eyesight at all times to prevent

valuables from being stolen. Sometimes even these pre-cautions aren’t enough.

“I was [watching] Kaytra-nada and someone ripped open my backpack, but I didn’t feel it,” Jared Eis-ner ’16 said. “When I left the concert, my friend told me that my bag was ripped open and my wallet wasn’t in

there. I went to the lost and found and [the wallet] was there but the credit card and money was taken out.”

Theft, actual physical injury and claus-trophobia are only some of the dangers of attending music festivals. Along with the

euphoric stereotype, festivals can serve as gateways to in-

troduce underage minors to controlled substances.

ABC News reports that these drugs, along with being deadly on their own, are sometimes tainted with harm-ful chemicals such as rodent poison or are

composed of vari-ous-sized crys-

tals that cause the drug to have a more or less powerful effect on the user.

Another rising festival drug named me-phedrone, or “plant food,” induces alert-ness, excitement and openness. Most often, mephedrone is ordered over the internet then resold in person. In a study done by the University of Sunderland in the U.K., the crystalline drug can vary wildly in crys-tal form and size depending on the vendor. As a result, overdose is more easily achieved as various crystalline forms have varying

strength. This summer, three girls died at

music festivals in California from suspected drug overdoses. These recent deaths have led Los Ange-les offi cials to begin talking about banning raves in the Los Angeles County.

The attendees at these music festivals who purchase these illegal drugs are often oblivious to the in-creased danger in consuming these

substances, especially if mixing drugs.Despite the disasters a fatal overdose

would bring, event organizers decline to provide drug tests to their attendees due to the Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act. The Act makes it illegal for citizens to knowing-ly open, lease, rent, or maintain any place for any duration of time for the purpose of using, distributing or manufacturing con-trolled substances.

If violated, the Act enforces heavy fi nes upon perpetrators for accepting or encour-aging illegal drug use. If drug purity tests are provided, organizers would indirectly admit to providing land for drug use, and are put at risk of legal action.

As a result, event planners publicly pro-hibit the use of illegal drugs at festivals, but provide no aid to attendees.

However, many festival goers are not de-terred or are oblivious to these concerns.

“Whenever I go to concerts with friends, they usually get high, and it never ends in a bad situation,” Gabrielle* ’17 said. “It’s just really entertaining.”

Even the sun presents a host of problems that are not immediately apparent; attend-ees can receive painful sunburns and unfor-tunate tans. These may starkly increase the risk of developing premature aging and skin cancer later in life.

“Short term, you’ll defi nitely get sun-burns, which is painful, but when we talk about sun damage it’s the repeat damage of sun burns. That’s what causes the skin to deteriorate when you get older,” Stephanie Lem of Palomar Health Downtown said. “Re-peated exposure to the sun will cause ear-ly-stage aging of the skin or skin cancer [in the future].”

*Names have been changed

Stop the Music

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY LIZ YOUNT

NATHANSON’S

Alex Grande ’16

“ I sort of freaked out and started screaming and crying. I needed to get out.”

—Alex Grande ’16

By Jesse Nadel aNd JeaN saNders

As Sophia Van Iderstine ’17 gets ready for her late morning exercise class on a Saturday, she laces up her sneakers, grabs a bottle of Smart Water and heads for the door holding one more item in her hands: a pair of boxing gloves.

These are the essentials for her regular class at Box ‘N Burn, an aerobic and strength training studio in Brentwood that specializes in kickboxing classes.

“I’m really into unconven-tional workouts,” Van Ider-stine said. “I’m not really the type of person who likes to run on the treadmill for half an hour because I like to get active and get creative in dif-ferent ways.”

Box ‘N Burn is just one ex-ample of the numerous high-end, specialty exercise classes that are becoming a weekly staple for some students.

Although Box ‘N Burn gives a first class for free, each class after that is $30, with many students attending at least one class every week. Gyms such as the cycling studio Soul Cy-cle, the interval training gym Orange Theory, and the work-

out barre studio Cardio Barre are also at least $25 per class.

Despite the high price, some students regularly at-tend these classes.

In fact, approximately 30 to 40 percent of the clients of Burn 60, a luxury gym in Brentwood, are teenagers, Burn 60 personal trainer Nick Malizia said.

Katie Kim ’18 began attend-ing hot yoga classes, in which the room is heated to 105 de-grees, at SoCal Hot Yoga last summer, and it quickly be-came a staple in her workout routine.

The $20 per class cost or $150 monthly membership, she said, is worth it for the classes.

“The first lesson was really hard, and I didn’t want to go back, but it was so satisfying I just kept going, and I end-ed up going twice a week with my mom during the summer,” Kim said.

However, other students who have attended the expen-sive classes believe they’re not worth the money. After attend-ing a $34 Soul Cycle class, Lizzie Litchmann ’17 was dis-appointed with her experience.

“It’s too hot inside the room,” Litchmann said. “It

gets a little repetitive, because it doesn’t work out your whole body, and you never get off the bike.”

Henry Platt ’17, on the oth-er hand, attends Soul Cycle class multiple times a week as he said the classes are bene-ficial for both his mental and physical well being.

“I find it very spiritual be-cause all of the teachers say inspiring things,” Platt said. “I walk out feeling like I can tackle the day, which is very encouraging. Although it is fairly expensive, I think that the spiritual and physical gains that I get are definitely worth the money.”

Malizia believes that class-es also offer motivation that is unique to group exercise with a professional trainer.

“When you go pay for a class, what they are really paying for is an expert that’s teaching the class, the energy that he or she provides and the motivation through mu-sic and anything they have to say,” Malizia said. “There’s more motivation in going to a class than staying at home. That’s not to say that you can’t do it at home, it’s just that in a class you can feel all the ener-gy of those around you.”

Expens-erciseIs the burn worth the bucks? Some students spend more than $30 a week for high-end,

specialty exercise classes taught by experts.

The Chronicle polled 337 Harvard-Westlake students about their experiences with luxury exercise at local studios and gyms.

40% have paid more than $25 for an exercise class

Crunch the Numbers

65% think these classes are not worth their cost

23% have been to spinning classes

17% have been to a hot yoga studio

65%40% 23%17%

ILLUSTRATION BY TIFFANY KIM

GRAPHIC BY TIFFANY KIMSOURCE: CHRONICLE POLL OF 337 STUDENTS

ON AUG. 26

HealtH & Fitness The Chronicle • Sept. 1, 2015

BY JESSE NADEL AND JEAN SANDERS

As Sophia Van Iderstine ’17 gets ready for her late morning exercise class on a Saturday, she laces up her sneakers, grabs a bottle of Smart Water and heads for the door holding one more item in her hands: a pair of boxing gloves.

These are the essentials for her regular class at Box ‘N Burn, an aerobic and strength training studio in Brentwood that specializes in kickboxing classes.

“I’m really into unconven-tional workouts,” Van Ider-stine said. “I’m not really the type of person who likes to run on the treadmill for half an hour because I like to get active and get creative in dif-ferent ways.”

Box ‘N Burn is just one ex-ample of the numerous high-end, specialty exercise classes that are becoming a weekly staple for some students.

Although Box ‘N Burn gives a fi rst class for free, each class after that is $30, with many students attending at least one class every week. Gyms such as the cycling studio Soul Cy-cle, the interval training gym Orange Theory, and the work-

out barre studio Cardio Barre are also at least $25 per class.

Despite the high price, some students regularly at-tend these classes.

In fact, approximately 30 to 40 percent of the clients of Burn 60, a luxury gym in Brentwood, are teenagers, Burn 60 personal trainer Nick Malizia said.

Katie Kim ’18 began attend-ing hot yoga classes, in which the room is heated to 105 de-grees, at SoCal Hot Yoga last summer, and it quickly be-came a staple in her workout routine.

The $20 per class cost or $150 monthly membership, she said, is worth it for the classes .

“The fi rst lesson was really hard, and I didn’t want to go back, but it was so satisfying I just kept going, and I end-ed up going twice a week with my mom during the summer,” Kim said.

However, other students who have attended the expen-sive classes believe they’re not worth the money. After attend-ing a $34 Soul Cycle class, Lizzie Litchmann ’17 was dis-appointed with her experience.

“It’s too hot inside the room,” Litchmann said. “It

gets a little repetitive, because it doesn’t work out your whole body, and you never get off the bike.”

Henry Platt ’17, on the oth-er hand, attends Soul Cycle class multiple times a week as he said the classes are bene-fi cial for both his mental and physical well being.

“I fi nd it very spiritual be-cause all of the teachers say inspiring things,” Platt said. “I walk out feeling like I can tackle the day, which is very encouraging. Although it is fairly expensive, I think that the spiritual and physical gains that I get are defi nitely worth the money.”

Malizia believes that class-es also offer motivation that is unique to group exercise with a professional trainer.

“When you go pay for a class, what they are really paying for is an expert that’s teaching the class, the energy that he or she provides and the motivation through mu-sic and anything they have to say,” Malizia said. “There’s more motivation in going to a class than staying at home. That’s not to say that you can’t do it at home, it’s just that in a class you can feel all the ener-gy of those around you.”

Expens-erciseIs the burn worth the bucks? Some students spend more than $30 a week for high-end,

specialty exercise classes taught by experts.

The Chronicle polled 337 Harvard-Westlake students about their experiences with luxury exercise at local studios and gyms.

40% have paid more than $25 for an exercise class

Crunch the Numbers

65% think these classes are not worth their cost

23% have been to spinning classes

17% have been to a hot yoga studio

The Chronicle polled 337 Harvard-Westlake students about their experiences with luxury exercise at local studios and gyms.

65%40% 23%17%

ILLUSTRATION BY TIFFANY KIM

GRAPHIC BY TIFFANY KIMSOURCE: CHRONICLE POLL OF 337 STUDENTS

ON AUG. 26

HEALTH & FITNESS The Chronicle • Sept. 1, 2015

By ESHANIKA CHAUDHARY AND SOPHIE COHEN

Every morning Alyse Tran ’18 opens her refrigerator and pulls out mulberries, matcha powder and maca powder to blend her superfood smooth-ie, which she says wakes her up more quickly than caffeine while still avoiding the mid-morning crash.

“I fi rst tried superfoods for health benefi ts because I heard a lot about them, and they’re all the rage now,” Tran said.

Although she now primarily eats them because of the taste, she said their effect is noticeable.

“Eating super-foods like mulberries and chia seeds in the morning makes me feel more awake and energized, which is good for when I have to go to fi eld hockey practice or Soulcycle or something,” Tran said. “I’m dependent on them now, so if I don’t have them I get a little tired.”

Nutrient PowerhousesCertifi ed nutritionist Deb-

bie Lewis of Yong at Heart To-tal Wellness Medical Weight Loss Clinic in Encino said that superfoods are nutrient pow-erhouses that contain antiox-idants, polyphenols and vita-mins, potentially reducing the risk of developing chronic dis-eases such as cancer, diabetes or even the common cold.

Lily Beckinsale-Sheen ’17 said she has also observed the benefi ts of superfoods.

She started seeing nutri-tionist Phil Goglia, president and founder of health and wellness clinic Performance Fitness Concepts in Santa Monica. Although he didn’t tell her to specifi cally eat su-perfoods, he did encourage her to eat so-called “clean” foods

with high nutritional value.“I would buy [superfoods]

at Whole Foods, and they actually say on the outside something like ‘this is a super-food.’ At fi rst I bought them because they tasted good, and then I started to go out of my way to blend them into smoothies or put them on top of other foods. They’re healthy and they taste good, which is defi nitely a plus,” Beckin-

sale-Sheen said. After conscious-

ly incorporating ber-ries, kale, maca pow-der, quinoa and nuts into her diet, Beckin-sale-Sheen said she noticed an improve-ment in the condition of her skin, as well as an increased metabol-ic rate and higher en-ergy levels.

These benefi ts may be due to the high level of anti-oxidants found in such foods, Lewis said. Antioxidants such as Vitamin C or E minimize free radicals, which oxidize with cellular components such as DNA or cell membranes, a process that inhibits cell func-tion. Antioxidants react with free radicals before they can react with cells, leading to the positive changes that Beck-insale-Sheen observed in her body.

No Special Benefi tsWhile it is widely accept-

ed that superfoods must have high levels of nutrients, there is no consensus as to how high they must be in order to qual-ify as a superfood, and there’s no offi cial medical defi nition. A diet hyperfocused around superfoods is unnecessary because a diet consisting of a variety of fruits and vege-tables will include the same nutrients, Lewis said. For this reason, Harvard-Westlake trainers said they don’t put an emphasis on eating super-

foods for students, especially for athletes.

“Our focus is to generally eat clean and healthy, and su-perfoods can be a part of that, but we don’t place priority on that,” Cross Country and Track Program Head Jonas Kools-bergen ‘83 said. “Whether [su-perfoods] are different enough in nutrition to be statistically signifi cant is the question. People are more likely to buy it if it is marked as a superfood than just a normal healthy item.”

Some students agree with Koolsber-gen.

“I eat whole foods and nothing pro-cessed, but I think superfoods aren’t necessarily better than your average healthy food,” Jenny Lange ’17 said. “But some of them are just good so I’ll eat them for the taste.”

Unhealthy in ExcessSome items marketed as

healthy superfoods are also potentially harmful in excess.

Commercialized juice stores in Los Angeles such as Kreation Kafe, Juice Crafters and Pressed Juicery make juices out of fruits and vege-tables in their stores daily and have recently grown in popu-larity and expanded to multi-ple locations all over the great-er Los Angeles area. Other companies such as Evolution Fresh and Naked Juice have a similar concept but bottle and sell their juices worldwide in supermarkets, using preserva-tives to keep them fresh.

Goji and acaí berries, along with other fruits, are often used in fresh-pressed juices and smoothies, but al-though these juices are mar-keted as healthy snacks and meal replacements, they can be unhealthy. Lewis said that these juices are often high in

sugar even when they have no sugar added due to nat-ural fructose. Consuming large amounts of sugar can be harmful to the body in several ways, such as potentially lead-ing to Type 2 Diabetes. Also, when so much sugar enters the body at one time, the ex-cess is sent to the liver, where it is stored as fat.

Another myth concerns the so-called benefi ts of using

large amounts of co-conut oil in cooking, Lewis said. Fat is essential for healthy hair and skin and is an important compo-nent of the cell wall. While coconut oil is a healthy alternative to butter and oth-er oils, in excess, its saturated fat con-tent can lead to high cholesterol and heart

disease. Coconut oil is being marketed as a clean super-food, causing people to use far more than the recommended intake and ultimately causing this “healthy” food to do more harm than good.

Lewis encourages people to limit their saturated and trans fat consumption and to instead eat healthy fats such as Omega 3 fatty acids, which can be found in salmon and avocados. Overall, she recom-mends eating in moderation.

“If you are a healthy eater, eat a variety a day,” Lewis said. “You don’t have to load up on superfoods and have a specifi c amount of superfoods a day. Eat a variety of veggies, fruits and whole grains and lean protein like salmon and chicken. Get variety within a week, and you will get all of the nu t r i en t s , vitamins and antioxidants.

SEPT. 1, 2015C8 FEATURES THE CHRONICLE

Heroes or Villains?

NATHANSON’S

Lily Beckinsale- Sheen ’17

NATHANSON’S

Jenny Lange ’17

and lean protein like salmon and chicken. Get variety within a week, and you will get all of the nu t r i en t s , vitamins and antioxidants.

SEPT. 1

ILLUSTRATION BY ESHANIKA CHAUDHARY

86 percent of students agree that superfoods are trendy, but only 30 percent have seen positive results from them. Are superfoods actually superior?

SPORTSThe Chronicle • Sept. 1, 2015

Team comes up short in season openerBy BENNETT GROSS

Coming off of ACL surgery during his sophomore sea-son, Marshal Cohen ’16 had fi nally fully rehabbed from the gruesome injury he suffered against St. Paul High School two years ago.

To begin the season against Loyola Aug. 28 at Ted Slavin Field, the Wolverines’ opening drive culminated in a Cohen interception on what ended up being his only pass attempt on the evening.

The Wolverine defense sub-sequently gave up Drake Beas-ley Jr.’s ’17 fi rst touchdown of the night.

Down 7-0, the offense started at the 20-yard line af-ter a touchback on the ensuing kickoff. On the fi rst play from scrimmage, on a read option play, Cohen ran for a 42-yard gain to set the Wolverines up for what would be their best drive of the game.

A few plays later on what appeared to be a triple option, Cohen threw a jump pass to wide receiver Max Robertson ’17 in the end zone. The ref-erees initially called the play a touchdown, but after a discus-sion overturned the call and ruled the play an incomplete pass.

Just after the overruled touchdown, Cohen ran to his right, and he was hit hard in the knee by Loyola defender Kelly Blake ’16. Not only did Blake cause a fumble, he may have caused Cohen’s season to be over.

The Wolverines were even-

tually defeated by the Cubs 34-0.

“We had a couple of guys injured today, but it is a next-man-up mentality, and we are handing this team to the younger guys and letting them know that it is their time now,” defensive back Alex Barnum ’16 said.

On the following play, Bea-sley scored his second touch-down of the night with a 92-yard carry.

Costly penalties and some sloppy offensive possessions were the story of the rest of the game for the Wolverines. The defense ended up allow-ing Beasley to score two more times before the Cubs decided to pull their starters.

With Noah Rothman ’16 in at quarterback, the offense had trouble stringing together fi rst downs without Cohen in the game.

Rothman, who is known more as a pocket passer com-pared to Cohen’s scrambling ability, had issues throwing the ball down the fi eld against two of the premier defensive backs in the state, David Long Jr. ’16 and Myles Bryant ’16.

During the second half, with Loyola’s starters out of the game, the second string offense for the Wolverines had some promising drives for both the rest of the season and for the future of the program.

“I actually take away a lot of positives from this game,” Senior Captain Mike Mapes ’16 said. “Loyal Terry ’19 was running against the 17th ranked team in the state and

was incredible. On defense, they scored three touchdowns on the same mistake. That is fi xable. We have a few easi-er games coming up so that should give us time to improve and be ready for league play.”

As there is no junior var-sity team this fall, all 14 of the freshman in the football program have the opportunity to play varsity. Several under-classmen such as Terry, Gar-nett March ’19, Thomas Glover ’18 and Josh Johnson ’19 got a lot of playing time in their fi rst game.

“When the freshmen came here, they probably didn’t ex-pect to see a lot of playing time against Loyola,” Head Coach Scot Ruggles said. “It is good for us that they got a lot of reps, and it will be fun to see how our team improves weekly as the season progresses.”

The defense stymied the Loyola offense in the latter part of the game, as the Cubs only managed to score three points in the fi nal two quarters against the young, scrappy Wolverine defense.

“I don’t care who you are. If you are thrown into a var-sity game as a freshman it is tough,” Ruggles said. “But when you get playing time against Loyola, that is not an easy thing to do, and the un-derclassmen performed very well.”

The squad will try to avenge the loss in next week’s battle against the Jefferson Demo-crats at Ted Slavin Field.

“We just have to come back next week and not worry

about what happened against Loyola,” Terry said. “It was one team, and we are just looking to win the rest of the way and eventually make the playoffs.”

Coming off of a grueling offseason, the Wolverines are looking to make the playoffs for a second consecutive year after last season’s fi rst round lossw to Crescenta Valley.

Led by 25 seniors, Ruggles guided last year’s squad to the playoffs after failing to earn a postseason bid in 2013.

After the graduation of sev-eral key contributors in 2014, including Hassan Smith ’15, Desmond Butler ’15 and Gar-rett Robinson ’15, the squad was fi ghting an uphill battle from the beginning of spring practice.

Along with the transfer of Ryan Dominick ’17 and Cart-er Begel’s ’17 choice to focus on basketball, the Wolverines needed some added depth.

While All-American la-crosse player Phil Thompson ’16 joined the squad, along with some incoming freshman, the squad’s thin numbers en-tering the season and Cohen’s apparent knee injury should present some early season ad-versity that the team will have to overcome if they plan on getting back to the playoffs.

“I was really nervous before the game, but I just took it one play at a time, I played really aggressively, I ran down hill on offense, and on defense I focused on fundamentals and tried to get in the backfi eld as much as I could,” Thompson said.

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Di� erent players, same goalBy JAKE LIKER

The boys’ water polo team enters a new season having won 37 consecutive games and back-to-back CIF South-ern Section Division I Cham-pionships. Despite past ac-complishments, this season’s squad refuses to rest on its proverbial laurels, Head of Aquatics Brian Flacks said.

“The thing that I love about the team this year is that I nev-er have to question this team’s effort,” Flacks said. “A lot of people talk about complacen-cy and having problems since we’ve won the last two years; we haven’t had that problem at all. In terms of the general grind and the day-to-day ba-sis, this team has an unbeliev-able work ethic and motiva-tion, and now it’s about them going out to earn it and not ex-pecting to be given something just because we work hard on a daily basis.”

There is another potential problem, however, as the de-parture of an especially strong Class of 2015 has left many holes to be fi lled.

“When you graduate eight seniors, and of those eight there are four starters and fi ve going to Division I universities to play water polo, obviously we can’t replace all of those guys,” Flacks said.

Anthony Ridgley ’15, John-ny Hooper ’15 and Ben Hallock ’16 were all named to the 2015 All-American First Team by the National Interscholastic Swim Coaches Association. Ridgley will continue his water polo career at the collegiate level at Harvard, and Hooper will do the same at University of Cali-fornia, Berkeley. Hallock, how-ever, still has one more year as a Wolverine before continuing on to Stanford.

• Continued on page A3

COMING UP SHORT: Quarterback Marshal Cohen ’16 attempts to run for a fi rst down deep in Loyola territory (left). Cohen gets stopped by two Cubs defenders in the fi rst quarter (top right). Running back Phil Thompson ’16 is tackled in the Wolverines 34-0 loss.

DARIO MADYOON/CHRONICLE

Boys’ Water Polo

CAMERON STINE/CHRONICLE

CONNOR REESE/CHRONICLE

Facts&Figures

Game to watchSEPTEMBER 5

Boys' Water Polovs. Mater Dei

The team looks to begin its quest for a third consecutive national title on a high note in the scrimmage against Mater Dei on Sept. 5. This scrimmage could be a preview for another championship rematch.

Mater Dei High School

Consecutive games won by the boys' water polo team 37

Goals scored by

varsity field hockey last

year65

After playing a key role on the varsity team for the last two years, Rosenfeld should emerge as a leader. He scored two game-changing goals, resulting in a win in the CIF-SS championship game against Mater Dei last fall. Rosenfeld and the rest of the team will look to maintain their status as one of the best teams in the country.

KEY PLAYEREvan Rosenfeld '17

Junior Varsity

Cross CountryNext Meet:Sept. 11 @ Seaside Invitational

Field HockeyNext Game:Sept. 1 @ Westminster HS

Boys' Water PoloNext Game:Sept. 9 VS. Murrietta Valley

Girls' Volleyball

Sept. 1 @ San Marcos

Next Match:

By Dario MaDyoonanD rian ratnavale

After finishing 13-17 overall and 2-6 in a revamped Mission League last year that added Marymount and Marlborough, the varsity girls’ volleyball team is looking to improve on its record and finish atop the league this year.

Despite losing seven former seniors to graduation, the squad has the leadership it needs to succeed with captains Zoe Baxter ’16 and Josephine Treadwell ’16. It is also developing young talent like freshman Chloe Mueller ’19.

“High school is such that we are going to have turnover every year,” Volleyball Program Head Adam Black said. “We’ve lost some key seniors in graduation, but we have this young crop stepping up who we think is pretty hungry. There are some new kids on varsity who are excited to make their mark, and that’s part of the excitement.”

The team has been practicing since July 27, and many of the players have competed for their respective club teams over the summer as well.

“We've been working for a while now; the preseason has been about working together, developing fundamentals as a team and being a really cohesive unit,” Setter Sophia van Iderstine ’17 said. “We will be really prepared for the

season to come.”The main emphasis in

practice has been working on fundamentals to transition to a more offensive playing style that suits the team best.

“We are working hard at the fundamentals of the game, skill and technique, and spending time working on the things we believe are the most important: serving and passing,” Black said.

Although the Wolverines are looking forward to every game, the players are particularly excited about playing Mission League rivals, and the coaches are well aware.

“We’re most looking forward to playing our rivals, Notre Dame and Marymount,” Treadwell said. “We know a lot of the players at Marymount, so we’re looking forward to playing them.”

Even though the team has great expectations for the upcoming season with a new crop of talent and veteran leadership, it knows that success on the court starts with success in practice.

“We have a clear vision for this season,” Baxter said. “We’re trying to do all the little things, so day by day, we’re trying to improve at least 1 percent. We want to win league, but we realize that it’s about working really hard and coming to the gym really focused.”

Assistant coach Ryan Casey said that the team is striving to

make every play count and put in the maximum amount of effort possible, in turn making the team more exciting to watch.

Approaching the start of the squad’s season, there is a sense of excitement among players and coaches about taking another crack at the new and improved Mission League.

"I think there's going to

be excitement from our team every time we step on the court,” Black said. “There's excitement in the gym right now about getting better, there's excitement in the gym about working hard and there's excitement in the gym right now about playing with and for each other. And I think that excitement is going to be contagious for our community.”

Team to readjust tonew Mission League

Squad achieves record numbers in preseasonBy Juliana Berger anD CaMeron Stine

With a record-setting 41 students attending the Big Bear training camp in August, cross-country is looking to work towards CIF success for both men and women.

The team traveled to Big Bear for five days this summer to train in higher altitude and promote team bonding.

“We had tremendous team vibe, excellent training and a real opportunity to come together as a team; it was one of, if not the most successful Big Bear trips ever,” Cross Country Head Coach Jonas

Koolsbergen said.The team had two workouts

each day. They would break into four or five separate groups and compete in team-building competitions, such as canoe races.

Koolsbergen believes that it is always difficult to get the athletes at summer workouts due to how much they travel. However, most of the seniors and key runners were there and the number of runners present increased from the end of July onwards.

“I thought the trip was a great bonding experience because not everyone shows up to all the summer

practices, and pretty much everyone goes to Big Bear,” Conor Kneafsey '17 said.

Many new players are joining the team, and Koolsbergen predicts they will make an impact.

The girls’ team has the addition of Rasa Barzdukas ’17. The boys’ team added Austin McNabe ’18 and Andrew Shibuya ’19, who should help the team in competitions.

“Obviously it is always hard to lose people who were a part of the family, but it is a natural part of high school sports,” Koolsbergen said. “Hopefully, as a group we can

replace the good players we lost last year.”

The team will be continuing with its pack strategy from last year, where runners will try to stick together in order to speed up each other's pace.

This strategy is ideal since in cross-country only the first five runners’ scores are recorded.

“The best athletes go and do their own thing, but getting fourth and fifth place to finish with them will really help the team's score,” Koolsbergen said. “Minimizing their spread, the time between the last and the first runner, ensures the best possible result.”

Cross Country

Number of matches won

by the girls’ tennis team

last year9

Rushing touchdowns ran in by quarterback Marshall Cohen ’16 in 201418

SERVE IT UP: Natalie Elattrache '16 prepares to serve in a four-set loss to Oaks Christian High School this past season.

JONATHAN SEYMOUR/CHRONICLE

Girls' Volleyball

RACE TO THE FINISH: Lochryn Howe '17 (left) passes a runner from Alemany High School. Jack Stovitz '16 (right) leads the pack in a cross country race Oct. 2 at the second league meet at Crescenta Valley Park. Stovitz qualified for CIF as an individual last year.

AUDREY WILSON/CHRONICLE

Sept. 1, 2015D2 SportS the ChroniCle

Girls' Tennis

Sept. 1 VS. West Ranch

Next Match:

AUDREY WILSON/CHRONICLE

SportS D3Sept. 1, 2015 hwchronicle.com/SportS

Alumnus receives championship ring

Jarron Collins ’97 will be receiving a NBA championship ring for coaching with the Golden State Warriors during their run to the NBA Finals.

The Warriors’ head coach, Steve Kerr, hired Collins to be a player development coach prior to the 2014-15 NBA season. He was promoted to Assistant Coach this summer.

The Warriors defeated their opponents in the Western Conference playoffs and played against Lebron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA Finals. They defeated the Cavaliers in six games.

—Oliver Akhtarzad

Senior commits to Stanford University

inbriefCenter Ben Hallock ’16

committed to play water polo at Stanford University next year.

Ever since he started water polo, Hallock said he has aspired to reach the highest standard in the CIF division and play at the collegiate level.

“I realized that I had a special talent for being in the water, and that it would help me get into a school like Stanford,” Hallock said. “That’s when I decided to put my full efforts into the sport.”

To prep for the season and playing in college, Hallock will be focusing on getting stronger so that he can be at the same level as his future teammates.

—Elly Choi

By Carina Marxand EMily rahhal

Coming off an undefeated season, varsity field hockey enters the fall season with a team that will be dependent on its younger players.

The team lost Maddie Os-wald ’15 to Georgetown and Brooke Reese ’15 to Yale, both Division I schools. They left the team with only three se-niors and five juniors, making them reliant on the sophomore players, most of whom are new to the varsity squad.

Field Hockey Program Head Erin Creznic is not wor-ried about the change, how-ever.

“We lose big people every year,” Creznic said. “We’ve also won league for the last three years, and we’ve had great seniors every year. The only difference is that there’s

a large sophomore class, but they’re very intense.”

The sophomore class in-cludes Mia Rielly ’18 and Alyse Tran ’18, who attended the Futures Olympic development program. Both were selected for the U16 Re-gional Futures Elite Team from a much larger pool of program par-ticipants, and will meet every few months to train and further their skills.

Now, the girls seek re-venge on New-port Harbor Sept. 17, to whom they lost to 2-1 last year.

“Don’t let the bow fool you,”

Carolyn Kim ’18 said. “They prance around in plaid skirts. The devil wears plaid.”

In order to prepare, the girls are practicing almost every day to strengthen both

their offensive and defensive skills. Their se-cret weapon for success is the girls’ chemistry on and off the field, a camara-derie that was not as neces-sary with pow-erhouse ath-letes to depend on last season.

“[We are] fo-cusing a little bit more on making sure

that we master all the basics [this year],” Creznic said. “Be-cause we can’t depend on one

all-star player to just take it down the field and score whenever we need her to.”

The players’ first team bonding night in Oxnard was considered a success among the girls, bringing them closer so they can work harder and better together during game times.

The biggest challenge en-tering this season is bringing the younger players up to the varsity level quickly, Creznic said.

The squad will compete in the KSA tournament in Or-lando, Florida on Sept. 4-5. Though the younger players may need some practice, they are mentally ahead of their competitors, Creznic said.

“They are competitive, and they really fight to score,” Creznic said. “Sometimes teams like that do better than teams with all-star players.”

Field Hockey

Squad to depend on skill over experienceCLEAN UP CREW: Defender Lexi Block ’17 clears the ball from oncoming attackers during their game against Fountain Valley High School Sept. 16 last year. The Wolverines shutout the Barons 4-0 at home. Block will play her second year of varsity this season.

SCOTT NUSSBAUM/CHRONICLE

6 alums playingprofessional baseballBy Connor rEEsE

Heading into the final stretch of the baseball sea-son, six Wolverines find them-selves playing at the highest level of America’s pastime.

MLB.com ranks Lucas Giolito ’12 as the third best prospect in the league and ranks him as the number one pitching prospect. He is ranked as the top prospect in the Washington Nationals’ farm system.

Giolito is ascending the Nationals’ minor league farm system. Giolito pitched 69.2 innings for Class A+ Potomac, racking up three wins through 13 games with 11 starts. In late July, Giolito was promot-ed to Class AA Harrisburg. Giolito has pitched 28.2 in-nings and has racked up two wins through his first five starts.

Max Fried ’12 was drafted seventh overall in the 2012 MLB June Amateur Draft by the San Diego Padres. After being shut down for the 2014

season, Fried was traded to the Atlanta Braves Dec. 19, 2014. The Braves assigned Fried to the Single A Rome Braves despite having just un-dergone Tommy John surgery in August. Fried is ranked as the 53rd best prospect by Baseball America.

Right-handed pitcher Jack Flaherty ’14 was drafted 34th overall by the St. Louis Car-dinals. Flaherty has pitched 81.0 innings for Class A Peo-ria, going 8-1 with a 2.33 earned run average and 83 strikeouts through 15 total starts.

Outfielder Austin Wilson ’10 was drafted in the second round by the Seattle Mariners organization in the 2013 MLB June Amateur Draft. Wil-son is hitting .224 with eight home runs and 41 RBIs over the course of 100 games this season with Class A+ Bakers-field.

Pitcher Nik Turley ’08 is in his eighth season in the mi-nors. After being drafted by the New York Yankees in the

50th round of the 2008 MLB June Amateur Draft, Turley was traded in early 2015 to the San Francisco Giants. He has started 16 games for Sac-ramento, going 6-6 with an earned run average of 4.64.

Outfielder Brennan

Boesch ’03 was drafted by the Detroit Tigers in the third round of the 2006 MLB June Amateur Draft. He is now with the Cincinnati Reds or-ganization. Boesch is hitting .136 this season in 36 ap-pearances.

Baseball

WINDING UP: Jack Flaherty ’14 pitches during a 2014 game at O’Malley Field. He now plays for the Peoria Chiefs.

SAM SACHS/CHRONICLE

“They are competitive, they really fight to score. Sometimes teams like that do better than teams with all-star players.”

—Erin CreznicField Hockey

Program Head

Alumna competed in Women’s World Cup

This summer Ali Riley ’06 played in three Women’s World Cup Games in Canada for the New Zealand Women’s National Team. New Zealand played against the Netherlands (0-1), the United States (0-0) and China (2-2). Riley is currently signed with the club team FC Rosengård, which won gold in the Damallsvenskan, where Riley played fullback and forward. She now has four championships under her belt.

Riley played on the New Zealand Women’s U-20 national team in 2006 for the 2006 Women’s U-20 World Cup finals. She was named Player of the game during the team game against Russia during the World Cup finals. —Ethan Knight

Pitcher commits to U.S. Naval Academy

Starting pitcher Gabe Golob ’16 has committed to the U.S. Naval Academy to play college baseball.

Golob compiled a 6-2 record in his starts last season, and threw for a Mission League low 1.17 earned run average in 54 innings pitched, along with 50 strikeouts.

Golob was a key part of the Wolverines’ playoff success last season, throwing for 3.1 innings and no earned runs in an 11-10 victory over Mater Dei in the wild card round of the playoffs.

Golob said he is already relishing the opportunity ahead of him at Navy.

—Jacqueline Ayestos

Jared HalpertBaseball Program

Head

change of

“In relation to the new mission statement, we're going to focus on being excellent in every aspect of life.”

After playing college baseball, Jared Halpert started his coaching career at Fres-no State. He then joined Harvard-Westlake’s baseball coaching staff in 2011.

During his final year as an assistant coach, the Wolverines went 24-6 before los-ing in the second round of the CIF-Southern Section Division 1 playoffs to El Dorado.

Halpert will replace Matt LaCour, who led the Wolverines to three consecutive Mis-sion League titles (2011-13) during his nine- year tenure, as well as a CIF-Southern Sec-tion Division 1 championship in 2013.

D4 SportS the ChroniCle Sept. 1, 2015

This year, Jason Schwarz will replace Jon Carroll as the Harvard-Westlake Head Swim Coach.

Carroll moved positions this year to become a Middle School Dean after Paul Mastin left to become headmaster at Lawrence School.

Schwarz will take over a program that sent two of its current players to the State Champi-onship swim meet, and whose boys’ and girls’ teams each finished 17th overall in the CIF Southern Section Playoffs. Schwarz coached the Los Angeles Swim Club and qualified for the 1996 Olympic Trials team.

Jason SchwarzHead Swim Coach

Erik Krum will be taking over responsibili-ties as Head of the Lacrosse Program.

Krum is replacing Alex Weber, who went 39-17 over the last three years, but stepped down at the end of last season.

Before joining the Wolverines, Krum was a two-time All-American lacrosse player at Mira Costa High School, a three-time NCAA champi-on at Salisbury University. He was also a First Team All-American in his senior year.

Krum came back to California after graduat-ing, and in 2012 he started the Santa Monica Dragons Lacrosse Club, a youth lacrosse club.

Erik KrumLacrosse Program

Head

"I want the kids to believe in themselves.I want the kids to believe in their skills.I want the kids to believe in each other."

"We want to pursue what it means to be on a team and the team atmosphere."

SportS D5hwChroniCle.Com/SportSSept. 1, 2015

command

New Basketball Program Head David Rebibo previously worked as an assistant coach with the men’s basketball team at the University of San Francisco.

He went 109-72 as head boys’ basketball coach at El Camino Real High School. Rebibo transformed them from a team that went win-less in league play during his first year to a pro-gram that reached the City Section Division I title game.

He will replace Greg Hilliard, who oversaw nine CIF championships and two State champi-onships as the boys’ basketball program head.

David RebiboBasketball Program

Head

"We're going to work tirelessly. We're going to constantly strive to take the next step and get better."

Kristie Gipe will take over as the Girls’ Ten-nis Coach after Chris Simpson resigned from his position earlier in the year.

Gipe graduated Cum Laude from Biola Uni-versity in La Mirada, California. While playing tennis at Biola, she was the NAIA’s No 2. dou-bles player in the country.

Gipe has over 30 years of experience at all levels of tennis, and is a USPTA Elite Tennis Professional.

Gipe will take over a team that has a 134-4 record in Mission League play over the last 13 years and has won the last seven league titles.

Kristie GipeTennis Program

Head

"Everybody works hard, and I think we have a really good future with this group of girls."

Victoria Druehl will work as an Upper School Strength and Conditioning Coach.

Prior to coming to Harvard-Westlake, she was the Head Strength and Conditioning Coach at Palmer Trinity Private School in Palmetto Bay Florida.

Druehl helped train the men’s basketball team at the University of Miami and the nation-al championship-winning women’s basketball team at the University of Connecticut.

Druehl will help Head of Strength and Con-ditioning Gregory Bishop train teams.

Victoria DruehlStrength and Conditioning

Coach

"I approach every new program with a positive attitude and can only hope to get more teams in and involved in the weight room. "

Girls’ Golf

Sept. 1, 2015D6 SportS the ChroniCle

COLE JACOBSON/CHRONICLE

CHIPPING IN: Josie Baker ’18 chips the ball during the girls’ golf match at Rancho Park. They went on to defeat Marymount 226-275. Baker will return this year for her sophomore season.

Team hopes to benefit from deeper, more experienced rosterBy Elly Choi

The varsity girls’ golf team will start off their season against Mary-mount with two seniors Vivian Lin ’16 and Lauren Song ’16 lead-ing them. The team believes that with this a d v a n t a g e , their dynamic will be strong. Program head Marge Cham-berlain said that with everybody returning with improved skills, they will be looking forward to an out-standing season.

“This year we were lucky enough to not lose any play-ers and to gain several new ones,” Josie Baker ’18 said. “Because we haven’t lost any-one, our team dynamic will be extra strong this season, and the freshmen joining this year will add further depth to the program.”

Last season, the team did not have any seniors, but this year, there will be two players, Song and Lin, who have been on the varsity team for all four

years of high school. “They have been on the

team for a long time, they un-derstand what it takes to com-

mit to their goals and h o p e f u l l y will have a great sea-son ahead,” Chamberlain said.

Chamber-lain stressed that it’s not about just an individual player stand-ing out, but

the whole team being strong together.

“Our culture is having a team. If all our players play well and commit to the process, we should compete heavily in the Mission League,” Chamberlain said.

M a r l b o r o u g h Mustangs joined the CIF-SS division for the first time last year and are a strong team that the Wolverines are working hard to overcome. The Wolverines stated that Marlborough has strong play-

ers that will lead to many close matches.

A few aspects that they would like to work on are im-proving their process and be-coming more consistent to reach their goals individually and as a team.

“Our team is deep,” Cham-berlain said. “This makes us different from the other teams in the league, who have two to three good players. We have six to eight good players.”

Chamberlain said that the squad has been practicing dif-ferent skills and mental man-agement exercises and believes that their efforts will pay off in the squad winning the cham-pionships.

“Winning is a product of our goals and our girls per-forming at their best level,” Chamberlain said. “Our players are good players. We just go out, and if we play well, the result is that we should win.”

The team lost one match by a score of 195-209 to Notre Dame on Sep. 24 last

season, and ended up in sec-ond place in the final league tournament.

Boys’ Water Polo

• Continued from page D1

“There is for sure a big-ger sense of urgency now that there is not a ‘next year’,” Hal-lock said. “But as for winning three titles in a row, nothing motivates me more than think-ing about losing the champi-onship game.”

Hallock has also represent-ed his country in addition to his school lately, playing with the U.S. Senior National Team in games against Italy and Australia.

The reigning 2014 Division I Co-Player of the Year also scored four goals for Team USA in the 2015 FINA Interna-tional Tournament, where the Americans took third place.

“My experience with the national team was extremely beneficial in terms of becoming a better leader and an overall better water polo player,” Hal-lock said.

Hallock was competing against the best players every day, he said.

“Although it was an ex-tremely challenging task, I grew monumentally as a play-er,” Hallock said.

After losing so many se-niors, the change of personnel will be noticeable. Although the team’s roster may look different this year, the team’s goal remains the same.

“We don’t really believe in rebuilding years,” Flacks said. “This offseason we worked to

make sure we

molded the guys in our pro-gram to fit roles we needed to replace. Our goal, our vision every year is to put ourselves in a position to win a CIF Division I champion-ship, so the expec-tation is to win another one.”

F l a c k s does not buy into the idea that the program’s recent success will lead to complacency.

“We try to put more pres-sure on ourselves than any external kind of forces could ever put on us, whether it be

media or other people that we talk to, so I don’t think that the pressure has changed at

all,” Flacks said. H a l l o c k

echoed this sen-timent.

“I believe that the only added pressure this year is how high we set our expectations,” Hallock said. “Having said that, our focus

is only on this year’s team and has nothing to do with what teams have done in the past. But we [nevertheless] expect from ourselves to go undefeat-ed and win another Division I championship.”

SOUTHPAW: Duncan Froomer ’16 looks to get the ball inside during an offensive possession in the Wolverines’ win over Dana Hills on Sept. 16 last season.

MILA BARZDUKAS/CHRONICLE

By Juliana BErgEr

Two track and field athletes competed in the Panamerican Junior Athletics Champion-ships in Edmonton, Canada Aug. 1.

Courtney Corrin ’16 placed second in the Panamerican Ju-nior Athletics Championships for the long jump with a jump of 6.13 meters (20-1 1/3). Cor-rin qualified for the games af-ter winning the USA Track and Field Junior National Champi-onships in Eugene, Ore. with a record setting jump of 21-6 1/4.

Alexandra Florent ’15 tied with two others for fifth in the high jump at 1.7 meters (5-6 9/10). It was Florent’s first year qualifying for Team USA.

“My goals for the games were to go into it not putting too much pressure on myself, but instead to focus on doing the little things right to ensure that I did well,” Florent said.

Florent will continue her track and field career at the collegiate level, as she is com-mitted to Wake Forest Univer-sity in Winston-Salem, NC.

“I am a little disappointed that I didn’t do as well as I feel I could have, but I am proud to be able to say that I placed fifth while competing for the USA,” Florent said.

Ashley Grossman ’11 as-sisted the U.S. Women’s wa-ter polo team in winning the gold medal at the Pan Ameri-can games in Toronto, Canada during July.

The center led the Wolver-ines to their first CIF champi-onship for women’s water polo in her senior season.

Students compete in Pan Am

“Our players are good players. We just go out, and if we play well, the result is that we should win.”

—Marge Chamberlain Girls’ golf coach

WINDING UP: Ben Hallock ’16 scores one of his four goals against Dana Hills last season.

“We try to put more pressure on ourselves than any external kind of forces could ever put on us.”

—Brian Flacks Head of Aquatics

nathanson’s

Lauren Song ’16

MILA BARZDUKAS/CHRONICLE

By Connor rEEsE

Girls’ tennis is back with a new coach and opens the season Sept. 8 against Santa Monica High School.

Kristie Gipe took over for Chris Simpson, who resigned earlier this year.

“I’m super excited,” Gipe said. “Everybody works hard, and I think we have a really good future with this group of girls.”

Gipe graduated Cum Laude from Biola University.

She was the NAIA’s num-ber two doubles player in the U.S.

She has over 30 years of experience at all levels of competition.

She is also a USPTA Elite Tennis Profes-sional.

The team hopes to pro-mote bonding off and on the court, Gipe said.

The team started off the year with a team dinner to meet the new members.

“We had a team dinner

with the whole program, which was a fun way for everyone to come together,” Juliana Simon ’16 said. “It’s been great hav-ing the new freshman on the team.”

To help combat tennis’ in-dividuality, Gipe wants the girls to be one cohesive group.

“It’s about personalities,” Gipe said, “I believe a team works well when they func-tion as a unit. Even though it’s an individual sport, everybody plays better when they’re be-hind each other.”

Gipe is striving to up the focus and intensity of both off-season and season practices.

“Coach Kristie and all the c o a c h e s have done a great job ramping up the inten-sity of the p r o g r a m while still making it fun,” Si-mon said.

M a n y p l a y e r s have been attending t r a i n i n g

camps and clinics through the course of this summer.

In addition to promoting

bonding, the team is also striv-ing to emphasize team-work during both prac-tices and games.

“The girls have been open-armed to me,” Gipe said. “They’ve been so nice. I try to make a really concerted effort not to just show up on the first day.”

Gipe has tried to de-velop relationships pri-or to that so that both

players and parents know who she is, she said.

Despite go-ing 7-1 in Mission league play last sea-son, the Wolverines were knocked out of CIF playoffs in the second round against Santa Bar-bara by a score of 11-7.

“As a team, we are all training

harder on court and off court than last season and are much more motivated altogether to improve upon our past suc-cesses,” Simon said.

The team aims to make a deeper run in the CIF playoffs this year.

“I think that every season our goal is to win the Mission League,” Simon said. “This year, we’re working harder than ever and want to make it as far as we can in CIF.”

hwChroniCle.Com/SportS SportS D7Sept. 1, 2015Girls’ Tennis

New coach Gipe takes the helm with high hopes

By BEnnEtt gross and hEnry VogEl

A Facebook post from for-mer Wolverine football player Jonathan Martin ’08 reveal-ing that he attempted suicide multiple times during his NFL career and felt unable to fit in at John Thomas Dye and Harvard-Westlake will cause the athletic department to in-crease its focus on the wellbe-ing of student athletes, Athletic Director Terry Barnum said.

As a mixed race student en-rolled in a predominantly white high school, Martin pointed to his struggle to fit in with both white and African-American students.

“You learn to tone down your size and blackness by becoming shy, introverted, friendly, so you won’t scare the little rich white kids or their parents,” Martin wrote. “Nei-ther black nor white people accept you because they don’t understand you. It takes away your self-confidence, your self-worth, your sanity.”

Martin’s comments re-inforced the athletic depart-ment’s need to work towards its goal of making athletics at Harvard-Westlake diverse and inclusive, Barnum said.

“We want students to feel welcomed and included in our community,” Barnum said. “We have noted that this is an ongoing journey, and it is not a destination that you get to and you are done.”

The athletic department was not aware of Martin’s feel-

ings towards the school while he was a student at Harvard-Westlake, Barnum said.

“A lot of the feelings that he had were internal, and I think that his statement kind of said that,” Barnum said. “Just be-cause it was not overt or read-ily known by any of us, obvi-ously it was happening, but he felt that way, and we are trying to do a better job of checking in with our student-athletes to make sure that they are feeling good about being members of our community. I think that we will continue to try to improve upon that.”

Martin retired from the NFL this summer due to a back in-jury that would have sidelined him for the 2015-2016 season. In 2013, he was in the national spotlight for publicly accusing fellow Miami Dolphin Richie Incognito of extensive bullying both in the locker room and outside of team activities.

He was voted into the Har-vard-Westlake sports’ Hall of Fame as a member of the 2014 class. However, his induction ceremony was postponed be-cause until this year, he was still an active player in the NFL.

Martin’s Facebook post is a chance for the athletic depart-ment to move forward, Bar-num said.

“It gives us an opportunity to look inward and look for ways to make our community more inclusive so that kids in the future feel included and welcomed,” Barnum told the Los Angeles Times.

EYE ON THE BALL: Jenna Moustafa ’17 smashes a backhand back to her opponent during a non-league loss to Santa Barbara High School at Los Angeles Valley College last season.“ Coach Kristie and

all the coaches have done a great job ramping up the intensity of the program while still making it fun.”

—Juliana Simon ’16

Changes imminent after Martin post

AUDREY WILSON/CHRONICLE

nathanson’s

Juliana Simon ’16

Sept. 1, 2015D8 SportS the ChroniCle

Q & A ZOE BAXTER

Career Win Percentage

Career Wins

Career Aces55

.556

35

Which person has had the biggest influence on your game?

I started playing volleyball in the fifth grade and I used to play sports at Harvard-Westlake before I attended the school. A lot of the sports I did when I was younger were at Harvard-Westlake, so I knew the school pretty well. Mila Barzdukas ’15 played vol-leyball, so she inspired me to play. I started off doing 11s and 12s, and it wasn’t super competitive, but I was really into it, and I really loved the sport. So I kind of knew that I wanted to play volleyball when I started. It probably took only a season or two to know that I really loved it.

What’s been the most memorable moment of your Wolver-ine career so far?

What has it been like transitioning from being a sophomore on the team to becoming the captain and more of a leader on the floor?

It’s actually been really fun because I remember our senior cap-tains from when I was a sophomore, and I was really inspired by all of them and looked up to them a lot. It’s great this year because as a senior, we have a freshman and sophomores on the team, so we can step into that leader role for the sopho-mores and one freshman. To be in that role now where I have to lead by example and know that how I act will affect how people work and practice is really fun. Now I have to transition into the person that I [have] always looked up to, which is a great experience.

What will you try to do differently in your senior year than in years past?

My position on the team has changed going into senior year as a captain. I think my biggest role is to try to keep everyone together as a team and focus on the same vision and have the same goals to try to unify them in that sense. On the court we have a lot of rivals, and we’re in one of the hardest leagues in the area. So I think a goal of mine is to be a vocal leader on the court and keep everyone focused on winning and improving.

When did you start playing volleyball and when did you know it would be your sport?

I think the biggest influence has definitely been older girls on the team. I’ve been watching volleyball since I started playing in fifth grade and I was always inspired by older girls and wanted to be like them. I do watch professional volleyball as well, and I think that it’s not just one player that inspires me but just any-one that goes after every ball and is hustling and also working her hardest to try to get every point and working her hardest for her team because that’s the type of player that I really want to be.

The most memorable moment of my career was in sophomore year [during the] semifinals of the CIF game against our rivals Notre Dame. It was the fifth game to get to the finals, and we were down 11-14, and they only needed to get to 15. We were telling ourselves, “Ok we can do this, we can still win.” And we ended up coming back to win 20-18 to go to the finals, and that has stuck with me for the longest time.

Girls’ Volleyball

JONATHAN SEYMOUR/CHRONICLE

Stats

By Dario MaDyoon