hronicleThe harvard WesTlake

Los Angeles • Volume XXI • Issue I • Sept. 7, 2011c -

SUITING UP: Head and Senior Prefects were robed Tuesday by faculty at the opening Conovocation Ceremony. All prefects pledged to uphold the school’s mission and the Honor

Code. Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts announced her slo-gan for the year, “Make Your Mark,” and screened clips from a video that inspired the slogan. The Head Prefects also spoke.

DANIEL KIM/CHRONICLE

The demolition phases for a new $6 million pool and the Kutler Cen-ter, both of which are scheduled to open next September, have been completed, according to Director of Campus Operations and Construc-tion J.D. De Matte.

The plans for the Kutler Center have been submitted to the City of Los Angeles for approval and the final drawings are being completed for the pool. De Matte said that he hopes to get approval from the city for the Kutler Center in two to three weeks and hopes to send the final planning package for the pool to the

city in a couple of weeks.The Los Angeles Department of

Water and Power is currently re-pairing water pipes under Coldwater Canyon Avenue. In order to access the pipes, traffic has been reduced to two lanes. The first phase of the project, which is scheduled to end in December, stretches from Dickens Street to Van Noord Avenue.

At the end of last year, the field was torn up in preparation for new turf. Associate Head of School and Head of Athletics Audrius Barzdu-kas said that the old turf had become worn out after eight years of use and

was due to be replaced. The coat of arms of Harvard-

Westlake was hand-sewn into the center of the new field.

The Kutler Center is currently budgeted at $4 million and the pool at $6 million. Chief Financial Officer Rob Levin said that not all of this money will be used solely for con-struction.

“As you get further into it, you realize there are going to be some interim costs,” he said. “We can’t do this over a summer, so we have to

Basketball star receives 30 college offersBy Saj Sri-Kumar

The start-ing center/power forward for the boys’ varsity bas-ketball team has narrowed his col-lege choices to six after receiving 30 scholarship offers.

Zena Edosom-wan ’12 has nar-rowed his list to Harvard University, University of California, Berkeley, Uni-versity of Southern California, Univer-sity of Texas, University of Washing-ton and Wake Forest University.

Throughout the month of July, Edosomwan participated in tourna-ments in front of college scouts, hosted by the Amateur Athletic Union, where he heard from 30 interested schools.

“I was very happy, I was very humbled,” Edosomwan said of the

Zena Edosomwan ’12

nathanson’s/chronicle

INSIDEB12

7Seven teachers will join the Upper School faculty this year, three of which

are familiar with Harvard-Westlake because they taught at the Middle

School last year.

A10

College plans of recent alumni were

disrupted when Hurricane Irene

rained on the east coast.

INDEPTH

A work in progress

C8STEPPING UP:

Chad Kanoff ’13takes over

the starting quarterback role

this year on a football team with a depleted roster.

Continued on page C7

Continued on page A7

Continued on page A9

TAKEN BYSTORM:

Students camped in Africa, hiked in Alaska and Yoesmite and created trails for the government.

C4-5Students and an alumnus competed internationally on Teams USA this summer. B6-7

By Eli Haims

During the summer, the Zanuck Swim Stadium was demolished, the library was vacated, a highly traveled stairway was removed and

new turf was installed on the field.

INTO THE WILD: REPRESENT:

Barzdukas to serve in new admin roleBy michael rothberg

Head of Athletics Audrius Barzdu-kas has been promoted to the newly created role of Associate Head of Har-vard-Westlake.

Retaining his duties as head of ath-letics, Barzdukas will also be respon-sible for various aspects of the school’s administration, including advance-ment, international relations and ad-mission.

Barzdukas will be delegating some athletic department work to Athletic Directors Darlene Bible, Terry Bar-num and Terry Elledge to spend more time helping the administration, Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts said.

“Since Mr. Barzdukas will spend some more time with the administra-tion, I think there will be a bigger bur-den, but Darlene Bible, Terry Elledge and I work well as a team, so I think we’ll be able to pick up the slack and it will be fine,” Barnum said.

Barzdukas, who has worked at Harvard-Westlake since 2002, said he intends to address philosophical ques-tions regarding the school’s role as a school in a 21st century environment by working with the President Thomas Hudnut, Huybrechts and Chief Ad-vancement Officer Ed Hu.

“What does it mean to be a school and how do you prepare students, to

By Cami de Ry

Full on warfare broke out, splitting the boys and girls cross country team at their retreat at Cedar Lake Camp in Big Bear Aug. 21 to 28.

While the boys worked to defend their title as 2010 prank masters, the girls planned revenge, Christina Yang ’12 said.

It all began on 1:30 a.m. Tuesday morning when the girls awoke to loud Dubstep music and bear sounds blast-ed by the boys.

However, the girls quickly retali-ated. Jumping and stomping in their upper level dorms, the girls shook the boys’ dorms, effectively waking them up, and also causing an emergency light to fall off the ceiling.

“We were already awake, so I didn’t see the point in all the jumping,” Lieb-man said.

Following the late night pranks, the girls strategized their shaving cream offensive attack. As Cami Chapus ’12 lured Justin Berman ’13 out of his

dorm for a Tylenol and a look at her banged up knee, fellow female team-mates “plated” Berman with shaving cream head to toe, Kelsey Ogo-mori ’14 said. Next the girls kidnapped Ber-man, claiming him as “Girl XC HDub” prop-erty.

Most of the pranks involved water guns. Dorms, clothing and personal be-longings were drenched by the end of the trip, Yang said.

The girls used their femininity to their advantage for their main prank. Coloring sanitary napkins with food coloring, the girls disgusted the boys by sticking feminine products to the boys’ doors.

“I was beyond repulsed,” Judd Li-ebman ’12 said. “I couldn’t believe they would stoop that low.”

However, the anticipation leading up to the pranks was perhaps worse

than the actual events, Yang said. “In addition to actual pranks, we

engaged in psychological warfare by telling the girls that we scattered live worms about their dorms, when, in fact, we did not,” Liebman said.

The coaches were hesitant to

allow such behavior on a trip aimed for training and bonding, Ogomori said. It wasn’t clear whether training or pranking was the focus of this trip, Liebman said.

Worried that someone would get hurt and that the pranks would cause a divisive environment for the team, coaches called a cease fire.

“It was more about fun and a good way to relax in between runs,” Ogomori said.

In the end, there was not a clear winner, and the pranks helped to bring the team together.

The Chronicle Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2011

3700 Coldwater Canyon Ave. Studio City, Calif. 91604

PreviewA2

News A11 Sports C3Features B12

OffbeatBoys’ and girls’ cross country participates in prank war during summer training trip

MUSICAL SPIRIT: The newly-formed drum line performed for the first time at the varsity football team’s game against Venice High School, the first game of the

season. The three members of the drum team, from left, Justice Sefas ’13, James Wu ’13 and Jake Chapman ’12, auditioned just three days prior to the football game.

STUDIES ABROAD: Brendan Gallagher ’13, Michael Yorkin ’13, Henry Woody ’13 and Daniel Modlin ’13, from left to right, boat during a city trip in Spain.

ROCK STAR: The junior fellowship recipient Xochi Maberry-Gaulke ’12 studies geology at several places in Iceland, including a sulfuric geothermal hot zone.

WIND UP: Bradley Schine ’12 prepares to shoot at a game last year. The boys’ varsity water polo team has to cope with the losses of their coach and pool this year.

VICTOR YOON/CHRONICLE

PRANKED: Justin Berman ’13 gets doused with shaving cream and silly string by the girls’ cross country team.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF XOCHI MABERRY-GAULKEPRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF ANDREW BRABBEE DANIEL KIM/CHRONICLE

“[The prank war] was more about fun and a good way to relax in between runs.”

—Kelsey Ogomori ‘14

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF AARON DE TOLEDO

chronicle.hw.com news A3sept. 7, 2011

New dean replaces Oxelson

Educators from Beijing to visit school, examine AP math, science curriculum

MEET AND GREET: Head of Harvard-Westlake Jeanne Huybrechts met with educators from Beijing No. 12 in Beijing last year. The principal and vice principal also visited Harvard-Westlake and educators will come to study the AP program on Sept. 28.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF JEANNE HUYBRECHTS

By Lara SokoLoff

Six teachers from a Beijing high school will observe Harvard-West-lake AP classes from late September through early October as part of an effort to establish their own AP cur-riculum.

“I think it’s flattering that a school on the other side of the world had heard enough and learned enough about our way of doing school to want to learn from us,” President Tom Hud-nut said. “I thought it was pretty much a no-brainer actually because it is dif-ficult for me to imagine why someone wouldn’t want to be helpful in these situations.”

As a member of the World Leading School Association, Harvard-Westlake has built a relationship with Beijing No. 12 High School, one of the best high schools in Beijing, Associate Head of School and Head of Athletics Audri-us Barzdukas said.

The principal and vice principal of Beijing No. 12 visited Harvard-West-lake last year, and Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts has visited their school. The educators will visit from

Sept. 28 to Oct. 5.Our results on AP tests and our

teachers’ reputations drew Beijing No. 12 to Harvard-Westlake, Barzdukas said.

The Chinese educators will sit in on AP classes and rotate between a num-ber of teachers, taking notes on meth-ods, pedagogy and questions. The visit will culminate with a seminar that fo-cuses on teaching philosophy, Barzdu-kas said.

“They’re coming here to, in a sense, participate in the best practices work-

shop where essentially they want to see how our AP teachers teach their classes, and then have discussions about philosophy, pedagogy and con-tent as it relates to AP teaching,” Bar-zdukas said.

Most of the teachers will be sci-ence and math teachers because that is where Beijing No. 12 has chosen to begin, Hudnut said.

“There is no point in them offer-ing AP English Literature right off the bat,” he said. “I think their focus will be in the quantitative subjects.”

Hudnut said he hopes Harvard-Westlake educators will be able to travel to Beijing No. 12 during spring break to view the progress on their own AP curriculum.

“I think that any western school looks to Asian schools for what they can get from them,” Hudnut said. “This is sort of a turn on that in that it’s an opportunity for us to give some-thing to them. It is very hard to say that there is much in it for us other than to extend our name and fame in the world of pedagogy in the other side of the Pacific Ocean, but I think that’s worth something.”

By aLLiSon Hamburger

New dean Pe-ter Silberman traded reading applications for helping to create them when he joined the school this year, fill-ing former dean Canh Oxelson’s vacancy. As As-sistant Dean of Admissions at the University of Penn-sylvania for the past five years, Silber-man read undergraduate applications from Southern California, knowledge that he expects will be useful this year.

“I think it’s a landscape that chang-es so quickly that it helps to be very fresh,” Silberman said. “Even three or four or five years ago, some of the ad-vice you might give a kid might be dif-ferent now.”

Veteran dean Jon Wimbish agreed that Silberman’s background is ben-eficial for dealing with such a rapidly changing industry.

“He has already helped us fully re-alize the state of affairs on the other side of the [admissions] desk,” Wim-bish said.

Silberman grew up in Philadel-phia and attended Penn as an under-grad. This is his second year living in Los Angeles, as he started a doctoral program at UCLA last year, which he will continue this year. While his re-cent experiences in an admissions of-fice correlate directly with the college counseling aspect of being a dean, the everyday interactions with students and families are new to Silberman.

“I can already tell that we are much more immersed in the students’ lives in this environment than you are in higher ed,” he said. “Students can walk into my office and be dealing with something that day that you would never see on a college application.”

Silberman has acquired Oxelson’s junior and senior dean groups. Oxel-son moved to New York this year for a counseling job at Horace Mann School.

“He’s a true pro, and he wants to make sure that all the kids that he’s had to transition to me are in really good shape, so if there’s any lingering issues I can just pick up a phone or write him an email,” Silberman said.

He intends to continue where Ox-elson left off regarding the college pro-cess, Silberman said, whether on col-lege essays, lists of schools or advice.

Peter Silbermannathanson’s/cHronicLe

“I think it’s flattering that a school on the other side of the world had heard enough and learned enough about our way of doing school to want to learn from us.”

—Thomas C. HudnutPresident of School

By arieLLe maxner

A new emer-gency system will be used this year to alert students, faculty and par-ents in case of crises.

The system will simultane-ously email, call and text parents, students and fac-ulty in emergen-cies, Head of Se-curity Jim Crawford said. In the case of a lockdown, “we will continue to send everyone information on what to do or where to go,” he said.

Called a reverse 911, the system is currently operational. A text message was sent out to all faculty and staff members Tuesday, Aug. 30, and soon, “everyone will be notified via a text,” Crawford said.

“The systems can send 6,000 mes-sages in 20 seconds,” Crawford said.

Head of Upper School Harry Sala-mandra said that the idea behind the reverse 911 is that “you can send or broadcast a message to literally your whole community, everybody that you have the telephone number for.”

The reverse 911 is replacing the old telephone tree system, in which a few people were responsible for calling other people.

“For instance, a department chair, let’s say Laurence Weber, would call all the English teachers, that kind of a thing,” Salamandra said. “And then, the parents would be notified and they had their own telephone tree. There was a whole group of parents that, in years past, were charged with making calls and then passing that on and then so on down the line that people would help.”

“We are hopeful about it,” Sala-mandra said. “I think it’s going to be a good thing to have, and I think we will be able to quickly notify our commu-nity, our families, our faculty and our staff, what’s going on in case there is an emergency. Hopefully, we will never

have to use it – that’s the best case sce-nario, to never have to use it. But, in reality, I’m sure there will be an occa-sion where we would be glad to have this service.”

Salamandra described different situations in which the system would be utilized, such as earthquakes, fires and floods.

“We would be able to notify all of the faculty, the staff, all the families that this is what we are doing or this is what you need to know about this par-ticular situation,” Salamandra said. “If an earthquake happens in the middle of the day, how do you get information out to the parents? That’s not an easy thing to do necessarily. However, if you have a system like this, we feel like it would be advantageous to send critical information in a quick, easy way.”

To ensure that the information can be sent out to everyone, “we are asking everyone to make sure the school has any new cell numbers and home num-bers,” Crawford said.

The company responsible for the emergency system is Send Word Now.

School to text, email emergency notices

Harry Salamandranathanson’s/cHronicLe

Out with the old...

...in with the new.

A group of parents and department heads responsible for notifying the community of an emergency.

Telephone tree>>

Reverse 911>>A system that will simultaneously email, call and text parents, students and faculty in emergencies.

“By Allison HAmburger

The head of the physics department at Eton College traded places with a physics teacher this year as a part of the school’s first teacher exchange.

Joe Dangerfield is teaching Physics and AP Physics B here, while physics teacher Karen Hutchison spends the year in Windsor, England at Eton, a prestigious all-boys boarding school.

“One of the reasons that we’ve never done it or even thought about it is that a teacher who comes to this school really has to be good at what he or she does and has to be able to fit into the culture of the school right away,” Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts said. “That’s difficult for anyone com-ing to this school, much less someone from another country.”

Another issue for the teachers is ensuring that the subject matter will convert effectively in each country.

“The nice thing about teaching physics is that physics is the same ev-erywhere in the world basically,” Dan-gerfield said. “The laws of physics don’t change, but to learn about different course structure will be quite a lot of work for me.”

Dangerfield approached Eton Headmaster Tony Little in April 2010 with the idea of teaching in the Unit-ed States. Eton has done teacher ex-changes before, Dangerfield said, but they often involved schools in Australia or New Zealand. Little connected Dan-gerfield to Huybrechts, who brought the exchange idea to Hutchison.

The exchange is sponsored by the Fulbright Program, which has been

particularly helpful in organizing im-migration paperwork, Dangerfield said. Hutchinson and he applied to the pro-gram last fall, and the exchange was confirmed in March.

“My initial feeling when we eventu-ally learned that the exchange was a reality was a mixture of relief, elation and panic, as we had only four months left to organize relocating our entire family to a new continent,” he said.

Since Eton is a boarding school, they provide housing for Hutchison on campus. In return, Dangerfield cur-rently lives in a school-owned house adjacent to the upper school campus with his wife and two children, aged 3 and 5. The teachers’ current schedules also vary from each one’s home jobs.

Eton’s schedule includes a half day of classes on Saturday. The term be-gins tomorrow, so she has yet to expe-rience the culture of an all-boys school.

“I imagine that the culture of the school will be different than that at Harvard-Westlake, but I’m not sure how yet,” Hutchison said. “Superfi-cially, the boys wear uniforms and call their teachers ‘beaks.’”

One factor in Dangerfield’s deci-sion to come here was a desire to learn more about the U.S. college admissions process. Some Eton students expressed interest in travelling abroad for uni-versity, so Dangerfield hopes to bring home knowledge that will help prepare such students.

While Hutchison traveled to Eng-land briefly in high school, Dangerfield had never been to the United States .He said that he and his wife are trying to keep an open mind.

“I expect to find it challenging to adapt to new courses and new ways of doing things, different structures, but I’m trying not to make assumptions,” Dangerfield said.

Hutchison and Dangerfield both arrived in their temporary countries at the beginning of August. They have communicated by email for almost a year to describe what to expect during the school year.

“The support at Harvard-Westlake generally, as well as from Karen, has been phenomenal and has made a huge difference to how settled we feel,” Dan-gerfield said.

News A4 The ChroNiCle sepT. 7, 2011

By DAviD lim

Liz Resnick will occupy the Director of Stud-ies position, which has been vacant since Deb Dowl-ing left at the end of the 2009-10 school year. Resn-ick left her previous job as the Head of Upper School at Crossroads School to pursue a master’s in business adminis-tration at University of California, Los Angeles while working in a part-time capacity at Harvard-Westlake.

Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts describes Resnick’s role as “multifac-eted.”

“[Resnick] oversees our joint Facul-ty Academic Committee,” Huybrechts said. “Working with other administra-tors, she’s responsible for the coherent six-year program. Somebody attending the Middle School, someone attend-ing the Upper School, somebody’s got to care about the whole six year pro-gram, especially the transition. She also works a lot training and mentor-ing new teachers, faculty evaluations.”

The Faculty Academic Committee oversees the curriculum and academic policy on both campuses and is made up of the deans and representatives of each department.

Resnick will work full days Mon-day through Wednesday and will come in for meetings throughout the week.

After Dowling departed to become the Head of Upper School at Bridges Academy on Laurel Canyon, Huy-brechts interviewed a few candidates for her replacement over the past year, but did not find one that fit the job.

“Rather than scramble around and find someone to fit that position, we just waited a year and lived without a director of studies. It was hard, but we did it,” Huybrechts said.

Resnick’s move from Crossroads, which she said she still feels a “lot of affection for,” was primarily motivated by her graduate school schedule.

However, Resnick also looks for-ward to the differences between her new job and her eight years at Cross-roads.

“I really love the notion that, rather than being a manager of teachers, my job at Harvard-Westlake is going to be as a resource, as a person who can ob-serve, who can help people grow, who can point them in the right direction, talk about books I’ve read or profes-sional development opportunities or conferences that might help them,” Resnick said.

“Again, none of them are ultimately my authority to act on. I’m really here as a support so I’m delighted to be in that role.”

Resnick fills administrative vacancy

Eton teacher joins faculty in swapThe nice thing about teaching physics is that physics is the same everywhere in the world basically. The laws of physics don’t change.”

—Joe DangerfieldPhysics Teacher

DAVID LIM/CHRONICLE

DAVID LIM/CHRONICLE

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF JEANNE HUYBRECHTS

THE ARTS: Students at the Mara a Pula School play in a marimba band.

By lArA sokoloff

Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts toured five schools in Africa this sum-mer, including the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls.

The trip was coordinated by Global Connections, a non-profit organization that brings together educators from all over the world interested in initiating global programs at their schools, Huy-brechts said. She traveled with 44 edu-cators from over 20 countries.

The educators first visited OWLA, a boarding school at which all students are on financial aid. The school also pays for a student’s college education, should she go to college. Around 500 students attend the school in grades 7-12.

“Oprah’s school was an interesting place,” Huybrechts said. “There are

thousands of ap-plications to this place, and it was a very, very impres-sive facility.”

H u y b r e c h t s said the Maru a Pula School in Gabarone, Bo-tswana was most similar to Har-vard-Westlake.

“There was a panel of [students] speaking,” she said. “I just kept think-ing that they were so much like our students, that our students would love to meet these kids.”

Huybrechts said she hopes to help Maru a Pula create a student newspa-per because the school lacks one.

She also met an educator from Beijing who wants to work to build a

newspaper.“There was a tangible situation

that we could follow up on,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about how you find someone in another school, what would be the right school, how do you get an adviser at the right school and he was really keen to do this.”

The educators also visited Lebone II, a school within an African kingdom, the African Leadership Academy in Johannesburg, South Africa and Tiger Kloof Educational Institution in Vry-burg District, South Africa.

“I just recognized how easy it would be for our school to make its own global connections,” Huybrechts said. “I know these 44 other educators from 20 coun-tries, and I’ve been to these schools and schools in Korea, China and Singapore, as well. I’m really fired up to initiate that in a big way.”

Huybrechts visits schools during Africa trip

Jeanne Huybrechtsnathanson’s/cHronicle

MEET AND GREET: Luke Soon-Shiong ‘14 (center) and Hannah Kofman ‘14 (right) talk about their schedules dur-ing lunch after orientation. Sophomores met their dean groups for the first time and went on tours around the campus.

New kids on the block

DAVID LIM/CHRONICLE

By Michael RothbeRg

Students were notified via email that they are no longer allowed to re-quest schedule changes after school has started on Sept. 6, said Beth Slat-tery, the dean in charge of scheduling.

“The big difference this year is that we sent out an email to that affect, but the policy has actually been in place the past few years,” Slattery said.

The only exception to this policy is level changes, in which students either drop down or move up a track.

“At Harvard-Westlake, we maybe ease into [classes] for the first day or so, but then we’re off and running,” said dean Jim Patterson. “Once the first day of school comes, it becomes significant-ly [more] challenging to make changes. At that point, class sizes are balanced.”

Since Aug. 22, almost half of the upper school students have requested a combined total of 700 to 1,000 changes to their schedules, all of which were submitted through a new online inter-face. Over the summer, Slattery col-laborated with other deans to accom-modate students in time for school.

Last February, returning and in-coming upper school students submit-ted forms indicating which classes they wished to take in the fall. The deans reviewed the requests to ensure that students adequately met graduation requirements.

These forms were then fed into Didax, an administrative computer system designed by software engineer

Alan Homan. “I go through and try to fix as many

conflicts as possible, try to balance numbers and genders as much as possible, and then I’m done. And that’s about mid-July, and from that point on I turn it over to the deans,” said math teacher Beverly Feulner, who has been arranging schedules for 28 years.

In April, there was an opportunity for students to see their schedules to make sure that the classes in the computer program correspond with what the students signed up for and wanted to take.

“That’s an important step because that’s what we can then take and say, ‘this many students want this particular class,’” said Patterson.

Students were presented with these tentative schedules online in mid-August. In previous years, students filled out paper cards to request changes, but this year for the first time, the forms were available online.

“I think kids found it generally easy to use and the way that we worded things made it so people did a better job of explaining what their goal was, because in the past people listed that they wanted changes but then they wouldn’t be clear with the reason behind that change,” Slattery said.

Due to the large quantity of applications for schedule changes, Slattery and other deans prioritize the requests by their rationale. Conflicts, situations in which schedules require students to be in two classes

simultaneously, receive top priority and are guaranteed to be fixed.

Requests for changes justified by reasons such as sports practice eighth period and free periods were dealt with after the conflicts and level changes were resolved.

At the upper school, students are not allowed to know which teachers they have until the first day of school.

“The purpose of [the policy] was to ensure that students were making decisions not based on rumors but based on what their desires and needs are,” said Patterson. “Nonetheless, some students do request specific teachers, but these requests are not guaranteed to be acknowledged.

“Normally it has to do with ‘I want this teacher because I had them before’ and we can’t promise to do that but at least that’s based on an actual experience, but if somebody says ‘I don’t want to have this teacher because I heard this,’ the likelihood of honoring that is diminished,” said Patterson.

After compiling and correcting schedules, accounting for hundreds of changes, Slattery released the finalized schedules for a second time on Sept. 2.

The deans will not be accepting future requests besides level changes.

“I think that people should know just how hard we try to honor and just how much we do because there tends to be a lot of chatter after school starts about ‘I got this and this isn’t fair,’ but it’s our attempt to be as fair as possible,” said Slattery.

chronicle.hw.com news A5sept. 7, 2011

PE requirement limits students

Switch Up

Deans rule out schedule switches except for moves between levels

With some staff members switching positions and others joining for the first time, both the Middle School and the Upper School will have new faces on campus this year.

Gary Lundy ’00As the new Annual Giving Officer, Lundy handles logistical planning and event coordinating this year.

Justin Arbona-BensonArbona-Benson is now the PC Sup-port Specialist at the Middle School.

“I think that this will affect the students’ morale about the year if they’re stuck with a miserable teacher that they cannot get along with and that grades will suffer because of the strictness of this rule.”

—Joey Lieberman ’14

“It does pose an inconvenience to us, but from the school management point of view, they’ve got tons of kids to deal with and everybody wants their own schedule their way. You can’t really juggle all that.”

—Adam Zucker ’13

“We should have the best experience we can in school, and if we want to change something we should be able to. It might hinder our learning if we are stuck in an environment where we do not feel comfortable.”

—Taylor Cooper ’13

“I think it’s fair because unless you’ve had a problem with a teacher, you shouldn’t judge them based on other people’s opinions. Scheduling should be changed for timing issues rather than personal ones.”

—Bradley Coon ’12

soundbytes

By Rebecca NussbauM

With seven classes, Ryan Lash ’12 faces a full course load, and instead of having a lunch period, she must take yoga to complete her physical education requirement.

“I go to Cardio Barre every weekend,” she said. “I think a lot of people do things outside of school that they don’t get credit for.”

Other students face the same problems. Charlie Andrews ’13, a self-coached rock climber, trains 20 to 25 hours per week, but still has to take P.E.

In the past, independent P.E. allowed students playing a sport not offered at school to get P.E. credit, Athletic Director Terry Barnum said. The program was discontinued because coaches struggled to prove that all students actually deserved credit.

“Once in a while, we’d have a student who claimed to be doing something outside of school that they were not doing or not to the extent they wanted us to believe they were,” he said.

Barnum says that on-campus P.E. provides students with valuable interactions with their peers.

“The way you interact with your peers in an athletic setting is a lot different than you would in an academic setting,” Barnum said.

Andrews finds having to do P.E. “unnecessary” because he exercises as much as most varsity athletes, and fitting in P.E. class can be challenging, he said.

“I’m probably going to have to drop Human Anatomy and Physiology because I don’t have any blocks,” Andrews said.

Since the department lessened the requirements from five trimesters at the Upper School to six trimesters throughout high school, Barnum feels that the requirement is very manageable.

“You can be done with it in tenth grade,” he said. “If you take three [trimesters] in ninth and three [trimesters] in tenth, you have your full junior and senior year.”

Clément, a middle school secretary last year, replaced Angela Lloyd as Computer Services Coordinator.

Jolina ClémentNIKA MADYOON/CHRONICLE

Leah JosephsonJosephson has switched from middle school to upper school receptionist.

DAVID LIM/CHRONICLE

CHLOE LISTER/CHRONICLE

JACK GOLDFISHER/CHRONICLE

Jose Gutierrez Gutierrez switched from Tech Support to Networking Administrator.

JACK GOLDFISHER/CHRONICLE

Janiece RichardRichard, previously the upper school receptionist, is now Alumni Adminis-trator in the Office of Advancement.

SARAH NOVICOFF/CHRONICLE

GRAPHIC BY NIKA MADYOON

“It didn’t affect my schedule, but I have friends that are very upset because they have teachers they don’t really want. I think it’s an issue and that students should have the ability to change their schedules.”

—Brendan Gallagher ’13

“I think it will prepare me for more challenging life situations because you can’t just change something if you don’t like it. I understand it’s frustrating, but sometimes we just need to go with the flow.”

—Elizabeth Cohen ’14

Students voice their opinions on scheduling restrictions. Schedules may not be rearranged based on anything other than level changes , after school starts.

The ChroniClenews A6 sepT. 7, 2011

inbriefParents’ Association to host bone marrow drive

Thill nominated as finalist for Presidental Award

‘Big Sibs’ program creates 9th grade advisory board

Cazeau tours 5 schools in AfricaSHOPPING SPREE: Head of Middle School Ronnie Codrington-Cazeau and Harry Goldfisher ’12 visit the Tinga Tinga market in Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania. Goldfisher spent five weeks teaching English and computer skills at Hocet Secondary School.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF RONNIE CAZEAU

Mamigonian takes over Ethics,Gender Studies

PEP TALK: Program Director of Debate Mike Bietz gives students a talk before en-tering a competition. Bietz will now oversee v the middle school debate team as well.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF JOSH HARRELL

Debate coach promoted to full-time program head at both campuses

Middle school chaplain Rabbi Em-ily Feigenson has revitalized the “Big Sibs” program by creating advisory boards made up of freshman who will help the ninth graders bond with their “little sibs” more effectively. These ad-visory boards will create activities such as a planned Dance Dance Revolution game and a field day, where the pairs of “sibs” can bond.

Feigenson created the program four years ago with the intention of “mak[ing] the experience of coming into Harvard-Westlake less intimidat-ing and more friendly,” she said.

—Jack Goldfisher

A bone marrow drive to help can-cer patients nationwide will be hosted by the Parents’ Association during Homecoming on Oct. 1.

The committee hopes that students and parents will help as either donors or volunteers at the booth. The Par-ents’ Association will work with Be the Match, a national bone marrow regis-try. Chris Robinson ’14, who was diag-nosed with leukemia in 2010, was a big inspiration for the drive.

“Chemotherapy wiped out all the cells in my body, good and bad,” Rob-inson said. “The [bone marrow] trans-plant gave me fresh cells and new life.”

—Aaron Lyons

Math teacher Bill Thill is a final-ist for the Presidential Award for Ex-cellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching. He was nominated this sum-mer by a colleague and former winner of the award while at the Park City Mathematics Institute for teachers. Thill was also nominated last year for the Teachers of the Future Award.

“I’ve always enjoyed math and sta-tistics ever since I was in college, but I think one of the most interesting things for me is trying to figure out the kinds of questions that will get stu-dents to think deeply and to have good conversations,” Thill said.

—Megan Ward

Summer school at Harvard-West-lake experienced an increase in student enrollment and new class offerings.

New classes such as Boil, Fizz, Pop: The Science of Cooking and Eating and Introduction to the Potter’s Wheel were added to the list, which includes the popular journalism program, math preparatory classes, Gold Medal Sports camps, and the Performing Arts Con-servatory.

“In the summertime we are able to give more students the opportunity to experience Harvard-Westlake,” Upper School Dean Jim Patterson said.

—Caitie Benell

Summer school offers new classes, increases enrollment

By Luke HoLtHouse

After transforming the Harvard-Westlake Lincoln Douglas debate team into one of the top programs in the country, Mike Bietz has been promoted to Program Director of Debate, over-seeing both Middle School and Upper School Debate. He was formerly a part-time employee as the head coach of the Upper School Lincoln-Douglas debate team but will now work full time with the school and on both campuses.

“Since I was 18 years-old, I’ve been a part-time debate coach,” Bietz said. “It’s always been something I had to try to balance with another job, so I’m su-per excited to have it be number one.”

Since he started at Harvard-West-lake, Bietz coached an individual de-bater to a first-place finish at eight different national invitation tourna-ments. He coached Ben Sprung-Keyser ’11 to a championship at the National Forensics League, the official organizer

of Lincoln-Douglas debate National Championship in 2010. He has coached two National Champions, 22 National Tournaments of Champions qualifiers and one Tournament of Champions National Champion. Also, Bietz is the only coach ever in Lincoln-Douglas de-bate to coach a National Champion at National Forensics and Tournament of Champions in the same year.

Bietz was also the director of Vic-tory Briefs Institute, a debate organi-zation that hosts one of the nation’s largest debate camps. Alumni of Vic-tory Briefs have won eight consecutive National Forensics League National Championships since 2004.

He plans to have the team join the Western Forensics League giving students a chance to debate in both lo-cal and national tournaments. He said that it was difficult for some to par-ticipate on the team because it involved frequent traveling and students often had to miss school for tournaments.

The upper school cafeteria hours will be extended until 6 p.m.

Head of Upper School Harry Sala-mandra said the change accounted for limitations imposed by the construc-tion which prevent students from walking off campus.

“The idea is to have some things that students will be able to eat, after a workout or before a Peer Support group,” Salamandra said.

Salamandra said the primary mo-tivation for the change was “so that [students] could be safe. That’s really what this is all about.”

—Jack Goldfisher

By RacHeL scHwaRtz

English teach-er Malina Mami-gonian will take over the gender studies and ethics classes this year after former hu-manities teacher Martha Whee-lock’s retirement. Wheelock asked her to fill the po-sition last year and helped Mamigo-nian reconfigure the courses.

Mamaigonian described gender studies as a continuation of the phil-osophically-focused ethics course that looks at gender as a constructed idea imposed by society. Mamigonian will “pursue understanding of that con-struction in other cultures, in business, in the home,” she said.

Mamigonian will also start a new chapter of Girls Learn International, a program that explores human rights issues and will help Harvard-Westlake begin a cultural exchange with a girls’ school abroad. Managing Director of the Feminist Majority Foundation in Los Angeles Ina Coleman (Austin ’10, Kacey ’13 and Sloane Wilson ’17), will also help start the new chapter.

“The impact of economic circum-stances on gender roles and identity is tremendous,” Mamagonian said.

“The persistence of discrimination and hostility is insidious if not simply blatant.”

Malina Mamigonian

nathanson’s/cHRonicLe

By nika Madyoon

Head of Middle School Ronnie Codrington-Cazeau and middle school science teacher Florence Pi visited five schools in Africa this summer. Cazeau went to Africa to see different schools and how they compare to their Ameri-can counterparts. Pi hoped to learn from teachers in different environ-ments and “broaden [her] understand-ing of educational systems,” she said.

“Africa is a place that will awe you and humble you and make you think,” Pi said.

Their trip included visits to two low-income schools, a state school and two independent schools.

Cazeau and Pi’s first stop was at Hocet Secondary School in Tanzania, an institution for African orphans started by Sydney Schaef, who previ-ously worked with Teach for America. Hocet takes on very low-income Af-ricans and “prepares them to enter a very capitalistic world,” Cazeau said. Harry Goldfisher ’12, who has been in-volved with Hocet for over two years, met with Cazeau and Pi during their visit. Cazeau recalls how the students excitedly chanted Goldfisher’s name upon his arrival.

“This was an example of me being inspired by a student,” Cazeau said.

Goldfisher, who spent last year helping arrange and set up the com-puter lab at Hocet, spent five weeks teaching English and computer skills this year. He has learned a great deal about the value of education, he said.

Cazeau and Pi visited the African Leadership Academy in Johannes-burg, an institution that takes young Africans aged 16 or older and prepar-ing young Africans for college in Great Britain and Canada. The expectation at the Academy is that students will return to Africa and become leaders once their education is complete.

Cazeau was pleasantly surprised with what she saw at their third stop, the Girls High School of Praetoria, a state school. Pi attended the school while living in South Africa for two years. While not a private institution, the school reminded Cazeau of a pri-vate school.

Cazeau and Pi concluded the trip with a visit to Capetown, where they visited two independent schools that, along with Harvard-Westlake, are members of the G20 Schools, a world-wide association of secondary schools. Bishops Diocesan College, an institu-

tion exclusively for boys, and its sister school, St. Cyprian’s College, had the same level of parent participation and computer advancement that one would see here, Cazeau said.

“It was almost as if I was visiting Harvard-Westlake in a foreign coun-try,” she said. “They were us.”

Cazeau said the two had time for some touring while abroad. They stopped in Zambia to visit Victoria Falls and went on a safari through Kruger National Park in South Africa.

Pi is planning a four week trip through five African countries for the summer of 2013. The trip, which will be open to 15 sophomores and juniors, will involve a road trip and camping through South Africa, Namibia, Bo-tswana, Zambia, and Tanzania, and students will learn both about science and history throughout the continent.

Feeling somewhat out of place in the outdoors gave Cazeau a new outlook as an educator. She gained a better un-derstanding of how some students may feel when they do not immediately “fit into” the Harvard-Westlake commu-nity and how she can help them over-come that.

“It made me a better teacher,” Ca-zeau said.

Cafeteria to stay open until 6 p.m. after school

chronicle.hw.com news A7sept. 7, 2011

inbriefSenior represents U.S. debate team in Scotland

Middle school implements counseling for social skills

Eighth graders will mentor sev-enth graders this year in a social skills initiative developed by middle school chaplain Rabbi Emily Feigenson.

The initiative will implement a counseling system led by selected eighth graders. A team of these men-tors will meet with the seventh graders in their class meetings during the fall and discuss strategies for approaching and handling challenging social situa-tions.

“The goal of the program is to name a social challenge, to acknowledge it, and reduce stress so you don’t feel alone,” Feigenson said.

—Claire Goldsmith

Michelle Choi ’12 participated in the World Schools Debate Champion-ship this August in Dundee, Scotland as part of the United States team. She was one of five debaters representing the U.S. at the event.

The American team finished 4-4 and did not advance out of preliminary rounds into elimination rounds. Alum-nus Ben Sprung-Keyser ’11 was also a member of the team.

—Luke Holthouse

Zhou uses student work to teach at Beijing conference

Upper school foreign language teacher Qinru Zhou presented student work at an international teaching con-ference in Beijing in July, after having an academic paper published.

The meeting focused on instructing international students in Chinese who have little knowledge of the language.

His paper, concerning his personal methods for teaching Chinese, was se-lected to be printed in a book made es-pecially for the conference.

During his presentation, Zhou dis-played clips of his students speaking Chinese in class.

—Megan Kawasaki

Upper school art teacher Marianne Hall and Vox Populi adviser Jenni-fer Bladen received the Marion Hays award and the Kogan Family Award at the faculty opening meeting last week.

Bladen was recognized with the Ko-gan award for “developing and imple-menting innovative practices that have substantially improved teaching,” Ex-ecutive Assistant to the Head of School Emily Kennedy said. Hall received the Marion Hays Award for her “loyal and dedicated service to the school, friend-liness, good humor […] and thoughtful consideration for all members of the school community,” Kennedy said.

—David Gisser

Bladen, Hall receive awards at opening faculty meeting

Enrollment doubles in size for AP Computer Science

A record-breaking number of stu-dents enrolled in computer science courses this year. The summer com-puter science institute almost com-pletely full, and the size of the AP Computer Science A course doubled to 50, so a second teacher was assigned to teach the course.

Computer science teacher Jacob Hazard said the course has been “grow-ing steadily over the last five years.”

Hazard thinks the math department has “gotten a little bit of help from the Facebook movie, ‘The Social Network,’ and the cellphone prevalence,” he said.

“These things may have popular-ized computer science and made it feel more mainstream,” Hazard said.

—Emily Segal

History teacher visits South Africa with Chorale to help raise money

EDGE OF THE WORLD: Ken Neisser visits Cape Aghulas, the southernmost tip on the African continent, while in the Western Cape of South Africa. Neisser went to the Cape of Good Hope, the most southwest point of the African continent, earlier that day.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF KEN NEISSER

By Maddy Baxter

History teacher Ken Neisser ac-companied his wife, a member of the Angel City Chorale, to South Africa to help raise money for the Amy Biehl Foundation this summer. The 15-day-long trip included stops in Dubai, Jo-hannesburg, Cape Town and a three day safari at a game reserve in the Limpopo Province.

The Amy Biehl Foundation was started after Biehl was killed in Cape Town due to political violence. In 1993, Biehl was in South Africa for a Ful-bright Fellowship and was killed why-ilewalking a boy back from his classes at the University of Western Cape Town.Her parents visited Cape Town shortly thereafter and decided to cre-ate the foundation in their daughter’s memory in an attempt to improve the lives of those living in the townships.

The Angel City Chorale is a singing ensemble of 120 men and women from Los Angeles.

“They took a tragedy and turned it into this truly wonderful organization,” Neisser said.

The main focus of the trip was the foundation’s annual awards night in Cape Town where the Chorale per-formed South African music.

“Kids just jumped out of their seats and started singing and dancing, Ne-sisser said. “It was an extraordinarily moving sight.”

The Chorale visited the founda-tion’s school that focuses on arts edu-cation. The students performed drums, dance and choir along with the Cho-rale. They also performed for students

at the South African College High School.

“The choir breaking into song was a great icebreaker for mixing with the African people,” Neisser said.

The group flew 8,500 miles to Dubai, flying directly over the pole and the Arctic. The temperature in Dubai peaked at 122 degrees Fahrenheit and 90 percent humidity.

“The architecture in Dubai is something out of a Tim Burton movie., Neisser said, “Those modern buildings are fantastical.”

After Dubai, the group stopped briefly in Johannesburg on their way to the game reserve in the Waterberg Mountains to go out on a safari.

“You’d be eating your lunch and a monkey would jump up on the table and try to steal your food,” Neisser said. “Then you would hear some screams and realize that they had succeeded.”

Neisser and the Chorale spent the next eight days in Cape Town. He took a cable car to the top of Table Moun-tain and sat in Nelson Mandela’s cell on Robben Island.

“The tour guide was terrific,” Neis-ser said. “I engaged with him a lot about the apartheid regime in relation to the Cold War.”

The group also took a trip down to the Cape of Good Hope, which “is not actually the southernmost tip like most people think, but the most south-west point,” Neisser said. wSo, the tour pleaded to go to Cape Agulhas, the ac-tual southernmost point, as well.

“There is nothing as extraordi-narily dramatic as the Cape with the crashing waves on one side and the mountains pressing down on the oth-er,” Neisser said. “The physical topog-raphy of South Africa was awe-inspir-ing.”

Among other sights, the group vis-ited Stellenbosch, a university town, and a tribal cultural center in the Western Cape. He also saw the statue of Cecil Rhodes, a key player in British African imperialism.

“The World and Europe course was all around me,” Neisser said.

In Cape Town, the Chorale visited a restaurant on the waterfront and Neisser ate ostrich for the first time and found it delicious, he said. During the meal, the choir stood up and sang and the restaurant staff poured out of the kitchen and started dancing and singing with them.

“Everyone was in tears and it was incredibly moving,” Neisser said. “We were making a connection. I of course did not contribute my vocal talents.”

Neisser, an experienced traveler himself, considers his trip to South Af-rica to be “the most remarkable two week trip” he has ever experienced.

“It really was the trip of a lifetime,” Neisser said. “Linguistics, history, ge-ography and culture. It was a bounty of all kinds of riches.”

“The World and Europe course was all around me”

—Ken NeisserHistory Teacher

enter a world where there is more in-formation at hand, in a world that is smaller than ever before?” Barzdukas said. “What is the role of the school in getting young people ready to face the challenges of that world?”

To prepare for his new position, he observed the faculty, staff and students last year. Barzdukas, who described himself as “a question asker” and “a life long learner,” sat in on about 170 class-es and met with teachers to develop an understanding for the curriculum and academic philosophy of the school.

“You should seek to understand rather than judge,” Barzdukas said. “You should learn to think critically, learn how to make corrections, learn how to understand things and put things in context. Learning is a great deal. Learning is seeking to under-stand. I think learning is about aspir-

ing.”B a r z d u k a s

said he would like to help the school to “bridge cul-tures[…]among departments, be-tween campuses, among Los An-geles and around the world.”

During the summer, Hudnut and Huybrechts represented Harvard-Westlake at the World Leading Schools Association conference in New York where delegates from schools in the west and China share and exchange ideas about education.

As Associate Head of School, Bar-zdukas is working with Hudnut and Huybrechts to improve the school’s relations with international schools by coordinating visits between these

schools’ administrators.Hudnut said the new position was

created specifically for Barzdukas’s unique role in the school’s adminis-tration and “his sense of curriculum pedagogy and the school and the com-munity as a result of his administra-tive work in athletics.”

“The timing was good because Mr. Barzdukas was ready for [the posi-tion], and a lot of his ‘new’ responsi-bilities aren’t really new because he’s been working with our admissions of-fice and with advancement for a couple of years, so this makes it more official,” Huybrechts said.

“We’re terribly excited to have him,” Hudnut said. “He’s an extremely able, energetic man who has a wonder-ful sense of what the school is about.As teacher, administrator and parent, he will be able to see from a variety of perspectives, and that’s a very useful kaleidoscope to have.”

Head of Athletics to oversee admissions, advancement, international relations

Continued from page A1

Audrius Barzdukasnathanson’s/chronicle

By Alex GurA And eli HAims

Students will not be allowed to walk off campus this year while con-struction on Coldwater Canyon Av-enue is going on, said an email sent to students by Assistant to the Head of Upper School Michelle Bracken.

At the Senior/Faculty Barbeque last Thursday, Head of Upper School Harry Salamandra said that he hoped construction would finish around 3:30 p.m., allowing students to walk off campus after school.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is currently install-ing new water pipes under Coldwater Canyon Avenue adjacent to Harvard-Westlake, requiring two of the four lanes to be blocked off. Heavy traffic delays are expected.

“This is all part of the 10-year capi-tal improvement program that is for replacing aging water infrastructure,” Department of Water and Power’s con-struction engineering supervisor Todd P. Le told the Sherman Oaks Patch in April. “We are trying to make this as least disruptive as possible.”

The procedures for student park-ing and parent drop off and pick up have changed.

Salamandra outlined the plans in an email sent to students.

Seniors will enter through the main campus entrance, make the first right once on campus and loop around Hamilton Gymnasium before proceed-ing to their assigned spots.

Juniors will turn on to Hacienda Drive, which is south of the main en-trance, and proceed to their assigned spots.

Parents traveling southbound from Ventura Boulevard will enter the main campus entrance and make the first right once they have entered the cam-pus.

They will then loop around Ham-ilton Gymnasium and drop off or pick up their children on the sidewalk along the senior lot.

Parents traveling northbound from Mulholland Drive can either follow the same path as the southbound parents or drop off and pick up their children at the north entrance. Security and staff will help direct traffic.

Students will no longer be able to park on Coldwater Canyon or Halkirk Street as they have done in previous year.

The only options for students who were planning to do this are carpooling with another student or being driven by a parent or riding a school bus, Sal-amandra said.

Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts sent a similar letter to parents, saying “our temporary inconvenience will be rewarded with significant campus im-provements including a new academic program, new classrooms, a beautiful library, a spectacular aquatics facility and a 21st-century water pipe under Coldwater Canyon.”

An exception to the rule prohibit-ing students from walking off campus will be made for students who rely on public transportation to get to school. Passes will be given out to students who take public transportation regu-larly and the students will have a con-

versation with their deans about the construction workers’ schedule and when it will be safe to walk down the street.

Upper School Dean Jon Wimbish speculates that the passes won’t be handed out often, as there are only a handful of people who take the public bus regularly.

“In my three [dean] groups last year, I only had one student [who re-lied on public buses],” Wimbish said. “If that’s the average, there’s probably less than 10 [students] total.”

Deans hope the passes will be a last resort. The most common stop is Coldwater Canyon Boulevard and Ven-tura Boulevard, which is just down the street from campus, but even the short walk is “pretty brutal,” according to Wimbish.

“Even a person with a pass needs to be smart about walking,” Wimbish said. “There are going to be times when you just can’t [walk] because it’ll be too risky.”

However, Bookstore Associate Al-lie Costa had no trouble walking from her bus stop to the campus during the summer. She said that construction workers direct foot traffic around the work site and stop it when necessary.

“My plan is to keep on walking,” Costa said. “I don’t know how else to get here.”

“

A8 News The ChroNiCle sepT. 7, 2011

Constructive changes The Upper School and its surrounding area have been under mass construction. Coldwater Canyon Avenue was gutted to insert new water pipes, leaving limited access to school entrances. School renovation has resulted in the relocation of the library, blocked class routes and limited parking. Traffic on and off campus will be affected.

Administration restricts students from walking along Coldwater

There are going to be times when you just can’t walk because it’ll be too risky.”

—Jon WimbishUpper School Dean

nathanson’s/cHronicle

CLEANING OUT THE PIPES: Workers from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power fill a massive hole in Coldwater Canyon Avenue. Construction on Coldwater Canyon

blocks the majority of traffic from entering the school through the North Entrance. Traffic will now have to flow primarily through the Main Entrance and the Hacienda Drive Entrance.

Due to Kutler Center construction, direct routes to Seaver, Feldman-Horn and the Tech Center have been blocked. Letters indicate some alternate ways to get to class, all starting from the North Parking Lot. Numbers indicate directions to navigate around Coldwater Construction.

Mapping out construction

A To Seaver, second floorGo through first floor Seaver, then enter the second floor doorway.Time - 3:39 minutes

B To the Tech CenterStart at Rugby Hall, then go up the tower staircase and make a right.Time - 2:59 minutes

C To Feldman-HornStart at Rugby Hall, then go up the tower staircase and make a left.Time - 2:23 minutes

ELI HAIMS/CHRONICLE

TRAFFIC JAM: Due to construction on Coldwater Canyon Avenue, certain lanes are closed, top left. The stairs between Mudd Library and Seaver Academic Center is closed bottom right.

disturb the library so the library has to go somewhere. Gosh we could put it in Chalmers East, but that’s going to be sort of a half-baked solution. We really also need to get this portable classroom [for Silent Study]. There are going to be other costs.”

Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts said that the funding for the Kutler Center is on track. A lead donation of $2.5 million was secured for the pool and an additional $1 million has been raised, but fundraising is ongoing.

PoolBarzdukas said the new pool was

influenced by discussions in the Sports Council, and particular attention was paid to making the time that students had access to the pool more efficient.

“A bigger pool allows more kids to train immediately after school so that the stacking effect goes away,” Barzdu-kas said. “That’s really the chief thing. The pool was built to help us get more aquatic student-athletes home sooner.”

The new pool will be 51.9 meters long by 25 meters wide with a move-able partition allowing it to either be used as a single 50-meter pool or two 25-meter pools, compared to the old one which was 25 meters long. It will be built at the site of the Zanuck Swim Stadium, which was demolished dur-ing the summer. The pool will extend farther over the track than the old pool did and will also stretch into the parking lot, requiring the demolition of about 15 parking spaces.

De Matte, who is overseeing both the construction of the pool and the Kutler Center, said that the DWP con-struction on Coldwater Canyon Avenue will not impact the building process of either project. He said that since he has access to the work site from both the parking lot and the track, if one of the entrances to the school was blocked by construction, he could use the other.

“Getting all the demo work done and hauling all the trucks, that’s what would have been very tough next year,” De Matte said. “But it all got done dur-ing the summer by design.”

Both the swimming and water polo teams will have to practice and com-pete off campus until the pool is com-plete. Barzdukas said that it would be “nonsensical to say [the lack of a pool] wouldn’t have an effect” on the swim-ming and water polo programs. He said that he thinks that the athletes, coach-

es and parents are making the best of the situation.

“Given some lemons, we are mak-ing lemonade,” he said. “I think we are learning a valuable lesson that we make our destiny and we control how we feel about things.”

Kutler CenterThe Kutler Center, named after

Brendan Kutler ’10 who died in his sleep in December 2009, will serve as the hub for interdisciplinary studies on campus. The project is funded by Jon and Sarah Kutler, Brendan Kutler’s parents. It will oversee all humanities classes this year. The Faculty Academ-ic Committee will design new classes specifically for the Kutler Center, which will house three new classrooms and an office.

Huybrechts said the location of the building, bridging the third floor of Seaver, which is the home of the his-tory department, and the library was intentional.

“It is a physical bridge, it is a cur-ricular bridge, and that those two ele-ments come together was very inten-tional,” she said.

Levin added that the building was meant to be “a spotlight building for a spotlight department.”

Head Upper School Librarian Shannon Acedo said that logistically, it made a lot of sense to have a cor-ridor from the history department to the library.

“It makes all the sense in the world to have people who do the most re-search in the library able to come im-mediately over from class,” she said.

The construction has required the higher of the two staircases lead-ing from the flag court outside of the first floor of Seaver to the doors on the northeast side of Seaver to be demol-ished.

In order to access the second and third floors of Seaver, students will have to enter the second floor through the doors by the receptionist. Huy-brechts said that she hopes that the school has taken enough measures to prevent the construction from having too much of an effect on students, but admits that the path from the upper parts of the campus to the lower parts has become “rather circuitous.”

President Thomas C. Hudnut said he thinks the inconvenience caused by the construction on campus is insignif-icant compared to that on Coldwater.

“The fact that the neighborhood is

shut down, the fact that we have the inability to park anyone on Coldwater Canyon [creates] a much more stress-ful environment for all concerned,” he said.

In addition to the construction of the bridge, the library will be remod-eled. De Matte said there “has always been a need from the library for a new space,” but the construction of the Kut-ler Center expedited this process. In addition to general refurbishing, such as new carpeting and bookshelves, a multipurpose room will be added to the bottom floor of the library. It will be used as a classroom and a place for group study.

The library has been gutted and a temporary library has been set up in Chalmers East. About 25 percent of the library’s 20,000 volumes have been moved to the temporary library, with the rest in storage. The books that were moved to the new library were chosen based on circulation records and teacher selections, according to Acedo. The books in storage will be inaccessible to students. However, the librarians will be able to get any book requested through an interlibrary loan.

Four computers will be accessible to students to check their email and 20 laptops will be available for check out in Chalmers East. Acedo said she believes that students will be able to connect to the wireless network from personal laptops.

A structure has been built in the courtyard outside of Rugby Hall, where a tree was cut down amid protest last year to make space, to serve as the Si-lent Study. Acedo said that although it was built for Silent Study, it will be converted into classrooms once the li-brary is moved back.

The Tech Center will still be acces-sible to students through a door on the back of the old library.

Continued from page A1

Renovations reroute students

News A9ChroNiCle.hw.ComsepT. 7, 2011

The Upper School and its surrounding area have been under mass construction. Coldwater Canyon Avenue was gutted to insert new water pipes, leaving limited access to school entrances. School renovation has resulted in the relocation of the library, blocked class routes and limited parking. Traffic on and off campus will be affected.

Construction leads to change in arrival policyBy Victor Yoon

Policies for late student arrivals on campus have changed as a result of the construction taking place on campus and on Coldwater Canyon.

Previously, students who arrived at school late for their classes needed to check in with Attendance Coordi-nator Gabriel Preciado before pro-ceeding to class. However, because the construction on campus impedes

students’ routes to many classes, stu-dents are now supposed to go to class first and then sign in with Preciado after class.

Additionally, students no longer have to sign in with their teachers or with Preciado if they do not have a their first period class.

While seniors and juniors had this privilege in previous years, the policy was extended to sophomores in order to lessen the number of people

coming in to school at 8 a.m. Accord-ing to Preciado, the administration is hoping that this policy change will help reduce the traffic on Coldwater, which has increased as a result of the construction.

“For now, these changes are tem-porary,” Preciado said. “They may be-come permanent depending on how things go, but for now we’re hoping that students won’t abuse the chang-es.”

DEMOLITION: Zanuck Swim Stadium is being renovated at the cost of 15 parking spaces. The excavation has left a gaping hole next to Taper Gym, left. Mudd Library has been

stripped down and its contents moved to Chalmers for the construction of the Kutler Center, with the exception of the Tech Center. A worker dismantles the ventilation system, right.

Due to Kutler Center construction, direct routes to Seaver, Feldman-Horn and the Tech Center have been blocked. Letters indicate some alternate ways to get to class, all starting from the North Parking Lot. Numbers indicate directions to navigate around Coldwater Construction.

Mapping out construction

North Entrance: Limited accessA DWP worker will be directing traffic into the North Entrance.

2Main Entrance: OpenParents must drive around Hamilton Gymnasium for dropoff, and there is access to the senior lot.

1

3Hacienda Drive Entrance: OpenThere is access to both the junior and senior lots.

DANIEL KIM/CHRONICLE ELI HAIMS/CHRONICLE

SOURCE: HW.COMGRAPHIC BY ELI HAIMS AND MICHAEL SUGERMAN

TRAFFIC JAM: Due to construction on Coldwater Canyon Avenue, certain lanes are closed, top left. The stairs between Mudd Library and Seaver Academic Center is closed bottom right.

“The fact that we have the inability to park anyone on Coldwater Canyon creates a much more stressful environment for all concerned.”—Thomas C. HudnutPresident of School

The ChroniClenews A10 sepT. 7, 2011

New faces on campusNew middle school teachers

Shoshanna ThomasDepartment: Foreign Language (Spanish)

Thomas is substituting for Anamaria Ayala, a middle school spanish teacher on maternity leave.

“I hope to continue to learn about how a suc-cessful school operates.”

>>

This year, six teachers joined the middle school faculty.

Joe MedinaDepartment: Visual Arts

Medina previously worked for the photogra-phy department at Yuma High School and Arizona Western College.

“I cannot wait to see what inspires students in this community.”

>>

Adam RoseDepartment: English

Rose has substituted for English, History and Com-munications departments since 2005.

“I am ready to get into my own classroom and have my own students.”

>>

Jill TurnerDepartment: English

Turner used to teach Eng-lish III Honors and Ad-vanced Placement English at the Upper School.

“I feel like I’ll get to see smart, motivated stu-dents working their way through literary analysis.”

>>

Kathryn SampsonDepartment: Foreign Language (French)

Sampson replaced French teacher Stephanie Portal, who is on maternity leave and will not return.

“I’ve heard that [the students] are hardwork-ing and that makes me excited as a teacher.”

>>

TianTian WangDepartment: Foreign Lan-guage (Chinese)

Wang is from Nanjing and and has Master’s Degree in Chinese.

“Teaching teenagers will be an new experience.”

>>

Seven new teachers joined the upper school faculty, four new to Harvard-Westlake and three from the Middle School.

Visual Arts Department

Middle school visual arts teacher Alyssa Sherwood transfered to the-upper school this school year and is teaching Video Art and Drawing and Painting.

Sherwood previously worked at East Los Angeles Community College teach-ing 3-D animation. She was also part of the teaching staff at California State Summer school for the Arts, a summer

program at the California Institute of the Arts focused on middle and high school students. At the Middle School, Sherwood took over Andrew LauGel’s photography classes when he fell ill last year.

“Those two disciplines are more from my background becaue I’m an animator,” Sherwood said.

— Beatrice Fingerhut

Alyssa Sherwood

English Department

Sasha Watson joined the English department and is teaching English II and AP Language and Composition.

Watson is a specialist in 20th-cen-tury French poetry and taught French language and literature at New York University and Barnard College.

She was an arts journalist after college, and has written articles for the Los Angeles Times, Slate Magazine

and Publisher’s Weekly. This will be her first year teaching

high school. She wanted to either teach French of English.

“I want to teach depth and show students how far you can go into lit-erature,” Watson said. “I want to show students that you can always find yourself in great literature.”

— Micah Sperling

Sasha Watson

Amber Caron is teaching English II and English III: Living America this year.

“It has the spirit of a place that peo-ple want to be in,” Caron said. “Har-vard-Westlake seems like a unit. You walk onto campus because you want to be here and are eager to learn.”

Caron graduated from the Univer-sity of Hartford in Connecticut and at-

tended graduate school at Northeast-ern University. She later taught there for three years.

Recently, Caron worked for a non-profit organization, Write Girl, where she taught pregnant and teenage par-ents creative writing. She also partici-pated in a creative writing mentoring program with Write Girl.

— Mariel Brunman

Amber Caron

Science Department

Hilary Ethe ’00 moved from the middle school to teach Advanced Placement Environmental Science at the Upper School.

After five years of teaching Inte-grated Science I and II, Ethe said she is excited about her move and the new experiences to come. She also looks forward to the familiarity of the cam-

pus and the chances for good workouts walking the stairs at the Upper School.

“I try to remember what it’s like to take AP classes and understand the as-sociated challenges from the students perspective,” Ethe said. “If I can use this knowledge, I think I can become a better teacher.”

— Ana Scuric

Hilary Ethe

Nate Cardin is one of the two new chemistry teachers on the upper school science department staff this year.

“I really wanted to teach of chemis-try and science at the high school level because I remember the imapct my teacher had on me,” Cardin said.

He finished his graduate studies with a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Stanford this year. He received his un-

dergraduate degree in chemistry from Dartmouth in 2005.

This year will be his first year teach-ing after graduate school, but Cardin taught in the classroom and laboratory at both Dartmouth and Stanford.

“I’m really excited to experience all the different aspects the school has,” Cardin said.

— Daniel Kim

Narae Park was hired by the Upper School Science Department to teach two regular chemistry classes and two honors chemistry classes.

Park majored in Biochemistry/Chemistry at the University of Califor-nia, San Diego and received her Mas-ter’s degree in Organic Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology.

Park taught chemistry throughout col-lege and graduate school.

Since her graduation, Park has gone on a solo backpacking trip in Europe and has traveled all over the country, visiting Hawaii, Kansas, New Jersey, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington D.C.

— Sarah Novicoff

Narae Park

Nate Cardin

PHOTOS BY SARAH NOVICOFF

chronicle.hw.com news A11sept. 7, 2011

KABC honors junior for serviceBy Jamie Chang

Blake Nos-ratian ’13 was named a “Cool Kid” by KABC for his volun-teer work at the Veteran Affairs Health Care Sys-tem.

KABC names youths who have inspired and helped out in their com-munities “Cool Kids.”

“My job was to interview the pa-tients to gather the necessary data to make recommendations to the hospital administration on how to streamline health care delivery at the VA,” Nos-ratian said.

He started volunteering last year after a friend recommended it to him.

After conversing with veterans, Nos-ratian made suggestions to the hospi-tal administration to improve patient flow and the coordination of patient care.

Nosratian also led a project to col-lect magazines from local schools and libraries and update the issues weekly so the veterans could read while wait-ing.

While interviewing the veterans, Nosratian made personal connections with them.

He said he learned that although they are “remarkable human beings, the patriots, heroes and protectors of our country are devoid of the most ba-sic necessities, such as the ability to provide themselves with proper cloth-ing for a job interview.”

Nosratian said he is “now on a mis-sion to provide some of what our vet-erans need.”

By Keane muraoKa-robertson

Upper school Latin teacher Derek Wilai-rat participated in a Roman ar-chaeological dig in England with the Earthwatch program this July. Wilairat received funding from Blake Schlei Lindsley ’92 to participate in the program to enrich his knowledge of the Classics.

Earthwatch is an organization that hosts expeditions around the world.

Wilairat stayed in South Shield, a city in northeast England, with 10 other participants. Individuals inter-ested in archaeology, college students studying archaeology and teachers who had also received funding from their schools participated,

Wilairat worked with professional archaeologists at Arbeia, a Roman fort.

“It’s a lot of digging, moving earth around and also cataloging everything very carefully,” Wilairat said. “You have to keep track of where everything is found, diagram the ground you’re working on and record the data. It’s very scientific.”

Wilairat’s most memorable trip in England was to Hadrian’s Wall.

“I learned a lot about the history of Roman Britain,” Wilairat said. “I also learned a lot about Hadrian’s wall in great detail, which was actually near where I was working at the fort.”

Wilairat plans to incorporate the history the of Hadrian’s Wall into his daily lessons.

By maddy baxter

Twenty-seven students practiced their Spanish in nine different cit-ies in Spain this summer with four chaperones, while visiting local sights, museums, cathedrals, beaches and lo-cal shops. The purpose of the trip was to merge culture with language in a natural environment, foreign lan-guage teacher Javier Zaragoza said. He and foreign language teacher Andrew Brabbée led the trip with Zaragoza’s daughters, Laura ’06 and Catherine ’08.

Zaragoza has been the leading fac-ulty adviser for school trips over the summer and spring break since 1991. He has organized trips to Costa Rica, Argentina and two places in Mexico.

“When you are under an institute such as Costa Rica and Argentina, it’s quite expensive, so we wanted an envi-ronment where we put all of the mon-ey into the kids,” Zaragoza said. “The language, eventually, only takes care of itself if you have the passion and the

cultural interest.”The trip consisted of two “city ac-

tivities” per day, including tours and local trips. Students had to take part in two sessions a day of workshops and skill lessons at the hotel or on the bus. The workshops emphasized reading comprehension, oral drills, research, writing, vocabulary development, criti-cal thinking and deductive reasoning, and grammar. Daily quote exercises were accompanied by packets based on Spanish classes at Harvard-Westlake and catered to each student’s level.

The students were allowed time to explore the cities and had a midnight curfew each night.

“I designed the program so that the students were never all 27 at once, other than a couple of dinners and the bus, and I had them in different ho-tels,” Zaragoza said. “I wanted them to get that feel that they were looked at as an individual, not as a group.”

The group began in Madrid and traveled to Cordoba, Seville, Granada, Almeria, Murcia, Benidorm, Valencia

and Barcelona. “It was fun hearing all the differ-

ences in the accents and we had a lot of freedom so it was fun to have the op-portunity to explore the cities,” Annie Wasserman ’13 said.

“It was an incredible experience that completely changed the way I think of the language and culture,” An-drew Friendly ’14 said.

Zaragoza hopes to return to Spain for the summer trip next year. It is still undecided whether or not students will visit the same cities, in case some kids would like to go on the trip a second time. If the trip continues, it will in-clude more of northern Spain as well.

“In Spain, people are talking, they’re sharing, they’re enjoying and the students saw that. I think in time they’re going to see that this will be one of their greatest experiences, just because of the way it happened,” Zara-goza said. “And now, for the next year, I’m going to fine-tune the trip to the point where it will be 100 percent per-fect.”

Wolverines Eat Pizza From Mama’s and Papa’s !!!

Wilairat digs in England

ROWING THEIR BOATS: Tatiana Ettensberger ’14, Mazelle Etessami ’14, Andrew Friendly’14 and Jonathan Felker ’14, from left, spent an afternoon boating during a trip to a park in Madrid after visiting the El Prado and Reina Sofia museums.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF ANDREW BRABBÉE

Spanish students practice language in Spain

Blake Nosratian ’13nathanson’s/ChroniCle

Derek Wilairatnathanson’s/ChroniCle

Stop limiting us with P.E.

Fourteen months and $10 million later, the school promises a renovated campus next school year. In the meantime, however, we are stuck with a disjointed library with significantly fewer books, longer walks between classes and athletic practices that require buses. But it’s not that we don’t understand the value of the construction.

An interdisciplinary study center memorializing Brendan Kutler ’10 is a worthy endeavor, especially as the facilities that are created will serve students for many years to come.

The renovation of the library will have the harshest effects of all of the construction projects during the school year. No longer will the library be a place for students to study or to meet friends. Three quarters of the library’s volumes have been put away in storage, completely inaccessible to students.

As a school, we pride ourselves on having excellent research facilities available to students—eliminating access to so many books will hurt students’ ability to thoroughly complete research assignments. While the school promises that many more volumes will be available through interlibrary loans from other schools, we question the feasibility of using such a cumbersome process to get essential research materials.

The only remaining vestige of the old library, the Tech Center, will only be accessible from a back door between the Feldman-Horn Art Gallery and St. Saviour’s Chapel. It remains unclear whether students will make the trek all the way up there to use the computers, or

whether they will simply overcrowd the computers in Chalmers Hall and Munger Science Center.

While the fragmented library inconveniences students, it also hurts us sentimentally. The library was the hub of campus for many of us— a place to spend time with friends and to do our homework.

The new library, with its reduced size, is too small to fulfill the same role. Because of space constraints, there is no room for fiction and other pleasure reading books in the library. Instead, the temporary library functions only as a place for research.

Inevitably, the construction will affect classes in progress. History and foreign language classes are located in Seaver Hall, immediately next to the construction site. Loud construction noise could easily disrupt a test or a lecture in the south end of the building. In addition, classes may be disrupted when students show up late because of the long detours now required to get to some classrooms. This campus has not experienced construction on this scale since the 1994-1995 construction of Munger Science Center, and it is inevitable that further problems and complications will arise. Despite being larger in scale and in funding,

the Middle School Modernization Project had a much smaller impact on students because virtually all of the construction took place on new land acquisitions and in the former faculty parking lot, literally walled off from life on campus.

This project, on the other hand, takes place in the heart of the campus and will significantly affect student life.

With that said, we recognize that, given a project of this size, the administration has done as much as possible to lessen the impact on students.

We appreciate its effort to make replacement facilities available. It’s great that the librarians have made a huge effort to provide as many resources as possible given the tiny facility. Still, we miss our library, and the role it played as a place to do homework or spend time with friends. Hopefully the new, glass-paned and modernized library will serve the same purpose in the years to come.

The athletic department requires each student to complete six trimesters of physical education throughout the four years of high school. Athletes easily fulfill the requirement by playing on sports teams after school, but non-athletes must take physical education classes during the day.

These P.E. classes take up time in students’ schedules that could be spent in classes that genuinely interest them.

Although it is unintentional, the policy punishes non-athletes by taking away the academic flexibility that our school prides itself on. Everyone should have the same opportunity to fulfill the physical

education requirement after school. This could be accomplished by giving students credit for exercising on their own outside of Harvard-Westlake.

However, we understand administrators’ desire to keep fitness tied to campus life, so as a compromise, we should offer physical education after school.

P.E. teachers should hold classes like yoga or aerobics or let students sign in with a coach and exercise on workout machines. Just as sports teams practice after school, workout classes should be offered after the academic day so both athletes and non-athletes have the same amount of time during the day to devote to classes.

Physical education is not the problem. We appreciate the purpose of the requirement and applaud our school’s emphasis on health and fitness.

It is the policy, not the idea behind it, that is problematic because it makes exercise interfere with being a student.

Athletes get the full day to pack with courses, so let’s extend the same right to everyone.

Construction brings inconvenience

Eight periods a day. Seven slots for classes. Five core academic subjects. That seems to leave plenty of time for electives and free periods. But maybe not. One of the best aspects of our school is its variety of courses, but athletes have easier access because they don’t have to take physical education during academic periods.

SYDNEY FOREMAN AND RACHEL SCHWARTZ/CHRONICLE

pinionLos Angeles • Volume XXI • Issue I

The Chronicle • Sept. 7, 2011o

Vote of Editoral Board members present

18In favor

0Against

3Not voting

Vote of Editoral Board members present

19In favor

1Against

1Not voting

Editors in ChiEf: Judd Liebman, Lara Sokoloff

Managing Editors: Eli Haims, Allison Hamburger, Austin

Lee, Saj Sri-Kumar

ExECutivE Editors: Justine Goode, Rebecca Nussbaum

PrEsEntations Editors: Chloe Lister, Arielle Maxner, Victor

Yoon

ads ManagEr:Alex Gura

BusinEss ManagErs: Sanjana Kucheria, Susan Wang

assistants:Tara Stone

ChiEf CoPy Editor: Micah Sperling

ChiEf of PhotograPhy: Daniel Kim

PhotoshoP Editor: Hank Gerba

nEws Managing Editors: Maddy Baxter, Nika Madyoon

sECtion hEads: David Lim, Keane Robertson,

Michael SugermannEws CoPy Editor:

Ana Scuricassistants:

Julia Aizuss, Beatrice Fingerhut,Jivani Gengatharan, Jack Goldfisher,

Claire Goldsmith, Lauren Sonnenberg, Noa Yadidi

oPinion Managing Editors: Abbie Neufeld, Anabel Pasarow

sECtion hEads: Mariel Brunman, Rachel Schwartz

oPinion CoPy Editor: Ana Scuric

oPinion assistants: Sarah Novicoff, Lizzy Thomas

fEaturEs Managing Editors: Cami de Ry, Megan Kawasaki

fEaturEs sECtion hEads:Michael Rothberg, Megan Ward,

Elana ZeltserfEaturEs CoPy Editor:

Carrie DavidsonfEaturEs assistants:

Eojin Choi, Sydney Foreman, Eric Greenberg, David Gisser, Jessica Lee, Jessica Murdock,

Morganne Ramsey, Emily Segal, Lauren Siegel

sCiEnCE & hEalth Editor: Jessica Barzilay

sCiEnCE & hEalth sECtion hEad:Gabrielle Franchina

CEntErsPrEad Editors: Caitie Benell, Jamie Chang

arts & EntErtainMEnt Editor:Claire Hong

arts & EntErtainMEnt sECtion hEads:

Maggie Bunzel, Aaron Lyons

sPorts Managing Editors: David Kolin, Julius Pak

sECtion hEads: Michael Aronson, Luke Holthouse,

Camille ShooshanisPorts CoPy Editor:

Robbie LoebsEnior sPortswritEr:

Charlton Azuomaassistants:

Eric Loeb, Grant Nussbaum, Patrick Ryan, Lucy Putnam,

Sam Sachs

ChroniClE.hw.CoM Editors in ChiEf

Eli Haims, Austin LeeonlinE Editors:

David Gobel, Alex Gura, Sanjana Kucheria, Chelsea

Khakshouri, Cherish Molezion, Shana Saleh, Meagan Wang, Susan Wang

onlinE assistants:Mazelle Etessami, Jensen Pak,

Malanna Wheat

advisEr: Kathleen Neumeyer

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 Alex Gura at (310) 467-1797. Publication of an advertisement does not imply endorsement of the product or service by the newspaper or the school.

hronicleThe harvard-WesTlakec3700 Coldwater Canyon, Los Angeles, CA 91604

By Micah Sperling

Harry Potter is over. Or so ev-eryone thinks.

When I hear that this summer’s Harry Potter film marks the end of an era, I feel baffled and frus-trated by the fact that people don’t understand how much Harry Potter means to me and many other fans I know, and how that makes Harry Pot-ter immortal in more ways than his survival of the killing curse…too many times to count.

I went to see “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2” twice, once at the Harvard-Westlake screen-ing and once at the midnight pre-miere. I dressed up both times with friends who did the same. Now my cloak, my Gryffindor tie and plastic wand lay somewhere in my closet, sadly never to be worn to a Harry Potter premiere again.

Even though the story of the “Golden Trio” (Harry, Ron and Herm-ione) is successfully concluded, there are still worlds to explore in the Har-ry Potter universe. Much is left unsaid of the wizarding world’s history, or of its future with the next generation of Potters, Weasleys, Malfoys and other magical names the Sorting Hat has sung out. The gaps are filled by our own imaginations or those of fanfic-tion writers. It is for love of Harry Potter that millions of fans eagerly joined the website “Pottermore,” J. K. Rowling’s latest extenuation of the books, before its official public release.

Having grown up with Harry Pot-ter and seen his ups and downs, I feel a connection to the series that can-not be broken, no matter how old it becomes. I never tire of rereading the novels, for each time the adventure shows me something slightly differ-ent, a fresh perspective as my new experiences give me more insight into Harry’s problems.

Harry Potter will live on. He and his friends have become so embed-ded into our popular culture that the thought of his dying just encourages fans to keep him alive. Loving Harry Potter has become a part of who I am, and to take him out would leave a gaping hole. If enough people make an effort and show their love for some-thing, no matter what, it will never die. Lily Potter proved that. So find something you want to keep alive, and hold on to it. I, for one, will never let Harry Potter go.

Harry is in our hearts

I have visited France almost every summer of my life because my mother does research in Paris each

year. She speaks French flawlessly. I used to look on and catch a few phrases as she chatted away with her French friends, but mostly I felt envi-ous of my mom and separated from these people by the language barrier.

Although I had studied French a bit before coming to Harvard-West-lake, it was not until seventh grade that I began to improve.

Each summer, I have come to love the country more and more, but this year my experience was more fulfill-ing because I had the ability to com-municate and understand what went on around me. I felt as though I had

slipped into the skin of a true Parisi-enne.

Speaking French not only acts as a tool for communication, but also opens a window into French culture. Being able to overhear conversations, order my own patisseries and see French films gave me deeper insight into French life.

This summer, I felt I could truly be in France since I no longer needed to translate French commands or requests into English in my head to understand their meaning.

Standing on the bus squished against a bunch of commuters on a hot day, a man whispered to me under his breath “insupportable” (“unbear-able”). As I replied with an under-

standing nod, I realized that because I now understand French, I could masquerade as French and escape the whispers of “tourist” that locals so often murmer.

Gaining greater insight into French culture has helped me look at America differently. I get a chance to see my country through the eyes of a culture that at first glance seems sim-ilar, but with closer study, is unique.

For example, this summer I learned that French and American concepts of secularism differ greatly. My patriotic instinct is, of course, to assume that we have the most egali-tarian policy.

Unlike in the United States, where separation of church and state is seen

as the freedom to practice any reli-gion wherever one chooses, in France, secularism blindly bans all religion from the public sphere. While at first the French policy may seem draconian and inhibiting towards freedom, it reveals that the French see religion as a completely private matter.

Just after finals, I found it difficult to even look at any academic material or to appreciate what I had learned during the year, but spending time abroad this summer reminded me of the importance of studying a foreign language at school.

Language study in high school can help you become bilingual. To fully comprehend another culture, under-standing their language is key.

By arielle

Maxner

I’ve always loved everything Japanese. From samurai to sashimi, the history, culture and

food of the “Land of the Rising Sun” have fascinated me my entire life. So when Chase Basich ’11 told me about a Japanese-American “cultur-al exchange,” I was immediately in-terested. The program, High School Diplomats, takes 40 American high school students and 40 Japanese students to Princeton University for 10 days.

From the moment the Japanese students arrived, I knew I was go-ing to have a great time and learn a lot. I tend to talk really fast, so I had to work hard to slow down enough for the Japanese students to understand. Slowing down my talking also made me think about what I was saying much more than I usually do. While I got annoyed at first about not being able to have a rapid-fire debate with any of the Japanese students, I got used to my new talking speed pretty quickly.

Discussing the differences between Japanese and American schools with the Japanese students was one of my favorite experi-ences of the program. In Japan, the students stay in one room for the entire day and it’s the teachers who move from room to room. Lunch

is served in the classroom, as well. Japanese students can only be in-volved in one club, because they all meet after school. There are no of-ficial school teams—all of them meet as part of a club. I think the biggest difference, though, is the Japanese college admissions process. Japanese high school seniors take a national entrance exam. If their scores are high enough, they can take the entrance exam for the university of their choice. Grades don’t matter. There are no essays. Colleges don’t care if your teachers like you or not. Everything is based on these two test scores.

In Japan, if you want to be an executive, you really have to go to Tokyo University, Keio University, or Waseda University. In America, you can run a company even if you don’t go to an Ivy League School.

People complain that the American system doesn’t take who you are as a person into account enough, but having a system simply based on two exam scores doesn’t consider anything besides how you did on those exams.

What I thought was interest-ing was that most of the Japanese students favored the American sys-tem because they said it put more importance on what you’re like as a

person. In contrast, the American students tended to like the Japanese system because your high school grades matter less.

I prefer the American holistic system, but I can see how easy one equalizing national exam would make the whole process.

Every day in class, we did both language and culture. I went in with no experience, but by the end of the program, I could carry on a basic conversation in Japanese. I’m disap-pointed, though, that I won’t be able to continue my Japanese instruc-tion at school. Part of the reason I transferred to Harvard-Westlake was to be able to take Japanese, and the loss of that program is one of the things that I wish was differ-ent about school. Besides starting a Japanese cultural and language instruction club on campus, it’s hard for me and other interested students who don’t already speak Japanese to further our passion.

The phrase people use a lot at HSD is “the best 10 days of your life.” Going in, I thought that was just an exaggeration. Looking back, though, I don’t know how trite the saying was. All the great discussions I had and the people I met certainly made it rank among my favorite experiences.

Learn from cultural differences

RACHEL SCHWARTZ/CHRONICLE

Paris, je t’adore en Juillet-Paris, I love you in JulyBy rachel Schwartz

chronicle.hw.com opinion A13Sept. 7, 2011

Speaking French not only acts as a tool for communication, but also opens a window into French culture.

By DaviD Lim

Being a senior freaks me out. As an underclassman I saw (most) seniors as effortlessly

and unattainablely cool. They were automatically made way more awe-some because of their age despite their probable normalcy.

From my newly aerial view, I know now that being a senior isn’t as glamorous as certain Facebook photo albums make it out to be. I find myself at a crossroads between fear of be-ing older and total excitement at the prospect.

I question whether I’m ready to begin my last year in high school as the impending college send-off plagues me with nerves. I have resolved to appreciate every last moment I have here.

Too often, time passes me by dur-ing the school year. I think strictly in terms of due dates, and my longing for the weekend inhibits my presence in the “now.”

I am hereby inaugurating a new school year resolution: even if dread-ing an AP Environmental Science oral presentation, I shall not waste the preceding days being totally consumed by anxiety. I will savor each day apart from said dread and then allow, like, 15 minutes to freak out beforehand.

I stare at this Word document, and attentive sophomores stand by wait-ing to be assigned Photoshop tasks. The authority is equal parts scary and great. I like the power, but I sort of miss the lack of responsibility and the ability to rely on seemingly qualified older people. I can only hope that I look like I know what I’m doing and that I can be reliable.

I hope to make the best out of my last year on the Chronicle, and I hope to do my fellow seniors proud, regard-less of whether or not underclassmen think I’m cool.

I want to challenge myself and to enjoy every last class and free period that I have. I want to grow as a person this year too. Bring it on! I combat all things scary in my future. I welcome the new with a little bit of trepidation but with a mostly open mind.

And I’m excited to wear a wreath on my head at Ring Ceremony.

Bring it on, senior year

I spent my summer in a plasma physics lab at the University of California, Los Angeles. On the

first day of work, I was given a com-puter and an instrument used to measure light and essentially told to make it work.

With no programming experience and not formally working with anyone, I was daunted by the task at hand and very surprised at the independence and responsibility that my professor gave me.

Along with this independence came a very flexible lunch hour, which allowed me to spend a good deal of time with friends who were also in-terning in labs.

I can’t even count the number of people who told me that all they did was follow a graduate student around

or do busy work for hours at a time. I was very glad (and somewhat lucky as well) to find a lab where I was given so much autonomy.In fact, I think that I accomplished more given this level of independence than I would have if I were just give a step-by-step check-list that I had to have completed by the summer. Experiencing frustration when I couldn’t get something to work and satisfaction once I finally did get it to work unparalleled.

Few times before had I ever felt so accomplished and had such a signifi-cant level of personal growth. Unfor-tunately, Harvard-Westlake doesn’t do much to encourage independent study during the school year.

Yes, we do have a Senior Inde-pendent Study program, but it seems like it is not taken advantage of. Last

year only eight seniors participated. It seems that the requirements for this program are so restrictive that not many people are able to take part. Last year, I considered taking part in the SIS program.

One of the requirements is for a student to find a faculty member to sponsor him or her. Faculty members already take on a large workload, and mentoring a student poses an ad-ditional time commitment, including weekly meetings and grading at the end of the semester. Many students would also have to drop a class in or-der to take part. Students are only al-lowed to take seven periods of classes per semester and the SIS program counts as one of these periods.

The students who are interested in an SIS seem to be very self-

motivated, the type who pack their schedules with as many classes as possible, leaving no room for an SIS, especially second semester, if they had not previously considered it.A second independent study program, designed not for a grade but for a student’s own benefit, could solve this problem.

Instead of producing 40 page papers, students could produce 15 or 20 page papers. Instead of weekly meetings with teachers, there could be biweekly or monthly meetings. Instead of it taking a class period like the SIS program, it could be up to the student to find time.

This way, the student would be able to gain from an independent study while not having to meet all of the requirements of the current system.

By anaBeL

Pasarow

Every August as we all try to hold on to the last days of summer, we re-enter the

world of school by the arrival of our schedules.

Unlike most of my fellow class-mates, I jump past the mess of class numbers to the bottom and find the “Scheduling Conflicts” section as full as it has been for the past four years for me.

I cannot help but feel a little dissapointed by the rather mys-terious and complex machinery of the scheduling system. After all, our schedules are a carefully selected palette of classes that ide-ally somewhat reflect our inter-ests and who we think we can be at Harvard-Westlake. Overall, I think the scheduling system works amazingly, considering that it must accommodate the classes of almost 900 upper school students. The vast majority of around 1,000 schedul-ing requests every year are either requesting teachers or changing the period of a class.

Yet, I have been in that minority of 40-50 people with conflicts for all but the first year of my Harvard-Westlake career due to my unusual combination of classes, and I have had no option but to reconcile my-self with this yearly phenomenon.

I have realized the last-minute tweaks to my schedule forced by these conflicts have helped me reevaluate my passions and pushed me to try courses I never would have considered before. This year, my schedule delivered a conflict be-tween Advanced Placement Biology and Chemistry, showing me I’d be unable to double up on science my junior year. After a string of rapid-fire emails back and forth with my dean, it seemed Latin Literature would be on the chopping block to preserve the science classes I thought I valued the most.

After seeing my dean again, I realized biology was the science I absolutely wanted to keep and that I would regret turning my back on Latin forever just to stick with the schedule I penciled in months ago.

Against the advice of seniors who urged me to keep AP Chem-istry, I dropped the class. I plan to take the class next year, although I regret losing the experience of taking the class with a small group of my fellow juniors. With a stack of Ovid, Cicero and Sallust arriving in my book box, I am sure I made the right decision and look forward to a year in a class I will surely enjoy for its own sake. Also, this year’s conflicts have pushed me into

AP Physics C: Mechanics, a class I had not really considered previ-ously. Yet, I am eager to try the class out. A schedule conflict back in eighth grade led me to abandon a photography class and check out journalism on the Spectrum for the first time. If my schedule had not worked out exactly as I wanted it, I would not have been writing this article for the Chronicle.

The valuable lesson here is stated perfectly by Rolling Stones in their song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

No matter how hard we try, life never follows any plan we may come up with. This applies to the little things in life such as my ju-nior year schedule and more impor-tant life-changing situations that I have not yet faced.

Instead of losing sleep over our plans not working out exactly as we wanted, we can use such obstacles as opportunities for us to figure out what really matters and live a little by trying things we wouldn’t otherwise.

Although “you can’t always get what you want,” life all works out in the end, just as Mick Jagger belts out: “But if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.”

Appreciate your optionsSYDNEY FOREMAN AND RACHEL SCHWARTZ/CHRONICLE

Give us an opportunity for independenceBy eLi Haims

Sept. 7, 2011A14 OpiniOn the ChrOniCle

Yes, we do have a Senior Independent Study program, but it seems like it is not taken advantage of. Last year only eight seniors participated. It seems that the requirements for this program are so restrictive that not many people are able to take part.

Whether it’s renovation or repair, there is construction all around us. We have

changes on campus and right outside on Coldwater. The Chronicle is no exception.

We have made design and content changes that we hope you appreciate. Although the changes may not be apparent to all of our readers, we have tried to make our paper more reader-friendly and professional.

We are also in the process of redesigning our website with the help of Web Manager Lillian Contreras. Our website is still up and running, and we will continue to update it regularly.

Even though we have moved toward instant, online news, the Chronicle’s integrity and accuracy will not be sacrificed. Our goal is still to seek and report the truth every day. We don’t do this for us; we do it for you. We want you to pick up and read the Chronicle.

If you don’t regularly read our publication, tell us why and tell us how we can improve. It’s our job to relay the news and it’s your job to critique it.

We have one of the largest staffs in the history of our newspaper, and we hope our size will provide you with wider and more frequent coverage in print and at chronicle.hw.com. Our goal is to make the website your day-to-day source for campus and sports news.

We are hoping to get your feedback online through comments on the website or via email. We encourage you to email chronicle@hw.com with any suggestions or questions.

— Judd Liebman ’12 and Lara Sokoloff ’12, Editors-in-Chief

Give us feedback

MARIEL BRUNMAN/CHRONICLE

IN CHARGE: Editors in Chief Lara Sokoloff ’12 and Judd Liebman ’12 want to maintain the integrity of the paper, while focusing on immediate journalism.

letters

Welcome to the 2011-2012 school year — a year that brings with it a unique op-

portunity for growth and change. While physical construction is tak-

ing place on and around our campus, we too can do our part to build and shape Harvard-Westlake. Whether this is through establishing new clubs, creating legendary events or promot-ing technological advances, we have the chance to make a lasting impres-sion.

We are excited that this year Prefect Council will have a permanent presence on the Faculty Academic Comittee, which will allow us to main-tain a continuous dialogue between faculty members, administrators and students.

While we have myriad ideas to improve the student academic experi-ence, we want to hear what you think. At the core, we are a council meant to represent you, and that is what we

intend to do.However, our goals are not simply

focused on the academic realm, but also on the social life of the school. We want to find new and different ways to come together beyond the classroom and our success in accom-plishing this is contingent upon our collective participation as a student community. Student initiative is para-mount and our job as a council will be to help bring your creativity and in-novation to fruition. We can’t do this alone, though, and urge you to remain in constant communication with your class representatives.

Sophomores—take advantage of the numerous resources Harvard-Westlake has to offer. Upper class-men—follow through on those exciting projects you began years ago but have yet to finish.

This is a time for all of us to try something different, to think outside the box. This is a time for all of us to

work together to create a legacy that will impact future Harvard-Westlake classes for years to come.

— Rishi Bagrodia ‘12 and Brooke Levin ’12, Head Prefects

OPEN CHANNELS: Head Prefects Rishi Bagrodia ’12 and Brooke Levin ’12 hope to enhance communication between members of the school community.

MARIEL BRUNMAN/CHRONICLE

Help us make history

chronicle.hw.com opinion A15Sept. 7, 2011

Dear Students,

What does it mean to “live with integrity and purpose?” What does it mean to “be

a contributing member of society?” Having some answers to those questions is important to us because each question is related to a promise that we, your teachers, have made to you. It is our school’s Mission to teach, to guide, and to support each student toward a goal – that goal being to live with integrity and purpose as a contributing member of society. It is our mission to nurture the growth of your talent in the service of human freedom and a humane society.

So what does it mean to be a contributing member of society? It means pitching in, it means leveraging your considerable talents, skills and relationships to improve the lives

of the people in your community – whether that be our school community or one much larger. Contributing to the greater good nearly always implies making something good happen – building what wasn’t there before, changing the status quo, creating, leaving a legacy, making your mark.

Several months ago, I saw a wonderful documentary about a group of people living in Central China in a village plagued by the pollution resulting from a nearby unregulated chemical factory. Recognizing that none of them could do alone what all of them might be able to accomplish together, they persisted in a five-year struggle to stop the pollution. Affixing their fingerprints to petitions, they literally “made their marks” in support of their common cause and as contributing members of their society. The filmmakers who chronicled the

villagers’ struggle also “made their mark.” Once the story had been told and memorialized on film, it was nearly impossible for government authorities to ignore the petitions.

This year, please think about ways that you can contribute to the greater good of your community. Dream big! Imagine ways that you can make your mark in service to others, and let us know how we can help you realize those dreams.

My best wishes for a wonderful school year.

— Jeanne Huybrechts, Head of School

Huybrechts suggests ‘make your mark’

Jeanne Hyubrechtsnathanson’s/chronicle

330 students weighed in on the Chronicle poll

182No, because I have fulfilled my P.E. requirement through sports.

54No, it has not restricted me in my class selection.

58Yes, I have been unable to take an elective because of it.

32Yes, I have been unable to take an academic class because of it.

4 No, because I enjoy the P.E. classes.

“Have you felt restricted in your class selection due to the P.E. requirement?”

“No. I do sports after school so I get more

free periods.”

quadtalk The Chronicle asked:

“I love doing dance at school and dance fulfills the requirement, but I do think that having a P.E. requirement is good.”

Letters to the editorThe Chronicle welcomes comments from our readers. Letters must be signed, although names may be withheld on request. Please do not exceed 350 words.

Please send letters to:The Chronicle3700 Coldwater Canyon Ave.Weiler Hall, Room 108Studio City, Calif. 91604

Or, by email: chronicle@hw.com

“Yes, I had to take yoga when I wanted to take psychology last year.”

—Olivia Schiavelli ’12

—Arianna Lanz ’13

—Gabriel Araya ’14

PHOTOS BY MARIEL BRUNMAN

exposureClass reunion Seniors and faculty convened in Chalmers Patio on

Sept. 1 to promote class bonding and welcome the new school year at the Senior-Faculty Barbeque.

Sept. 7, 2011 A16

MINGLING: Middle school science teacher Elliot Parivar and Marissa Lepor ’12 catch up, upper left. Seniors and faculty line up for lunch provided by Wood Ranch Grill, bottom left. Noah Ross ’12 and Hannah Zipperman ’12 share a laugh, upper middle. Director for Alumni Giving Greg O’Leary and Director for Alumni Relations Susan Beeson ’96 introduce themselves, lower middle. Head of Upper School Harry Salamandra greets barbeque attendees, top right. Max Warwick ’12 and Bella Hicks ’12 chat and eat lunch, bottom right.

CHLOE LISTER/CHRONICLE

CHLOE LISTER/CHRONICLE

CHLOE LISTER/CHRONICLE

CHLOE LISTER/CHRONICLE

CHLOE LISTER/CHRONICLE

MICHAEL ROTHBERG/CHRONICLE

eaturesLos Angeles • Volume XXI • Issue I

The Chronicle • Sept. 7, 2011FThe open

By Justine Goode

The windows are rolled down and the breeze is whipping your hair in your face. There’s a blue sky

above you and a stretch of open high-way in front of you. It’s the quintessen-tial image of a road trip, as romanti-cized and satirized in dozens of movies and songs.

This summer, deciding to forgo planes in favor of trains and auto-mobiles, students and teachers found their experiences on and off the road to be just as adventurous and unpre-dictable as those of their silver screen counterparts.

English teacher Jeremy Michael-son piled his family into a Chrys-ler sedan for a roundtrip drive from Lawrence, Kan. to Stone Harbor, N.J., taking the northern route out to the shore and the south-ern route back. The family passed through through 12 states over the course of the three week trip, but spent most of their time in Kentucky, New Jer-sey and West Virginia. Michaelson and his family usually fly di-rectly to the Jersey shore every summer, but decided this year to start in Kansas and drive the rest of the way. The family made both scenic and sentimental stops along the way, driving out of their way to visit Charlottesville, Va., where Michaelson and his wife lived in a cottage in the countryside.

“We have really fond memories of our time there and wanted to visit our old place,” said Michaelson. “Also, on the way back to Kansas, we drove the Ohio River Scenic Byway, a windy two-lane highway that skirts the Ohio Riv-er through southern Indiana. It’s not spectacular scenery, but it’s beautiful — rolling hills, river bluffs, small family farms. People on the coasts sometime underestimate the quiet beauty of the Midwest.”

Another highlight was eating at one of his “all-time favorite restaurants,” the Bon Ton Mini Mart in Henderson, Ky., and erasing his family’s doubts about whether the savory cuisine was worth the extra mileage.

“It’s a total dive, the hours are ir-regular, and there’s only one lady who cooks everything, but it is, without a doubt, the best fried chicken you will ever have,” he said. “I’d eaten there before with my son, but my wife and daughter had never been. They didn’t think it would be worth the 70-mile

detour it took to get there. And then they ate. Let’s just say the conversion was swift.”

The vacation afforded Michaelson and his family a road trip experience full of both the highs and lows that are associated with that type of travel.

“If we hadn’t driven, we wouldn’t have bickered as much,” he said. “Then again, we wouldn’t have listened to Harry Potter together, used too many napkins at the fried chicken place or watched heat lightning flash over the corn fields of Illinois.”

On the other side of the coun-try, Maddy Morency ’12 crowded into a small car with her sister Alex ’10 and Alex’s boyfriend to go to Outside Lands, a music festival held in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, Calif.

“We decided to drive just because it seemed kind of fun, and I’ve always

wanted to take a road trip with friends,” Morency said.

The drive from Los An-geles to San F r a n c i s c o , about 382 miles, took around seven hours with

stops to eat and stretch. For most of the ride, Morency was cramped in the back seat of the car while her sister and boyfriend took turns driving. Once in San Francisco, Morency stayed in a different place than her sister, leaving her and the friends she met up with without any means of transportation.

“We bummed rides off of other people mostly, but on the first day of the festival, we had no way to get home,” Morency said. “The buses were so packed that they didn’t even stop at certain stops, because they couldn’t pick anyone else up and all the cab numbers were busy. It was really hec-tic, but we ended up running into peo-ple we knew who gave us a ride.”

Maddie Lear ’13 experienced simi-lar struggles trying to get back into the city from Outside Lands.

“Taxi drivers would avoid the fes-tival, so we would just roam around waiting for a bus to stop,” she said. “We met some interesting people while try-ing to chase down a train.”

To get to the festival, Lear took an Amtrak train from Union Sta-tion in downtown Los Angeles along with Alex Gura ’12 and Shana Saleh ’12. A five-hour ride took them to San Luis Obispo, Calif., where they even-tually boarded a bus. After another five hours, they finally reached San

Francisco. They decided on the mode of transportation more out of conve-nience than anything else, Lear said.

“Alex and I had the idea to take the train for the past month before the festival. My sister flew, but we didn’t make plans with her, so taking the train was the easiest last minute method of transportation,” Lear said.

The trio passed the nearly 12 hours of travel time by talking, eating, and watching Gura’s favorite cartoon, “Ad-venturetime.” Their arrival in San Francisco in the early evening was somewhat of a relief, as they had come close to missing their train that morn-ing.

“We were worried that we weren’t going to make the train, because we were running late and the train station downtown is so confusing,” said Lear. “So just trying to make sure we got on the train in the first place was the only thing kind of crazy that happened.”

Liliana Muscarella ’12 also headed up the California coast, but with more academic destinations in mind. After spending a night in Paso Robles, Ca-lif., she and her family made stops in Santa Cruz, Calif., Palo Alto, Calif., Berkeley, Calif. and Davis, Calif. before ending the trip in Yosemite National Park, where they stayed for three days. Though the majority of the trip focused on touring colleges, the relaxed pace of driving allowed her to visit interesting places near each one, like the historic Santa Cruz Pier.

“The evening we walked along the pier, there were all these sea lions, as well as random people doing salsa dancing right on the beach,” Muscarel-la said.

The most memorable moment of the trip occurred as Muscarella hiked up Vernal Falls in Yosemite, where three hikers were swept over a water-fall in July. Search-and-rescue teams swept the area immediately but failed to locate the hikers, and the three were presumed dead. While Muscarella was on the trail, the first of the miss-ing bodies was recovered by another search-and-resuce team. Helicopters buzzed overhead as Muscarella was forced to detour around the recovery site.

“The road trip itself was nice be-cause I went with my mom and our family friends, and I enjoyed just relax-ing with them, driving and listening to music,” she said. “I would never neces-sarily go there to a lot of the colleges’ locations, even though they’re relative-ly close. But they were really beautiful, and I’m glad this trip gave me the op-portunity to see them and other parts of the state.”

“The road trip itself was nice because I went with my mom and our family friends, and I enjoyed just relaxing with them, driving and listening to music.”

—Liliana Muscarella ’12

Opting for land-based transportation instead of airplanes, students and teachers drove to various locations across the country for vacations, music festivals and college tours.

GRAPHIC BY CHLOE LISTER AND VICTOR YOON

road

Discovering new cultures abroad

Sept. 7, 2011B2 FeatureS the ChroniCle

Over the summer, students occupied themselves by getting jobs or interning for various companies, gaining useful skills during their employment.

Workingthe summer shift

SUMMER JOBS: Gabi Kuhn ’12 organiz-es the straws at Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf on Ventura Blvd., above. Nikki Goren ’12 takes an order at Sprinkles Cupcakes in Beverly Hills, left.

By Morganne raMsey

On her way to her summer job in France, Solange Etessami ’13 was stopped at immigration

in Amsterdam. She said the customs agent found it odd that a 16-year-old was traveling alone to an obscure town in southwest France and delayed her before eventually letting her into the country.

For the end of July and most of August, Etessami worked at the Man-oir d’Hautegente in Coly, France. Her responsibilities included secretarial duties, working in the restaurant and watching the restaurant owners’ chil-dren.

“I was kind of a full-time nanny,” Etessami said.

Etessami first got the idea to work at the hotel from her father, who had stayed there a year earlier. He thought it would give her a chance to improve her French. Etessami had only taken French for a year before going to Coly.

“I definitely learned a lot of vocab,” she said. “It improves conversational skills.”

Oscar Beer ’12 worked for Meyle HD, a German company that produces spare automobile parts. The job enabled him to spend a month in Shanghai.

Beer is fluent in German, the lan-guage spoken within the company, so communication was not an obstacle.

“I just wanted the experience and to go to China,” he said. “It was sort of

a win-win.”Vivien Mao ’12 also interned in

Shanghai, working in public relations for two months. She corrected her co-workers’ English and translated Chi-nese into English for their European clients.

This was Mao’s second time intern-ing abroad.

“As our world is becoming more globalized, having experience in foreign countries means having a better un-derstanding of working in an unfamil-iar territory, as well as forcing a per-son to overcome the potential language barrier,” she said.

Mao decided to intern in China because she wanted to improve her Chinese skills, she said. She said that during her time there, her grasp of the language improved.

“It wouldn’t be an understate-ment to say that one of my crowning achievements was being able to have a 20 minute conversation with a cab driver where he couldn’t tell I was American,” she said.

Elaine Tang ’12 also had a chance to develop her Chinese, spending six weeks in Beijing working for a studio that specializes in animation and spe-cial effects. The company she worked at, Xing Xing, was involved in the films “Madagascar,” “Veggie Tales” and “Twilight.”

“I loved that I was able to not only experience China and its culture, but also got real work experience,” she said.

Stepping into the employees’ shoesBy elana Zeltser

By working full-time jobs over the summer, Taylor Cooper ’13, Na-dia Dubovitsky ’12, Nikki Goren

’12 and Gabi Kuhn ’12 gained more than just pocket money: they learned how to be more respectful and consci-entious customers.

According to Slate Magazine, the number of teenagers who forgo sum-mer jobs is at an all-time high, yet these students unanimously said view-ing their consumer world from the other side of the register is enlighten-ing.

Working anywhere from five to eight hours, five days a week, they said they gained a whole new repertoire of skills and understandings.

“I learned how to make an awesome Ice Blended, but more importantly I really learned how to behave with customers in different situations, and that translates to relationships with all people in life,” Kuhn said of her time at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf on Ven-tura Blvd.

Standing on a storeroom floor for an entire workday, as Cooper did in the clothing store Brandy and Melville, was daunting and often painful for her feet, she said. However, her job gave her the chance to see how customers be-have and treat the store as they shop, so Cooper could make mental notes for herself for the future.

“I’m definitely going to be very careful to keep everything folded when I go into stores and not make a mess,” Cooper said. “It’s so annoying when customers do that.”

All of the girls had perks and em-ployee discounts, but they all said the best part of their respective work ex-periences were the people they met on

the job. Goren, who was a cupcake associ-ate at Sprinkles Cup-cakes, befriended peo-ple of different ages who she otherwise might never have en-countered.

Dubovitsky, who worked at a family-run ice cream shop, Ice and Cream, had a similar experience.

“The people were so nice and we became a close-knit family, which was very surprising for me,” Dubovitsky said.

As the start of school rapidly ap-proaches, Cooper, Dubovitsky and Goren resigned from their positions. They said they may return during the breaks from school in spring, winter or next sum-mer. Kuhn, however, plans to balance school and her job at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf where she will work from 3 to 8 p.m. on weekdays in addition to working weekends. She said she hopes to even continue as a barista during college.

“The really great thing about Cof-fee Bean is that as long as there is one wherever I’m going, I could get trans-ferred really easily, and I would get preference over new people because I have experience,” Kuhn said.

“I liked the feeling of knowing that there was somewhere I had to go and something I had to do,” Goren said. “When I buy things it really is my money that I worked hard for.”

WORKING ABROAD: Solange Etessami ’13 holds a child whom she cared for as an au pair this summer in France, above. Vivien Mao’s ’12 plane ticket of her flight from Los Angeles to Shanghai, below.

MA

ZE

LL

E E

TE

SS

AM

I/C

HR

ON

ICL

E

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF NIKKI GOREN

ELANA ZELTSER/CHRONICLE

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF VIVIEN MAO

Researching new fields

Exploring the fashion world

ChroniCle.hw.Com FeatureS B3Sept. 7, 2011

LAB RESEARCH: James Wu ’13 handles a part used in build-ing a cryogenic cell, above. Julie Ko ’12 examines a fruit fly under a microscope, left. Daniel Bai ’12 analyzes data on a plasma machine, which creates plasma, below.

PASSION FOR FASHION: Melanie Chan ’12 had one of her stories featured on the website Styleite.

By eojin Choi

Injecting experiment mice, dissect-ing them and making blocks of their hearts were among many of

the tasks Crystal Ho ’12, Megan Kawa-saki ’12, Christina Yang ’12 and alum-nus Hank Adelmann ’11 executed at their summer internship at Moshe Ar-diti’s Infectious Disease lab at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Ho and Yang both found out about this program from upper school sci-ence teacher David Hinden, who con-tacted Moshe Arditi. This was Yang’s second time in the lab, having worked a total of 203 hours, while Ho worked for 159 hours.

Other tasks at the lab included staining slides and counting the T-cells in the mice. Yang said her experience taught her much about the work it takes to perform an entire experiment properly in a research lab setting.

“Unlike labs at school, the projects in the lab can take years to complete, and the procedures are much more complicated,” Yang said. “I value my time spent in the lab for the past two summers because I think it has helped me do the labs at school well, especially in Human Anatomy. I’ll probably use what I learned in Genetics this upcom-ing year as well.”

Ashley Wu ’13 worked at the Bouchard lab at UCLA after search-ing for labs she might be interested in online. Going to the lab every day for two months since the beginning of July, Wu learned how to use the design soft-ware Autodesk Inventor, designed a hydraulic chamber and learned how to measure rheological properties, the di-rection of the flow of matter, by using a rheometer, a device that measures the flow of liquid.

“I learned how to use different in-struments and got to work with a lot of different people,” Wu said. “It was a great experience, and I now have a close relationship with the people I worked with, including the professor.”

Daniel Bai ’12 went to the UCLA High School Plasma Physics Lab six days a week after learning about it through a friend. At the lab, he made an electric field probe that was used in his data run, which helped him learn about plasma resonance cones.

“I found the equations and concepts difficult at first, but once I continued to work in the lab, everything started to make sense,” Bai said. “I enjoyed work-

ing there because instead of just theorizing, it was a hands-on ex-perience.”

Eli Haims ’12 worked with Troy Carter, a UCLA profes-sor, at a similar plasma lab at UCLA. Haims programmed a spectrometer, collected data and analyzed light.

James Wu ’13 helped Gary Williams with research at the Acoustics and Low Tempera-ture Physics lab at UCLA af-ter finding out about it from physics teacher Antonio Nas-sar. In order to help research about superfluid helium and cryogenics, the study of ma-terial behaviors at low tem-peratures, Wu helped build a cryogenic cell, helped solder metals together and helped perform experiments by tak-ing data points. During the time he spent at the lab, Wu said he not only learned spe-cific techniques and how to carry out procedures, but also learned what it was like at a real research lab.

“I had a great time there and I think it will really help me figure out my interests in science for college,” Wu said.

Julie Ko ’12 and David Lim ’13 worked in the UCLA Undergraduate Research Consortium in Functional Genomics, a program designed to give undergraduates and high school stu-dents actual lab experiences.

Ko first joined this program last year when she found out about it from Michelle Choi ’12. Ko and Lim worked at the lab every Tuesday and Thurs-day from 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. for eight weeks, and they are currently writing a research report to submit to the Sie-mens Competition.

Ko and Lim completed tasks such as maintaining fly stocks, creating fly crosses and taking fluorescent pictures of fly larvae. Using the data they col-lected, they identifed and analyzed genes in the common fruit fly in order to identify possible human homologues.

“I think [the program is] a great way to inspire people to really get into science as opposed to sitting in lectures and memorizing facts,” Ko said. “The program has definitely made me more dedicated to pursuing a career in re-search, and it taught me a lot about myself and how I work and think.”

By Claire hong

Running through the streets of New York, Sophia Penske ’13 searched for the subway that

would take her to SoHo. As part of her Teen Vogue internship in New York, Penske was sent on runs to public rela-tions companies.

“One of my most memorable expe-riences is when I was sent on a run in New York to Soho and had to figure out how to take two different subways to get there, and then when I got back to work, they told me I had to go on an-other run but even further,” she said. “It ended up being a good experience, but at first I was worried and stressed about time and how to get places around the city.”

At Teen Vogue, Penske helped the magazine’s associate editor Andrew Bevan by researching and contacting other designers for the issue.

Penske also had the opportunity to intern in Los Angeles for one month for designer Gregory Parkinson. She helped him with “labor work,” cut-ting fabric and steaming and tie dying clothes for the designer.

“I have always been really interest-ed in fashion, but I still do not know what field of fashion I enjoy the most,” she said. “That is why I tried two dif-ferent fields of fashion.”

Melanie Chan ’12 also interned in

New York for two weeks, for the fash-ion website styleite.com, a branch of Mediaite. She worked weekdays for eight hours, writing stories for the blog and researching story ideas. Chan continued her internship when she re-turned, writing stories from home.

“I enjoyed being able to write about what I love,” Chan said. “I was able to use knowledge that I never thought I’d use, and researching fashion provided an outlet for all that knowledge.”

Chan has been interested in fash-ion for a couple of years and wanted an opportunity to develop and explore her interest. She picked New York as the ideal place for a fashion internship because “people there tend to be more trend-conscious,” she said.

Like Penske, Catherine Davis ’13 had a fashion internship over the sum-mer for Teen Vogue.

Davis first became interested in fashion three years ago but now realiz-es she does not want to pursue the sub-ject as a career. She primarily wished to intern for the magazine for the writ-ing experience.

Davis interned everyday through-out the month of July, assisting with photo shoots and helping the staff re-search and write small stories.

“This is the first time I’ve had real responsibilities,” she said. “I had to deal with strict deadlines and it cer-tainly helped develop my work ethic.”

DAVID LIM/CHRONICLE

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF JAMES WU

PR

INT

ED

WIT

H P

ER

MIS

SIO

N O

F S

TY

LE

ITE

.CO

M

PR

INT

ED

WIT

H P

ER

MIS

SIO

N O

F J

UL

IE K

O

—Melanie Chan ’12

Love was in the air as newfound summer friendships quickly turned into something more.

By Justine Goode

“Tell me more! Tell me more!” As early as June, you can imagine hearing the plea on the first day back at school — a crowd of friends begging for every detail of your summer days and nights. You can only hope that sometime within the next three months, you’ll meet someone and finally experience kind the summer love you’ve watched unfold countless times onscreen. But Ava*, Natalie*, and Dylan* didn’t have to rely on John Travolta or Olivia New-ton-John for their dose of summer lov-ing as their own romances took shape both halfway across the country and the globe.

The Co-workersFor Ava, a family vacation house

proved to be a perfect backdrop for a summer romance. The annual visit to the lake had resulted in previous flings, but Ava didn’t necessarily have the same expectation for this summer. She got a job at a local bistro as a way to pass the three months, and began her training with Riley*, a fellow waiter who was also from out of town. After work, the two kept running into each other around town and at parties. The proximity helped a relationship to de-velop, but the two tried to keep it low key.

“It was casual, because we knew by the end of the summer he’d be going to school in Cincinnati, and I’d be coming back to L.A.,” Ava said.

The two stayed together even after work was over, sometimes just talking and sometimes going to events like a Wiz Khalifa concert. Sometimes Riley would even drop by her house to have dinner with Ava and her family. After the first of these visits, her siblings could tell there was something going on between them.

“Since we go away every year, sum-mer romances are a thing with my sib-lings,” she said. “Everyone knew, ‘This is Ava’s summer.’”

The relationship ended with the summer, but both are planning to re-turn to the lake next year. However, it’s uncertain whether or not a sequel will play out.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen,” Ava said.

The Other (Other) GirlNatalie first saw Ethan* while sit-

ting in a courtyard in Paris, surround-ed by a group of friends from the five-week summer program they were both attending. Though she thought the blond, blue-eyed New Yorker looked like a nice guy, “I honestly wasn’t in-terested in him initially,” she said. Not that he was lacking for attention—Ethan already had a girlfriend at the

program, as well as a long-distance hook-up on the west coast.

The students in the program spent their days sightseeing around Paris, and one night, Natalie and Ethan found themselves sharing a seat on the bus ride back to the hotel. They real-ized they had feelings for each other, despite his other romantic entangle-ments. Both felt that pursuing a last-ing relationship was unrealistic, and agreed that they would part after the five weeks were over. However, they had to conceal their relationship while it lasted, and mostly limited their time together to the daily bus rides and nightly visits near the end of the trip when Ethan would sneak up to Natalie’s room. It was a risk, but they thought it would pay off.

“We weren’t worried about getting caught by staff, but by other people in the program,” she said. “The simple things, like hanging out together in our rooms talking, were the best parts. Any time we were able to spend to-gether was sacred.”

In the end, no one discovered them, and the two parted happily.

“To this very day, none of the girls he was involved with know about us,” Natalie said.

The Long-Distance RelationshipWhen Dylan was first introduced

to Rose* at camp, the chance of a ro-mance seemed impossible, even though they’d barely even had a conversation. A mutual friend let Dylan know that she wasn’t looking, and he made a point of backing off for a few days.

“But then we started talking,” Dylan said. “And things changed.”

The small size of the camp made spending time together especially easy, and over the course of the month-long program, the pair’s initial attraction blossomed into a full-fledged relation-ship. They proved to be “ridiculously similar” people, with Rose claiming Dylan was the guy version of her best friend. The two found out that they were born only six days apart, and also discovered a some-what bizarre coin-cidence — 17 years earlier, when Dylan’s mother was pregnant with him, she worked at the same New York law firm as Rose’s father be-fore Dylan’s family moved out west.

“It’s really funny that we found each other randomly, especially because her dad knew me before I knew me,” Dylan said.

The couple decided to continue their relationship even after the camp ended,

though they realized the long-distance aspect would make things more difficult.

“The distance is really hard, but we make do,” he said.

Dylan plans to spend a day or two with Rose when he flies to the east coast to look at colleges, and she’s al-ready made a trip to the west coast. The two spent their time together in typical California fash-ion.

“Since she’s used to a cooler climate, I decided to take her to the beach,” said Dylan. “We spent the whole day sitting in the sand and talking.”

The One That Got Away Upper School Dean Sharon Cuseo

met a summer love in high school, on a bus ride heading to church camp in Estes Park, Colo. His name was John, and he was from Placentia, nearly 100 miles north of her hometown of San Diego. The two ended up spending the nearly 20 hour ride talking in the bus’ overhead luggage compartment. Once they got to Colorado, a romance began, and inevitably ended, in typi-cal summer camp fashion. They lost touch once they got home due to the distance between their homes, as well as the lack of email, Facebook, or even private phone conversations.

“I didn’t even have my own direct line, so you couldn’t have a private talk with someone,” said Cuseo. “If you got a phone call, the whole house could hear.”

“In those days, phone calls cost dol-lars per minute,” said Upper School Dean Vanna Cairns. “It was much harder to get back in contact with someone who lived far away.”

The End (or Not)Cuseo has not since reconnected

with John, though she didn’t neces-sarily intend for it to be that way. But with the major presence of technology

in our everyday lives, the definition of a summer fling has changed since her experience. Natalie and Ethan decided to end their romantic involvement, but they still remain “best friends,” despite living on opposite coasts of the coun-try. Ava may not see Riley for a year, but she could easily send him a quick text asking how he’s been at any given time. And the rise of social technol-ogy has also made the possibility of a lasting long distance relationship more feasible—Dylan and Rose (whose rela-tioship statuses on Facebook say that they are “engaged”) can use Skype whenever they want to see each other, instead of having to buy an expensive plane ticket.

“It’s difficult to maintain relation-ships because the real world inter-venes,” said Upper School psychologist Sheila Siegel. “But if you’re in contact all the time, and manage to stay a part of that person’s life, then it’s easier to sustain a relationship.” However, Sie-gel said summer flings are less likely to last than relationships that develop in a less forced or crowded environments.

“Summer romances have to do with propinquity,” said Siegel. “You’re thrown together at a camp or on a trip, usually in a relaxing atmosphere that isn’t also filled with chores or respon-

sibilities. Maybe you’re a little bit lonely or

bored, and people look better than

they really are when under

stress.”

Sept. 7, 2011B4 FeatureS the ChroniCle

GRAPHIC BY CAMI DE RY, CHLOE LISTER AND MEGAN WARD

““The simple things, like hanging out together in our rooms talking, were the best parts. Any time we were able to spend together was sacred.

—Natalie*

* names have been changed

Summer

Tropical storm Irene tore acrossthe East Coast, interfering with the plans of alumni and faculty.

chronicle.hw.com Features B5sept. 7, 2011

By Jessica Barzilay

Caity Murphy ’11 thought the worst was behind her midway through her first week of classes.

She had moved into her dorm at The College of William and Mary in Wil-liamsburg, Va., met her roommates and started getting to know her fel-low incoming freshmen. By Thursday, Aug. 25, however, the looming pres-ence of Hurricane Irene turned from a mere threat into a disruptive reality for Murphy and her peers.

An Atlantic hurricane originating in the Caribbean, Irene wreaked havoc on the east coast as it moved all the way up to the Canadian coast. Irene made landfall over North Carolina’s outer banks on the morning of Aug. 27 and progressed to southeastern Virginia before reaching New Jersey the morn-ing of Aug. 28. By the time it reached New York that same day, the hurricane had been downgraded to a tropical storm. From Aug. 26 to Aug. 28, Irene left considerable flood and wind dam-age along the eastern seaboard.

“I got back from class on Thursday and people were running through the dorms and packing,” Murphy said.

Forced to evacuate, Murphy was left with a few options in the face of the impending hurricane.

“I freaked out because I don’t have any family in Virginia and I didn’t want to impose on the people I had just met,” Murphy said.

Murphy’s friends beginning col-lege on the eastern seaboard offered her housing as well, but her parents arranged for her to stay with their friends at a military base off campus.

“I would’ve been safe but I was al-ready homesick and I didn’t want to spend it with people I didn’t know,” Murphy said.

As students caught the last train to New Jersey and buses stopped run-ning, Murphy snagged a seat Friday on a flight to Los Angeles. By the time she entered the taxi to the airport, the storm was already raging all around her.

Murphy returned safely to school the next week, but all classes were postponed until Wednesday.

Ranging from Murphy’s situation to more subdued effects, Hurricane Irene impacted the activities of some alumni, students and faculty located on the east coast. For the most part, however, Hurricane Irene presented a minor disturbance or logistical ob-stacle rather than a true threat to the

Wolverines in its path. Like Murphy, many members of the

class of 2011 found themselves grap-pling with the effects of Hurricane Irene in an already hectic and over-whelming period of transition.

Near Boston, Jennifer Plotkin ’11 transferred her belongings from boxes to her new dorm at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the rain and wind, but she was most disappointed at the cancellation of freshman convoca-tion, one of the school’s long standing traditions.

Tiana Woolridge ’11 had been at Princeton University since Aug. 21 for volleyball training, so she had no dif-ficulty in arranging her travel plans to school.

“There was not too big of an impact for me personally, but it was a little scary for a girl from California who hasn’t seen rain for months,” Wool-ridge said.

More than just college freshmen dealt with the ramifications of Irene. Returning for her junior year of college to the University of North Carolina, Faire Davidson ’09 was prepared for power outages and unsafe roads.

At her location far from the coast, however, she said “the only noticeable difference was that a few trees had fallen down and disrupted the roads.”

Spanish teacher Javier Zaragoza (Andrew ’10, Cathy ’08, Laura ’06) struggled with the logistics of travel-ling to the east coast and navigating college move-in day for two of his chil-dren. He arrived in New York on Aug. 24 and left for New Haven soon after for Yale drop-off. After his Saturday afternoon flight was cancelled, Zara-goza was in Connecticut “as the hur-ricane hit with quite a force,” he said.

“Everyone was on panic alert and the stores and streets were crowded because the news reports were very alarming and the people were in a frantic mode,” Zaragoza said.

He and his wife moved from hotel to hotel to be closer to their children and to find an area in which the elec-tricity was still functioning. Despite the disruption, he said he found the ex-perience of being stranded on the east coast very meaningful.

“I must confess, I have never been in such a situation where we were com-pletely out of control of our surround-ings,” Zaragoza said. “It was pretty humbling. I actually walked around our hotel as the rain and wind were beat-ing on the trees and buildings. I was experiencing a new sensation.”

Welcomed by storm

GR

AP

HIC

BY

MIC

HA

EL

RO

TH

BE

RG

AN

D V

ICT

OR

YO

ON

B6 Features the ChroniCle sept. 7, 2011

Juniors learn backpacking skills, hike 120 miles across Alaskan mountain range

Roughing it Students braved tiring treks, hostile weather conditions and extreme labor while experiencing nature first hand.

TREKKING: Sam Wolk ’13 stands atop an Alaskan mountain after a long hike, top. Max Thoeny ’13 wears protective clothing to keep warm, bottom.

GRAPHICS BY CAMI DE RY, CHLOE LISTER, ELANA ZELTSER AND HANK GERBA

THE SIMPLE LIFE: After a long day of hiking, Joe Kitaj ’12 stretches and admires the Yosemite landscape, top. Peter Schul-man ’12 backpacks on a hiking trail in Yosemite, bottom.

Seniors leave city life behind to backpack through YosemiteBy Victor Yoon

Hank Gerba ’12, Joe Kitaj ’12 and Peter Schulman ’12 followed their guide along a mountain ridge, 50 feet above a river.

Exhausted from the hike and sweating from the sun beating down on them, the group dropped their packs and made a dash for the river at the first suggestion of a swim.

Their dip in the river was just one of the many stops that the group made on their five-day backpacking trip through Yosemite National Park. Led by a professional guide from the Y Explore Yosemite Adventures company, Gerba, Kitaj and Schulman hiked from Toulumne Meadows to Yosemite Valley.

The group walked about eight miles per day, getting up when the sun rose and setting up camp before it set.

“Our first campsite was at the top of a mountain,” Gerba said. “It was completely silent with a huge view, and we were the only ones up there. I felt really separate from the rest of the world.”

The route that the guide led them along went both on and off the trail. Kitaj said that they felt a sense of exploration when they were off the trail, and the potential of being where no one else had walked before was exciting.

On the last night of the trip, Gerba and Schulman separated from Kitaj and the guide to go fishing.

“[The guide] was like our safety net, so it felt like we were really on our own when we went down river without him,” Gerba said. “It made the sense of exploration even greater because we weren’t being led.”

While the group was together almost all the time during the trip, they weren’t always talking. Gerba said that being in Yosemite felt slower than everyday life and that there was less going on.

“By the time you’re on your seventh mile of the day and you’re carrying this heavy backpack, a lot of your focus is on getting to the next camp site rather than conversing,” Kitaj said. “A lot of it is also that you’re just appreciating where you are and your surroundings, and without the distractions of the city, your mind is pretty free to wander. The first day I missed my iPhone and the city and I wanted to talk to people, but as time goes on you get used to it. I think it really makes you appreciate what you have in the city more when you get back.”

While Kitaj’s experience in Yosemite helped him to appreciate city life more, Schulman’s experience was the opposite.

“I wanted to stay out there because back in the city, things just seemed way more complicated,” he said. “Things out there were simpler and you could focus on what really matters to you, but when you come back you’re over saddled by things that you don’t really care about or that don’t really matter.”

HANK GERBA/CHRONICLE

HANK GERBA/CHRONICLE

By chloe lister

Although neither had any back-packing experience, Max Theony ’13 and Sam Wolk ’13 both spent a month backpacking through Alaska as part of the National Outdoor Leadership School.

“It was the concept of absolute dis-connection and freedom that drew me in,” Theony said.

During the program they walked about 120 miles across a mountain range, backcountry camping along the way. They spent most of their time in a group of 12 with an instructor that later split into two groups that went off on their own with no guidance for the last four days.

In their time with the instructor, they were prepared for their indepen-dent expedition, first by learning basic backpacking tasks like how to read topographical maps, pitch tents, cook on camping stoves and later learned wilderness first aid in case anything went wrong.

Theony said that the most fright-ening part of his trip was at a point where his group was traveling on a cliff side. They had found a way down that they thought was safe and wouldn’t be too difficult to traverse. However, The-ony slipped as he was going down, and with an extra 60 pounds on his back was unable to stop himself.

“About halfway down there was a tree that was hanging out and about two feet after there was a steep drop off,” Theony said. “If I hadn’t grabbed that and climbed up th tree I would’ve been seriously injured.”

Wolk said that during his time in Alaska he not only learned practical backpacking tasks, but also lessons that would help him in his day-to-day life at school.

“When you see that thousand feet in front of you, you learn not to see the top of the path and just enjoy every step of the way,” Wolk said. “So when you’re writing an English essay, you learn not to dread the end and just to enjoy the process of writing it.”

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF SAM WOLK

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF SAM WOLK

By ABBie neufeld

Ruby Boyd ’12 camped for five weeks this summer in rural Africa studying the culture of the Himba, an indigenous group in northern Namibia. Boyd traveled with her mother, Joan Silk, a professor of anthropology at UCLA, and Brooke Scelza, an assistant professor at UCLA. Scelza’s current research mainly focuses on “the effect of familial and social relationships on health and well-being,” her website said. The three of them were accompanied by two Namibian translators whom they met after flying into Windhoek, Namibia’s capital. The translators enabled the group to communicate with the Himba, who only speak a dialect of the Herero language.

They drove to Opuwo, a very small town about four hours outside of their eventual location, which Boyd said does not have a name. In Opuwo, the group stocked up on supplies, including nonperishable food and vegetables, for their five week trip.

The group lived in tents, while the Himba lived in a compound. Typically, a compound that includes a man with multiple wives and their children. While only the men have multiple wives, it is permissible for both men and women to have multiple affairs and for the woman to have children with other men, leading to a society with a multitude of babies, Boyd said.

Although Boyd said she was mainly “just along for the ride,” she was still able to help out with parts of the study.

“I did some illustrations that she needed and I entertained children when we were doing some games with kids, but mostly I just entered data,” she said. “I was just there to do little things and help out where I could. We only had two translators so I couldn’t do anything involving translation because my mom and [Scelza] did all

the interviews.”Though Boyd couldn’t interview

the Himba, she was still able to observe and on some levels interact with them.

Boyd said one of her most profound experiences while in Africa was a burial service she attended for a baby.

“It was really sad — it was a baby. But it was just a very intimate moment that they let us come into. It was nice that they trusted us that much.”

Boyd said that she had to work to gain the people’s trust and prove she was worthy of it, a different experience from a similar trip she took to a Fijian village where she said the people were warmer. She partially attributes the reservedness to the Himba’s tougher lifestyle.

The Himban diet consists mainly of maize meal and soured milk mixed to form a porridge. Sometimes for a special occasion they will slaughter a cow, though this is rare because cows, along with goats, are their only source of milk. While Boyd was there, the Himba had an event to celebrate their ancestors and slaughtered six cows to celebrate. Boyd had the chance to observe the slaughter of a cow.

“I was highly impressed at how much meat they got off the cow,” she said. “You always hear the stories of the Native Americans and how they used every part of the buffalo. It was like that.”

“The Himba have actively chosen not to change, to keep their ways and their customs and all their various practices. They are very tough people they know what they are doing and they think it is right,” Boyd said.

The lifestyle of the Himba, highly different from Western culture, was something that greatly impacted Boyd.

“You can’t go someplace like that and not come back with a different view on life. These are people who have nothing and are happier than 90 percent of America,” she said.

However, Boyd was quick to emphasize that this was not a criticism of the American lifestyle.

“It’s just that they are so content with much less than it would take to make Americans content. It’s impressive,” she said. “I did not come home and throw all my clothes away and only eat a little bit, and I do not plan to. I just think it’s interesting.”

Features B7ChroniCle.hw.Comsept. 7, 2011

Seniors dig trails, build bridges, clear land

Students braved tiring treks, hostile weather conditions and extreme labor while experiencing nature first hand.

Senior camps with indigenous African group

THE GREAT OUTDOORS: Ruby Boyd ’12 feeds a cow where she set up camp in a remote African village four hours outside of Opuwo with a Himba translator.

MAKING TRAILS: Steven Ring ’12 hikes with his ax and hard hat for tread work at the Northwest Youth Corps Sum-mer Conservation Corps.

By chloe lister

Jackson Hudgins ’12 and Steven Ring ’12 traded in their cell phones and mattresses for hand tools and sleeping bags for six weeks this summer after being hired by the Northwest Youth Corps Summer Conservation Corps.

The Corps is based on President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Civilian Con-servation Corps in which “youth crew members work on conservation, re-forestation and recreation projects” throughout the Northwest, their web-site said.

Hudgins found NYC while searching online for a summer job where he could also work outdoors and told Ring about the organization.

“I wanted a break from what was going on in Los Angeles, and I like be-ing outdoors and I wanted to work for my own money,” Hudgins said.

Ring said that he was also looking for a summer job where he could make some money and wanted to spend some

time outdoors away from LA.Hudgins and Ring were both hired.

Hudgins worked in Idaho and Ring worked in Oregon.

The government hires the NYC to do trail maintnence, so each week their crews would have different projects.

Most of the work in Idaho was dig-ging trails with large hand tools and building bridges for river crossings, Hudgins said.

Working on these projects was a “welcome adjustment” from life at home, Hudgins said

In Oregon, Ring spent his first two weeks ripping out barbed wire fences, and the rest of his time there doing tread work.

“Tread work is trail maintenance, so where there’s been a mudslide on a trail you dig a new trail. Or, if some-thing’s falling off you build a retaining wall, and if the trail needs a bridge you build a bridge,” Ring said.

Ring said that he gained a new ap-preciation for the trails he would hike

on back home, knowing how much work went into making them.

“I learned to never cut a switchback by taking one of the shortcuts off to the side,” Ring said. “It takes so long to build one of those switchbacks and so much planning goes into that and it’s so hard to dig vertical trails, and cut-ting it just ruins that.”

Hudgins and Ring both felt that they learned from their experiences working.

“I got a little perpective because I learned what it was like to work and actually do manual labor,” Hudgins said. “I feel like I take things less for granted now, like waking up late and even having a car.”

“One of the best parts of it was be-ing around the kind of people who you’ve never been around before,” Ring said. “There were kids from foster care, homeless kids and one of my good buddies had worked at his dad’s lumber mill his entire life. You don’t get that just hanging around at Menchies.”

GRAPHICS BY CAMI DE RY, CHLOE LISTER, ELANA ZELTSER AND HANK GERBA

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF STEVEN RING

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF RUBY BOYD

HARVARD-WESTLAKESCHOOL

ID the new students11 new sophomores, one junior and one senior join the upper school student body.

Former School: Montclair PrepHometown: Encino

“I think it’s going to be fun. [I’m going to] try to make a seamless transition and have a great year.”

Max Fried ’12

Former School: Granada Hills Charter High SchoolHometown: Northridge

“I’m interested in the smaller class sizes because it will be easier to focus.”

Jessica Johnston ’14Former School: Hokkaido International School

Hometown: Sapporo, Japan“I’m excited to come and meet new people.”

Lisa He ’14

Former School: The Archer School for GirlsHometown: Los Angeles

“I want to go to my classes, meet my teachers and make a ton of friends.”

Amanda Reiter ’14

Former School: Monte VistaHometown: San Francisco

“I can’t wait to see the clubs and find out what I like.”

Adil Akram ’14

Former School: Chapin SchoolHometown: New York

“I love meeting new people and I can’t wait to get to know everyone in the grade.”

Camilla Borgogni ’14

Former School: Flintridge Sacred Heart AcademyHometown: Claremont

“I’m excited to play water polo and run cross country and track.”

Rebecca Armstrong ’14

Former School: La Canada High SchoolHometown: Darien, Conn.

“I like how there are more options, so I can try different things.”

Benjamin Knight ’14

Former School: St. Georges SchoolHometown: Vancouver

“I’m glad I’m able to takeclasses that I didn’t have at my old school.”

Jesse Lui ’14

Former School: MongessoreHometown: Paris

“My old school was small, and so I’m excited to go to a bigger school.”

Nikita Talavera ’14

Former School: Windward SchoolHometown: Pacific Palisades

“I want to be on the Chronicle because I really like journalism.”

Elizabeth Madden ’14

Former School: Upper Canada CollegeHometown: Toronto

“I’m looking forward to being a new kid and trying new things that I didn’t have at my old school.”

Christopher Yang ’14

Sept. 7, 2011B8 FeatureS the ChroniCle

Former School: University SchoolHometown: Milwaukee

“I’m excited to meet new people, but I’ll miss my old friends.”

Bradley Schlesinger ’13

DIDAX

DIDAXDIDAX

DIDAX

JAMIE CHANG/CHRONICLE DIDAX

DIDAXDIDAX

JAMIE CHANG/CHRONICLE

JAMIE CHANG/CHRONICLE

DIDAX

DIDAX

DIDAX

GRAPHIC BY JAMIE CHANG

chronicle.hw.com Features B9sept. 7, 2011

highstakes First step The Chronicle follows four anonymous

seniors as they begin their journey through the college admisssions process.

By ReBecca NussBaum aNd JustiNe Goode

As with the rest of the senior class, these four anonymous students em-bark on the college admissions process. The Chronicle will check in with the seniors as they face many obstacles and successes to come.

Diana:Video Art and Cinema Studies

classes piqued Diana’s* interest and inspired her to seek out a career in the film or television industry.

She will apply to film schools, where she can get hands-on experience mak-ing movies to jumpstart her career.

Diana wants to apply Early Deci-sion to New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, which is currently her first choice. However, she is not sure that it will still be her first choice by the Nov. 1 deadline.

“There’s so much I still don’t really know about what I’m doing,” she said. “It’s still kind of up in the air, but I will apply to whichever school I choose as my first choice.”

In addition to NYU, Diana is look-ing at other urban schools with film programs like Barnard College, Chap-man University and Emerson College.

“I was thinking maybe I could apply to Kenyon, but then again I don’t know what I’d be doing in the middle of Ohio trying to make movies,” Diana said.

“Going to New York would be good be-cause I could do internships during the school year at production places.”

Leo:Leo*, a varsity athlete, will play his

sport in college and may commit to a school within the next few weeks, he said.

He has received offers from Buck-nell University, Davidson College, Northwestern University, Occiden-tal College and Tufts University and is talking to Harvard University and Duke University.

“In the great scheme of things, I’m going to go to the best academic school that I can, so if [my sport] is going to help me do that, that’s what I’m going to do,” he said.

Leo is looking for a medium to large school in an exciting environment.

“I would love to go to a school like Dartmouth because there’s so much outdoor stuff to do, even though it’s in the middle of nowhere,” he said. “At the same time, I would love Penn or some-thing like that because there’s lots to do in a city,” he said. “I just want to have something to do.”

So far Leo is feeling good about the application process, saying that even if he doesn’t end up going to one of the schools recruiting him, it’s nice to be recognized as a high caliber athlete.

“It’s cool to have them validate my athletic potential,” Leo said.

Haley:Haley*, an artist and varsity ath-

lete, is looking for a spirited, medium to large-sized university.

She will apply Early Decision to her first choice, Vanderbilt University, and Early Action to the University of Michigan, whose non-binding commit-ment doesn’t conflict with her Vander-bilt application.

“I just want a school with a sense of pride,” Haley said.

Haley doesn’t care if the school is in an urban or rural location, but she would like to be out of Los Angeles.

“I want to be somewhere different,” she said. “I don’t want to be close to home.”

Haley isn’t interested in playing competitive sports in college and is not sure what she wants to major in, al-though she is interested in psychology and biology.

Haley started her common applica-tion, but said she is still apprehensive about the application process.

“It’s hard because it’s so out of our control,” she said. “We can do every-thing right and still not get into our top choices. It could be a perfect fit and you could still not get in.”

Kyle:Kyle* is a member of the swim

team, and will be taking Advanced Seminar, Physics C: Mechanics and Physics C: Electricity and Magnetism

his senior year. He plans on applying early to Yale, though he also likes UC Berkeley and most of the other Ivy League schools.

Kyle is looking for a school that of-fers both a serious academic experi-ence as well as an exciting atmosphere outside the classroom.

“Someone told me a story that Berkeley won some football game they hadn’t won in a long time and they ripped out a goal post and ran it down a hill,” he said. “I mean, that just sounds really fun.”

Kyle doesn’t know what he wants to study in college, but anticipates that his physics courses this year will direct him towards science.

There is also the possibility of re-cruitment for swimming, though he’s waiting to attend a meet to see wheth-er his times are fast enough to be con-sidered.

“For my event, I would need to go 57 [seconds],” he said, “I mean, that’s not too far off my time, so it’s probable, but that’s a pretty fast time.”

Though Kyle currently spends most of his time swimming or study-ing, he’s looking forward to the chance to let loose and enjoy himself in college.

“I mean, when you find out who I am you’ll probably be like, ‘Oh that nerd!’” he said. “But really, I just want to have fun.”

* names have been changed

ILLUSTRATIONS BY MICHELLE CHANG

INTRODUCTION: While Kyle avidly studies physics and swims at school, Diana can be found working in the video art studio, Haley balences art, sports and academ-

ics, and Leo practices his varsity sport. These seniors, representing different aspects of student life, each share the beginning of his or her college admissions experience.

13616 Ventura Blvd. Sherman Oaks, CA.

Phone: (818) 995-7603 Fax: (818) 995-7603

www.freakbeatrecords.com freakbeat@freakbeatrecords.com

10% Off any purchase with this coupon

Offer expires September 21,2011

By Michael Sugerman

Colin Beswick ’01 was profiled in a Billboard feature called “30 Under 30: The Young Execs You Need to Know” this July, in which he was recognized for his “considerable cu-rative edge.”

Since 11th grade, Beswick knew that he wanted to work in music.

After managing his older brother Kyle’s ’98 band in college, he realized his interest in music law. While at-tending law school at Southwestern University, Beswick landed a job with Sony, where his interests headed in new directions.

“I took several classes in law school about video game and technology law, which I found fascinating,” he said. “I began thinking that if I fell out of love with music, I could be happy working in games.”

As he was finishing his last se-mester of law school in 2009, Beswick snagged a job with a company called Tapulous, which created the mobile application Tap Tap Revenge. Under Tapulous’ Head of Business Affairs Gwen Riley, the company became “one of the first influential application de-velopers on the App Store,” Beswick said.

Tap Tap Revenge is a mobile ap-plication where a popular music track plays, and as it plays, colored balls slide rhythmically down the screen. At a certain line, one is supposed to tap the colored balls as accurately as possible to gain points.

Disney Mobile bought Tapulous in July 2010, and in September 2010, Bes-wick was named the Manager of Cre-ative Content and Music Licensing of Tapulous.

He handpicks all of the music con-tent that goes into Tap Tap. Beswick is a music enthusiast, so his job allows him to relish in his music interests.

“I watch new, breaking bands for our ‘Featured Track of the Week’ fea-ture,” Beswick said. “We also sell packs of music in Tap Tap Revenge that are some of the biggest tracks in the world. I listen to music all day long.”

Beswick also handles the legal as-pects of the track selection: he does all of the music licensing, working with record companies, artist management, and music publishers to acquire the rights to songs used in Tap Tap.

“It can be a challenge sometimes, because many major artists still aren’t that interested in the mobile space,” he said.

Beswick says some of his success was inspired by the confidence that Harvard-Westlake teachers gave him.

“Teachers like Stephen Bellon and Sharon Cuseo made me think I could achieve what I wanted to achieve,” he said. “And it was teachers like my Lat-in teacher Kathryn Price and my AP Art History teacher Carl Wilson who taught me that you really have to work for it.”

According to market research firm comScore, Tapulous applications have been installed over 70 million times — Tap Tap Revenge is Disney Mobile’s most successful game.

Beswick said that working his job, he learns something new every day, and is subsequently encouraged to be as creative as possible in his work.

“That’s inspiring,” he said.

By JeSSica Barzilay

Revisiting high school as co-writer and producer of “White Frog,” Ellie Wen ’05 stayed true

to her own high school roots. Play-wright David Henry Hwang ’75 served as executive producer. Upper school students and recent alumni acted as production assistants and extras.

“My whole time at Harvard-West-lake inspired me and made me into the person I am today,” Ellie Wen said. “I love my Harvard-Westlake family.”

Wen’s insight into family and rela-tionships carried over into the screen-play she co-wrote with her mother, Fabienne Wen. “White Frog” centers on the journey of a teenager with mild Asperger’s syndrome, Nick Young, as he grapples with the death of his seemingly perfect older brother, Chaz. Delving into Chaz’s life, Nick uncovers secrets that place untenable strains on his family.

At Harvard-Westlake, Ellie Wen’s interests spanned from theater to fencing to community service to stu-dent government. Fabienne Wen re-calls early signs of Ellie Wen’s excite-ment for writing and film.

“She had really great teachers at Harvard-Westlake who shared her passion for both, and encouraged her to pursue her dreams,” said her moth-er, Fabienne Wen said.

By the time she progressed to Stan-ford University, Ellie Wen remained heavily involved in on-campus groups and activities, like the Stanford Film Society, salsa dancing, acting and a ca-pella singing.

“I’ve always been interested in ev-erything,” she said.

In her senior project at Stanford,

“BroadwAsian’’ Ellie Wen explored the representation of Asians in musical theater. The project drew the attention of Hwang, and relationship played an instrumental role in the later develop-ment of “White Frog.”

During her time at Stanford, she spent summers interning at casting, production and management agencies “so that I could educate myself on all aspects of the entertainment industry,” Ellie Wen said.

Graduating with a major in drama and a minor in sociology, she moved back to Los An-geles after college to continue act-ing.

After an in-terview at Cre-ative Artists Agency, Ellie Wen made the transi-tion into working at an agency in the motion picture talent department. Now in the film finance department, she continues to work on her own film projects outside of work.

Fabienne Wen and Ellie Wen be-gan writing “White Frog,” as a side project “and then we got sucked in,” Ellie Wen said. Although the story is mostly fictional, they said that certain story lines and characters are inspired by people and experiences drawn from their lives.

In particular, Ellie Wen drew on her high school experience volun-teering at Las Familias Del Pueblo, a community center on skid row, when conceiving of a place in the film called “The Firehouse.”

“Community service was a ma-jor part of my high school experience

and it taught me that it was possible for young people to make big positive change in the world,” Ellie Wen said. “I hope ‘White Frog’ can encourage people to be more tolerant and loving and embrace diversity.”

Neither Ellie Wen nor her mother had any prior experience with screen writing or writing professionally, but both described the process of craft-ing the script as a natural progression once they had begun the story.

“I’m so blessed to have such a cool and supportive mom,” Ellie Wen said.

Once the screen-play was picked up, she and a former boss produced the project together. After Ellie Wen at-tached Hwang as executive producer, the production’s many components started to fall into

place. “It’s been amazing to see this proj-

ect through, from start to finish,” she said.

Along with its production staff, the film also has a strong cast: B.D. Wong of “Law & Order: Special Vic-tims Unit,” Tyler Posey of “Teen Wolf,” Joan Chen of “The Last Emperor,” and Harry Shum Jr. of “Glee”.

Jonathan Etra ’11 and Nick Kazi-miroff ’07 served as production assis-tants on the film. From researching in the office to picking up materials to arranging props on set, Etra’s job con-sisted of “everything and anything,” he said.

Ellie Wen and her mother have written several other screenplays to-gether.

’05, ’75 alums produce indie film

GREEN LIGHT FOR ‘WHITE FROG’: Ellie Wen ’05, above, wrote and produced “White Frog”. Executive pro-ducer David Henry Hwang ’75, Wen, actress Joan Chen, director Quentin Lee, producer Chris Lee and actor B.D. Wong assemble be-tween takes, right.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF ELLIE WEN

Alum syncs music with mobile games

“My whole time at Harvard-Westlake inspired me and made me into the person I am today.”

—Ellie Wen ’05

Los Angeles • Volume XXI • Issue I

The Chronicle • Sept. 7, 2011

rtsA EntErtAinmEnt&

Colin Beswick ’01

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF COLIN BESWICK

Sept. 13Acting Auditions

Sept. 12 Vocal Auditions

Sept. 14Dance Auditions

Sept. 15Callbacks

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF ELLIE WEN

Fiddler on the Roof Auditions Tryouts for the fall upper school musical will take place within the coming week.

B10

SOURCE: HW.COMGRAPHIC BY JESSICA BARZILAY AND MEGAN KAWASAKI

By DaviD Lim

When a friend dragged him to the Monster Massive in 2008, Wiley Webb ’12 had no idea what to expect for his first experience at a loud and exciting electronic music festival.

“I was greeted by around 50,000 people, glow sticks everywhere, ami-able girls in bikinis and, of course, this alien music powering the whole thing,” Webb said. “It’s quite a breathtaking scene to step into for the first time, and I suggest that everyone should ex-perience that sometime.”

Webb fell in love with the genre so much that he started making his own tracks in his eighth grade Electronic Music Class.

He the furthered his craft with the help of Brian Matrix, a professional music producer at production college in Burbank, who taught him how to make his tracks more “fat and profes-sional.”

In August, Webb was signed to electronic music label Plasmapool and will release his next tracks through the label in a three year distribution deal.

“I was planning to release my latest track on a professional friend’s small label and sent emails just for laughs to four of what I consider the best and biggest labels in dance music,” Webb said.

“[Plasmapool] quickly jumped on the track, and freaked me out by va-cationing and not responding to emails for two weeks,” he said.

Webb finalized the deal with the Germany-based label Aug. 15. He will keep 50 percent of the revenue from sales, but Plasmapool will have exclu-sive distribution rights to his music for six months.

Although he already has multiple tracks on iTunes and the music shar-ing service Soundcloud, Webb hopes that the Plasmapool deal will expand his online presence and eventually land

him some local DJ-ing gigs. “I go in between the beautiful and

the bangin’, generally between Pro-gressive house and Electro, BT, Dead-mau5 and lastly, Massive Attack are huge influences,” Webb said.

By Jessica Lee

Karen Kim ’12, Devon Bret-on-Pakozdi ’12 and Elana Meer ’13 performed at multiple ven-ues this summer, helping the sick.

Kim is the creator and vocal head of A Tempo, an ensemble of high school vocalists and instrumentalists. She was inspired by an experience with the Harvard-Westlake Commu-nity Singers and decided to establish this group toward the end of her ju-nior year. The ensemble consists of 23 members, and its repertoire ranges from classical to modern rock.

Many of the members of A Tempo attend different schools, so due to con-flicting schedules, the group is split into teams. Every member practices independently until group recitals are scheduled. With a set repertoire and carefully planned individual practices, Kim expects rehearsals to be efficient and effective even during the school year.

“As a solo singer and a chorister, it’s exciting to know that I’ve brought joy into someone’s life by doing some-thing I enjoy,” Kim said. “Overall, A Tempo is an ensemble that unites those who have a passion for music, and I see something truly good coming out of it.”

“Besides the teamwork and effort that characterize the whole group, my favorite part of being a member of A Tempo is the opportunity to have my arrangements and compositions per-formed on a regular basis,” Breton-Pakozdi said. “That’s such a rare op-portunity for a high-school or even a collegiate composer to have, and I’m truly blessed to have it.”

Two years ago, due to her interest in medicine, Meer attended an orienta-tion at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Cen-ter where she learned of various areas of medical community service. She decided to volunteer and apply for the Music for Healing program and has been involved in this area of service as a vocalist performer. Meer performed for patients on an average of six hours a week. Music for Healing was estab-lished three years ago and has since flourished into a model program that strives to provide comfort, assistance and hope for hospitalized patients, Meer said.

“These patients are at their weak-est, both emotionally and physically,” Meer said. “But I know I’ve made a sig-nificant difference when my patients say my performance reminded them of a loved one or of a memorable event. What I enjoy the most is the bonding and mutual interaction I have with my audience. I have conversations with my patients, and they give me invaluable words of wisdom. It is really a unique and unforgettable experience that I can’t get anywhere else.”

By arieLLe maxner

Alumni, students and Upper School English teacher Jocelyn Medawar, joined the Independent Shakespeare Company this summer, helping behind the scenes, selling tickets and clothing and setting up activities.

ISC “needed help with crowd control,” Medawar said. “I thought of Harvard-Westlake students, of course.”

“I thought it would be a good use of my time,” volunteer Sara Carreras ’13 said. “It definitely turned out to be. I thought it was great. I met some really nice people in the cast, crew, and other volunteers. It was exciting seeing over a thousand people each night come to watch the shows and enjoy it. Also, everyone thanked me a lot for handing out free stuff and pointing out where the bathrooms were, so that made me feel [great.]”

Samantha Frischling ’13 also enjoyed the experience of working at ISC, highly certain it would be a “fun thing to try.”

“I’m really happy that I found out about the company, because I would love to go see another one of their shows,” Frischling said.

Medawar described helping ISC as “thrilling. There is nothing like working with actors to remind a teacher that Shakespeare’s plays were intended to be seen. Working with them makes me a better teacher,” Medawar said.

Medawar has been involved with the company for three three years and is their dramaturg, a position she said is “a fancy way of saying that I help out with textual matters.”

Medawar has the Managing Director and one of the leading actors of ISC David Melville talk to her Shakespeare elective class to give an otherwise unseen perspective of the plays.

Performing arts teacher Chris Moore also helped get the word out about the company, sending emails to students.

ISC “is a terrific company that brings the works of Shakespeare to a large audience—for free,” Moore said. “They are a talented group of actors, directors, technicians who make the

Bard’s work extremely entertaining and very accessible to audiences of all ages. It is a great place to see theater and for students who love theater to become involved in the machinatins of a working professional theater company of dedicated artists.”

Emily Altschul ’09 was the house manager this summer and organized the volunteers.

Rachel Katz ’11 also got involved with ISC’s productions of “Hamlet” and “Love’s Labor’s Lost,” acting as the stage manager.

She heard about ISC through a combination of Medawar and Moore, and took the Shakespeare elective the first semester of her senior year.

“David Melville, who together with his wife Melissa Chalsma started ISC,

came and spoke to our [Shakespeare] class,” volunteer Jacob Axelrad ’10 said. “He told us about the work done by his company and his own unique philosophy on Shakespeare’s plays.”

“I had a great time working backstage and learning about the production process,” Axelrad said. “Everyone in the company, from the stage manager to the actors, was so friendly and helpful. Aside from getting to learn about Shakespeare from a theatrical perspective, it was also just fun to go to the park to help out the company every weekend.”

“It’s been so exciting to watch the company grow,” Medawar said. “Over 25,000 people came to the shows in Griffith Park this very summer; that’s twice the number as last year.”

Musiciansform vocal groups, sing for charities

Shakespeare fans volunteer at festivalchronicle.hw.com A&e B11Sept. 7, 2011

TO BE OR NOT TO BE: House Manager Emily Altschul ’09 sells Shakespeare shirts with the help of one of the actors, Matt Callahan, while on the stage at the event.

JUSTINE GOODE/CHRONICLE

Senior gets record distribution deal with top electronic label Plasmapool

CHLOE LISTER/CHRONICLE

SPECIALIZING IN Athletic & Performance Recruitment Videos

Essay Excellence Interview Coaching

CollegePrepCoaching.com

818/357-8383

Wiley Webb ’12

Karen Kim ’12nathanson’s/chronicLe

Sept. 7, 2011B12 FeatureS the ChroniCle

By Chloe lister

Junior summer fellowship recipient Xochi Maberry-Gaulke ’12 stopped while scrolling through her iPhoto

library, pausing on an image of people walking down a path with two huge rock walls on either side.

“Okay, this is so cool!” she said.This location is known as the Rift

Zone, and its unique geological impor-tance was a main factor in Maberry-Gaulke’s applying for the fellowship.

In 10th grade, Maberry-Gaulke and her classmates were assigned a project in their geology class for which they had to research a national park.

“I chose [a national park in] Iceland because it’s a really special place,” she said. “It’s one of the few pieces of land above sea level that is on a tectonic plate boundary which means the land is literally being pulled apart. It’s nuts to think about.”

After researching these tectonic boundaries at length and seeing photo-graphs of Iceland’s landscape, Maber-ry-Gaulke became more and more in-terested in the significance of Iceland’s geological qualities.

“After sophomore year, when I real-ized that I really like geology and that I want to go into it for college, I decided that I may as well apply for this grant and see if I could go [to Iceland] and see these beautiful and crazy, unusual things I had researched,” Maberry-Gaulke said.

Unlike previous recipients of the fellowship, Maberry-Gaulke traveled with her family.

“I needed an adult so I could rent a car,” Maberry-Gaulke said. “My mom [Visual Arts Department Head Cheri Gaulke] said she’d go because she’s doing this art piece about high heels walking and she got a faculty grant, and then [Cheri’s wife] Sue and [sister Marka Maberry-Gaulke ’12] wanted to come so we decided to make it a whole family thing.”

“And we’re fun to be around,” Mar-ka said.

Their trip was two weeks long, and

all their traveling around the country was done in their car, with no concrete destinations in mind.

“Some days we would only drive 150 kilometers, and then on other days we would drive 400,” Xochi said.

The family drove somewhere new every day. With a population of only 300,000, Iceland does not have very many large cities. The family stayed in mostly small bed and breakfasts, Xochi said.

“We would stay in villages with like, a thousand people,” Xochi said.

“And a thousand people was a really big village,” Marka said.

The sisters were most sur-prised by how many geographic elements and landscapes they saw in one day.

“There would be places near where the airport was where there was lots of moss fields and basi-cally nothing else, but also in the same day we could walk a kilometer and there would be a wa-terfall coming from some glacier some-where far away,” said Marka, who also studied geology in 10th grade.

“Outside of the towns there’s basi-cally nothing,” Xochi said. “We would see like one sheep. It’s cool to be in a place where the land is ruling the people instead of the people ruling the land.”

While driving from location to loca-tion, they saw several collapsed bridges decaying on the ground, Xochi said.

“They don’t even build the bridges to be permanent because no matter what, they can’t make a bridge that will withstand a flood,” Marka said. “It’s impossible.”

Xochi said that one of her favorite places they visited while in Iceland was the sulfuric geothermal hot zone out-side of the town of Myvatn.

“It was a hill that had no plants on

it, but all of the sudden you would see steam coming up from it and sulfuric acid — it was so beautiful,” Xochi said

Iceland has a geothermic spring that produces the most energy in the world, and because of all of the geo-thermic activity, electricity in Iceland costs very little, and these springs pro-duce some of the cleanest water in the world, Xochi said.

Xochi has not yet decided what she will do with all her experiences and what she learned while in Iceland, see-ing as the grant is very open ended as far as what the recipient does with the research. Xochi does plan to delve

further into the field of geology, possibly as a se-nior year inde-pendent study, in college and as a profession.

“My ideal job would prob-ably be a geo-logic photogra-pher, because I’m starting to really like pho-

tography and I love the idea of cap-turing a geological feature because in a thousand years it will probably look completely different,” Xochi said. “I don’t think I’ll be able to though be-cause that’s not really a job that’s easy to come by, but if not that I’d want to be some kind of field geologist where I’m out studying rocks.”

Xochi credits her geology class and teacher Wendy Van Norden for instill-ing this love of geology in her.

“I’m sorry that not everyone gets to take [geology], and I’m sorry that peo-ple think it’s the ‘stupid class’ for 10th grade science,” Xochi said.

Both Maberry-Gaulke sisters were amazed by how different an environ-ment Iceland is as opposed to home.

“Living in Los Angeles, it’s so pol-luted and dirty, but Iceland’s so clean,” Xochi said. “Being in that place is so incredible because the earth is so much more dominant.”

rocking out After receiving the junior summer fellowship, Xochi Maberry-Gaulke ’12 explored Iceland to examine its unique geological features.

GROUND-BREAKING: While touring Iceland, Xochi Maberry-Gaulke ’12, at right, observed a sulfuric geothermal hot zone near Lake Mývatn, top left, and the

Western Rift Zone, where the country is being pulled apart by tectonic plates, bottom left. Maberry-Gaulke stands before one of Iceland’s many natural waterfalls, above.

PHOTOS PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF XOCHI MABERRY-GAULKE

“It’s cool to be in a place where the land is ruling the people instead of the people ruling the land.”—Xochi Maberry-Gaulke ’12

By Michael SugerMan

For track stars Cami Chapus ’12 and Amy Weissenbach ’12, this sum-mer has been full of record breaking times and international competition.

In June, Chapus ran the fastest high school outdoor mile time in the nation this year at 4:42.71.

Weissenbach set the all-time na-tional high school outdoor record time in the 800-meter race with a time of 2:02.04, and was recognized as the Na-tional Girls’ Track & Field Athlete of the Year by the Gatorade Company in late June.

In July, Chapus and Weissenbach ran at the U.S. trials for the World Youth Track and Field Championship in Myrtle Beach, SC.

Chapus competed in the 1,500-me-ter race (100 meters short of her usual event, the 1,600-meter), finishing with a time of 4:25.61. Weissenbach compet-ed in the 800-meter race, and finished with a time of 2:09.52.

With their times, both Chapus and Weissenbach qualified to compete in Lille, France.

Later in July, they competed in Lille with the United States national girls’ track team. In the preliminary heat, Chapus ran 4:22.69, and Weissen-bach ran 2:05.84. They both won a spot in the finals.

Chapus finished fifth in her fi-nal race, though her time of 4:17.12 is the fastest girls’ outdoor time for an American runner this year.

“It was really exciting,” Chapus said. “At first, I actually didn’t realize it because I’m used to running the 1,600 or the mile, and I was really just plan-ning on going out there and racing.”

Chapus was also excited because her time bested that of well-known University of Oregon runner Jordan Hasay as a high school junior by 12 mil-liseconds. Hasay currently holds the all-time national high school outdoor record for the 1,500-meter, which she ran as a high school senior in 4:14.50.

“It was really exciting for me know-ing that she’s a really famous high school and college runner, and that she ran this event too and got faster from

By Judd liebMan

Pitcher and outfielder Max Fried ’12 will join the senior class and de-fending Mission League Champion baseball team after his former school, Montclair Prep, shut down its athletics program due to budget cuts.

“It’s definitely heartbreaking to hear the news,” Fried said. “The ad-ministrators and teachers were great, and I had been there since seventh grade, so it’s all I knew. It’s time to move on, and I can’t wait to get the school year started.”

Montclair Prep dropped its sports program after 50 years of competi-tion. The budget also forced the school to become a 9-12 school by closing its seventh and eighth grade in addition to the financial aid program.

“As a result of this economy and overwhelming requests for financial aid, we had to restructure,” school di-rector Mark Simpson told the Los An-geles Times.

Due to the closure of the athlet-ics program, CIF governing body will allow all Montclair Prep students to transfer to any school and will not de-clare any athlete ineligible.

“The Southern Section, which is extremely vigilant in terms of its transfer policies, took extracurricular [activities] into consideration,” Associ-ate Head of School Audrius Barzdukas said.

Fried, a UCLA commit, took ad-vantage of CIF’s decision and decided to transfer within two weeks of

portsThe Chronicle • Sept. 7, 2011

Los Angeles • Volume XXI • Issue Is

Football falls in season opener, surrenders 1st half lead to Venice

Baseball star joins senior class

By luke holthouSe

After tying the score at 27 with un-der a minute to play, the Wolverines surrendered a touchdown to Venice with 13 seconds left and fell 34-27 last Friday.

Both a failed extra point attempt after a 35-yard touchdown catch by Clinton Hooks ’13 on fourth down and a failed onside kick return aided Ven-ice in its comeback.

The Wolverines were leading 21-0 toward the end of the first half, but Venice scored on the last play of the half cutting the Wolverines’ lead to 14 points.

Venice then score 20 unanswered points in the second half, taking a 27-21 lead. Though it appeared that the Wolverines’ late comeback was enough to send a packed crowd at Ted Slavin

Field home happy after Chad Kanoff ’13 found Hooks in the end zone for the quarterbacks’ third touchdown, the team could not hold down Venice of-fense at the end of the game.

The game was broadcasted via live feed on foxsportswest.com. Full cover-age of the game can be seen from the website.

The team showcased two major changes last Friday. First-year offen-sive coordinator Scot Ruggles intro-duced a “hurry-up” offense, where the offense sets up in formation and calls a play without organizing in a huddle. Players also began playing on both of-fense and defense this season, rather than specializing in one position.

The team used players both on of-fense and defense because of a decline in the number of players on the team from last year.

A successful hurry-up offense al-lows the team to run plays without giving an opposing defense very much time to set up its formation or catch its breath.

“[It is] constantly putting pressure on the defense and making them think while they’re tired,” Ruggles said.

The Wolverine offense scored three touchdowns on its first six possesions but were had only one touchdown in the second half as Venice adjusted to the Wolverines’ offense at the half.

“We’re looking good this year,” of-fensive and defensive lineman An-drew Green ’12 said. “We just have to play tough this year, start fast, finish strong, and we’ll be able to stop any-one. We just have to be conditioned and ready to go. We’re all excited for this year, and everybody should come out and watch our games.”

CHRISTINA YANG/VOX

DANIEL KIM/CHRONICLE DANIEL KIM/CHRONICLE

STORMING THE FIELD: Wolverines rush onto the field at the beginning of the Venice game, top. The Venice defense

tackles Correy King ’13, bottom left. King evades the North Hollywood defense during the team’s scrimmage, bottom right.

Seniors run for USA at youth championships

JOINING THE RANKS: New senior Max Fried ’12 talks with Coach Matt LaCour. Fried transferred to the school after Montclair Prep shut down its athletics program.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF RICK GIOLITO

Cami Chapus ’12 and Amy Weissenbach ’12 competed at the IAAF World Youth Championships in Lille, France.

Continued on page C4

Continued on page C7

The cross country team trained at Big Bear for a week. Its first league meet is tomorrow.

Title defenseC2

By Charlton azuoma

Although the girls’ varsity volley-ball team lost 11 seniors, the squad, led by captains Sofia Davila ’12, Katie Price ’12 and Lucy Tilton ’12, is con-fident that the team hasn’t skipped a beat and can stay dominant in the Mission League, Head Coach Adam Black said. The team starts its season today against Santa Barbara in Taper Gymnasium.

“[Our captains] will be pulling us in the right direction this year,” Black said. “Every year is a new year. I’m not sure if there is a void, it’s just a new team.” The three senior leaders are the only returning players from last year’s team which started its season ranked 20th in the nation by Maxpreps.com.

“We look to the juniors and say we won’t always be here. You’ve got to step it up,” Price said.

In order to cope with the loss of more experienced players, the team has group meetings after practices without their coaches to talk about what could be improved.

Tilton feels that because of the player-loss, younger girls will have to take on larger roles.

“Seniors this year know they have to step up,” she said. “We will put it apon the younger girls to step up themselves.”

Middle hitter Arielle Winfield ’13 agrees with Tilton and feels younger players need to ste up.

“The juniors have been working re-ally hard because we all knew that the seniors were all going to be leaving af-ter the season,” Winfield said.

The team will be welcoming the re-turn of hitter Victoria Pearson ’12 as she returns to school after an academic year abroad in Spain. She did not play on a competitive volleyball team during her year abroad. Coach Black feels her year away from competitive volleyball will not affect her play on the team this year.

“She’s meshing well with the team,” Black said. “She’s a great individual and has picked up where she left off.”

“Obviously, one of our goals is to win league but we would really like to try for at least the second round of CIF,” said Price.

The team’s next game is tomorrow against Redondo Union at Redondo Union High School at 6:30 p.m.

Their most noteworthy game is against Marymount who won the Divi-sion I CIF title last season, according to setter Bea DyBuncio ’13.

DyBuncio believes the team’s other tough game this year will be against Lakewood on homecoming, both games in Taper Gym.

“[The Marymount game] will be big because we have both been successful teams for a long time,” DyBuncio said. “We have had a rivalry for a while and we are pretty evenly matched.”

Sept. 7, 2011C2 SportS the ChroniCle

11Eighteen hole score shot by girls’ golfer Amanda Aizuss ’13 at Westlake Golf Course to win a summer tournament.

game of the monthGIRLS’ VOLLEYBALL

Sept. 12at Taper Gymnasium

6:30 p.m.

Number of girls’ volleyball graduating seniors, leaving three returning varsity players.

vs. Marymount

Facts

5

1 Lucas Giolito’s ’12 ranking for high school pitching prospects in the nation.

76

4:42.71This year’s nation-best time which Cami Chapus ’12 recorded to win Adidas Dream Mile.

Football players who started on both offense and defense for the first game against Venice. There were no two-way starters last season.

&Figures

Previous Matchup:

Harvard-Westlake fell to Marymount 1-3 (25-22, 23-25, 25-14, 25-21) in their first

loss of last season.

Previous Records:

Harvard-Westlake: 26-3 overall; 10-0 league

Marymount: 25-7 overall; 8-0 league

Early on in the season, the girls’ volleyball team has only three returning players from last year’s team. At one point last season, they were ranked number one in the nation. The Wolverines face their rival Marymount, fresh off a CIF championship in this highly antici-pated matchup.

94Zena Edosomwan’s ’12 current ranking on ESPNU 100 on ESPNrise.com. He was unranked at the beginning of the summer.

Opponent to Watch:Tori Jasuto (Marymount)

Position: Outside hitter

School Comparison:

H-W MHSVolleyballCIF SSChampionships

1995 1996 1998 2000 2001 2007

1991 2000 2001 2002 2003 2006

2010

Division IA

ESPNHS Preseason Rank

Unranked 17

Girls’ volleyball copes with loss of 11 seniors

IAA

Runners prepare to defend CIF, league titlesBy DaviD Kolin and Julius PaK

The varsity cross country teams will take the first step in their title’s defense in their first meet tomorrow at 2:30 p.m. at Crescenta Valley Park. The meet will be the first of two league cluster matches, in addition to the league final meet, that will determine the league victors.

The boys’ team is the reigning CIF champion, while Cami Chapus ’12 and Amy Weissenbach ’12 are the state’s two fastest girls.

Coming off its most successful sea-son last year, the boys’ cross country team looks to repeat its CIF victory and to capture the elusive state title.

Although the girls’ team did not win either CIF or state last year, the team can only get better, as it still re-tains the state’s fastest one-two punch of Chapus and Weissenbach. Both run-ners are fresh from coming off inter-national competition, and Weissen-bach is free of the injuries that plagued her last season.

In preparation for the season, the teams traveled to Big Bear to train for a week.

The team left for Big Bear on Aug. 21 returned home Aug. 28. During their stay, cross country runners had two types of workout days.

On Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, the team performed more rigorous workouts than on Wednesday and Friday.

On the more difficult training days, runners would wake up at 6:30 a.m. and prepare themselves for an early morn-ing run of about two miles. Then, at 3 p.m. the team had an intense workout.

In Big Bear, the runners not only focused on their fitness, but also dis-cussed what they wanted out of the season.

“We had team meetings where we talked about our goals with the coaches and what we expected of ourselves,” David Manahan ’14 said.

Throughout the season, the cross country team has four meets before the CIF playoff meets in November.

ROBBIE LOEB/CHRONICLE

Field hockey underclassmen take larger rolesBy roBBie loeB

Coming off a Mission League cham-pionship, the varsity field hockey team looks to repeat their successful cam-paign after last year’s 15-3 season.

The first home game is scheduled against Newport Harbor tomorrow, and the first league game will be at Bo-nita High School on Sept. 27.

“We’re excited for the season and we’re going to go in ready to play and to win,” Kacey Wilson ’13 said.

Although losing key seniors from last year, such as Courtney Hazy ’11 and Rachel Hall ’11, the team will turn to its new seniors for leadership.

“The seniors are great leaders be-cause they have experience playing on varsity,” Wilson said. “Jessica [Barzilay ’12] is a really good example because she’s a good athlete who works hard.”

Underclassmen may pave the way for the team’s success, however, as they will be key pieces if the team is to re-peat as champions.

Six of 19 players on varsity are ei-ther freshmen or sophomores.

“Even though we lost a bunch of experienced seniors, we gained new players who will work hard to fill those roles,” Wilson said. “Maddie [Oswald ’15] is super-fast and has great endur-ance and Daniella [Grande ’15] is our goalie and has great reflexes. They can bring a new perspective because they’re freshmen on varsity.”

The team participated in the Gate-way Classic Tournament in St. Louis last week.

Results were unavailable as of press time.

SENIOR LEADER: Kristen Lee ’12, left, and Elana Meer ’13 battle for possession of the ball during a team practice. The team’s first home game will take place tomorrow.

For weekly coverage of the girls’ volleyball team, see chronicle.hw.com

PERFECT PASS: Outside hitter Nicole Gould ’13 passes the ball to the setter during a scrimmage against Thousand Oaks High School Aug. 30.

DANIEL KIM/CHRONICLE

By Michael aronson

The addition of a new coach, con-struction of a new pool and the loss of a dominant starter made for an eventful summer for the boys’ water polo team, which seeks its first CIF title since its transfer to Division I.

“I couldn’t be more excited to be back at the school that’s given me a lot of opportunities,” new head coach Brian Flacks ’05 said. “The goal is to win the Mission League and to create a certain culture that we want to live by on the Harvard-Westlake water polo program.”

Flacks will coach the team follow-ing Robert Lynn’s resignation. Flacks played water polo for four years at Harvard-Westlake, and he believes his

familiarity will help him step into the head coaching role.

“The more we spoke with qualified candidates, the more it became obvi-ous that Coach Flacks was the right choice,” Associate Head of Harvard-Westlake Audrius Barzdukas said.

The renovations of the pool will force all home games to be played off campus at either Los Angeles Valley College, University of California, Los Angeles or a pool in the Pacoima area.

“We’re going to make something happen this year and look at the posi-tive,” Flacks said. “It’s not a rebuilding year, and we are not giving up because of the construction.”

Senior leader Alec Zwaneveld ’12 is optimistic about Flacks as a coach and the team’s talent going into its first

game at Marina High School on Sept. 9.

“We have a really good freshman class coming in and some really great sophomores and juniors,” Zwaneveld said. “Our team really hasn’t changed much because we only lost one starting senior.”

The program did however lose starter and leading player Henry Mc-Namara who followed former coach Lynn to Newport Harbor High School. The Wolverines will play their former teammate and coach in their game against Newport Harbor on Oct. 14.

“Newport is definitely the team we’re looking to knock off,” Zwaneveld said. “[Beating them] would send a re-ally good message and it’s something we really have to work hard for.”

chronicle.hw.com SportS C3Sept. 7, 2011

Boys’ water polo gets new coach,copes with construction of pool

The equestrian team has two months to prepare for its 1st competi-tion at Hansen Dam Equestrian Cen-ter Oct. 30. The team hopes to improve from last year’s third place showing in the Los Angeles Interscholastic Eques-trian League this season.

“Hopefully, we can take the top spot,” rider Corinne Miller ’12 said. “I know we have a lot of new riders from younger grades moving up to the varsi-ty division, so I think we will be a good team this year.”

Though the team does not practice together, they have all been working hard individually, Miller said.

—Abbie Neufeld

Influx of members brings hope to equestrian team

Sprint coach Quincy Watts left Harvard-Westlake to coach at Califor-nia State University, Northridge. His new position will be “one job in one place with one employer,” Head of Pro-gram Jonas Koolsbergen said.

“It’s obviously disappointing for us to lose a coach and a person of that quality,” Koolsbergen said. “We will continue without him and continue to do the tremendous things we’ve been doing.”

—Julia Aizuss

Track and field coach leaves to coach at CSUN

The cheerleading squad is primed for this season with more members than ever before.

This year, there are 23 cheerleaders on the team. In addition to cheering at the school’s sporting events, the team will take part in both dance and cheer competitions throughout the year. The team did not compete last year.

There are just two seniors and four juniors on the team—17 additional members are freshmen and sopho-mores.

Three of the team’s members suf-fered injuries during cheer practice this offseason including a broken col-larbone and nose.

—Micah Sperling

Cheerleaders to compete with expanding program

OUT OF THE WATER: Bradley Schine ’12 fires a shot against Cathedral during last year’s homecoming game. There will be no homecoming game this year for the team due to the pool construction. All its games and practices will be held in different pools.

DANIEL KIM/CHRONICLE

Girls’ tennis aims for 10th league title in 12 years Drum Line performs at

first athletic competitionThe Drum Line made its debut Fri-

day at the varsity football game. The three students who performed were led by Lauren Kosty, a percussions ma-jor from Carnegie Mellon.

“[Kosty] is just so energetic and her enthusiasm is contagious,” Athletic Director Darlene Bible said.

Member James Wu ’13 says the students involved are excited about the prospect of this newly formed band.

“It’s about time Harvard-Westlake had a drum line,” Wu said. “It is time to show other schools how strong our music program is.”

—Elana Zeltser

New York Mets promoteinfielder to major leagues

By caMille shooshani

Tomorrow’s scrimmage against Beverly Hills High School will test the strength of the girls’ varsity ten-nis team after the loss of four starting seniors.

The girls hope they will be able to claim their 10th Mission League title in 12 years in the team’s upcoming sea-son, Head Coach Chris Simpson said.

“We’re playing for experience and competition this year,” Simpson said.

The league, in the past, has had generally strong singles players but weak doubles, leaving Harvard-West-lake to dominate the doubles field, Simpson said. With the loss of senior doubles players, the team will have to compensate.

Co-Captain Taylor Coon ’12 said Mira Costa High School and Palos Verdes High School are the teams to beat during the season as the matches have always been close.

Co-captain Kei Goldberg ’12 has taken a “motherly” role as supporter and adviser, as she will not be playing full matches until she recovers from a shoulder injury, she said.

Both Goldberg and Simpson said Kristina Park ’13 is one of the most improved players this season. Park, who recently moved on to the under-18 division, spent the summer competing in tournaments and practicing with friends at various summer intensives.

“I’ve been working hard this sum-mer and I’m excited for all of it to pay off this season,” Park said.

Girls’ golf wins first league match, faces ‘toughest competition’ in Notre Dame By austin lee

The girls’ golf team started off its season with a 226-271 league win over Alemany last Tuesday.

The team had very consistent scores overall, with almost all of the players scoring in the low to mid 40s.

“Our main goals are to play our best and for everyone on the team to im-prove by three to five strokes through-out the season,” co-captain Jessica Wibawa ’13 said.

The team has been training in-dividually instead of as a team this summer, due to difficulties in schedul-ing team practices because of players’

travel schedules.Instead, some players met with

Head Coach Linda Giaciolli over the summer to show their short games and to check in with their progress from last year.

The team played against Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy in a league match yesterday, followed by another league match against Notre Dame on tomorrow.

“Notre Dame is definitely our toughest competitor,” co-captain Amanda Aizuss ’13 said. “Several of their players want to play college and even professional golf, and they are ranked first by the Daily News.”

SINKING PUTTS: Kate Kushi ’14 watches her ball as she finishes her putting stroke at Encino Golf Course in the team’s match against Bishop Alemany last Tuesday.

DANIEL KIM/CHRONICLE

Josh Satin ’03 was chosen for the major leagues by the New York Mets.

Satin played four years of varsity baseball at Harvard-Westlake, then started four years at University of Cal-ifornia, Berkeley. He played second and third base in college and first base in the Mets’ minor league system.

He is not expected to get much playing time this season, as the Mets already have proven starters in his po-sitions.

Satin was a .307 career hitter with 37 home runs in under four minor league seasons.

—Micah Sperling

inbrief

By DaviD Lim

Third baseman Arden Pabst ’13 took home a gold medal from the International Baseball Federation World Youth

Championships in Mexico after the 16U U.S. team shut out Cuba 9-0 in the final.

“[The tournament] didn’t go as well as I would have liked, but I did have a very good game against Venezuela,” Pabst said. “I played well when it really mattered. I hit two hits and scored two runs, and I started a couple of big rallies to come back, and we won it in ten innings.”

In that critical second round game that determined which team would progress to the final, the U.S. team was down five runs at the end of the eighth inning.

“We were down five runs,” Pabst said. The first guy of the inning struck out. Then I got up and I had two strikes on me, and I got a hit, and then I ended up scoring. Then we scored five runs in that inning, and we took the lead. I kind of started that rally.”

Venezuela scored a run in the top of the ninth inning to take a 15-14 lead. Pabst was the first hitter up for the United States in the bottom of the ninth.

“I hit a ground ball to third base, and the third baseman threw it away, so I got on second,” Pabst said. “They put a pinch runner in for me and he scored to tie up the game again,” Pabst said.

Pabst’s two runs helped propel the U.S. team into the finals in the ten inning 18-17 victory.

To qualify for the national team, he attended multi-stage trials at the 16U level of competition run by USA Baseball.

Teams USAC4 SportS the ChroniCle Sept. 7, 2011

By marieL Brunman

As captain of the USA Women’s Cadet National water polo team, Morgan Hallock ’13 led the United States team to a silver medal at the Union Americana de Natacion Jr. Pan American Games in Puerto Rico from Aug. 4-13.

She began the tryout process over a year ago with the Olympic Development Program, the umbrella organiza-tion for the tournament.

After making the cut for the 70-girl team, Hallock competed in two tournaments in California. Her perfor-mance won her a spot on the 13-girl roster.

Most of her teammates were also from Southern Cali-fornia, but a few members were from Hawaii or Florida, Hallock said. The team traveled to Miami to practice to-gether before competing in San Juan, and at the end of the Miami training, Hallock was chosen as captain.

“Very quickly I recognized her ability to be an incredi-ble leader, and I was not disappointed,” Hallock’s National Team coach, Kim Everest, said. “Trying to pull a team together in a short period of time requires an athlete who can bond the team and command respect, and Morgan did both.”

Everest also admired Hallock’s strong work ethic and exceptional drive.

“I could count on her to handle situations where her teammates needed to learn responsibility, and I could count on her to uplift and inspire her teammates,” she said. “I am blessed to have had the opportunity to work with Morgan. She is an incredible young woman who will continue to be very successful in her life.”

Hallock appreciated the opportunity to lead the team through the tournament.

“It was an honor to be the leader of our national team and represent our country,” she said. “It was amazing to work with other talented, athletic girls who had a similar work ethic to me. The amazing thing about playing at a national level is everyone puts in the equal amount of ef-fort and time and are just as motivated to compete.”

Hallock was also chosen as the English-speaking rep-resentative to read the Athlete’s Oath during the opening ceremony that included an audience of players from teams hailing from Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Peru, Puerto Rico and Trinidad and Tobago.

“The different languages sometimes formed a barrier, but the USA girls were closest with both the Brazilian

Junior captains US girls’ water polo team in Puerto Rico, wins silver medal

Two seniors race in Francethere,” Chapus said.

“This year the 1,500 that I ran in was really fast,” she said. “Every other year, my time would’ve gotten second place. It just made me feel great that I could end the sea-son on such a high note.”

Weissenbach finished in fourth place in the 800 meter race with a time of 2:03.59.

“I still hold the record for my race in general, so it was disappointing not to do as well,” she said. “But I gave it my all, and it was just a really cool experience to run with the best people in the world at my sport.”

Chapus and Weissenbach were the only two national represen-tatives from the same school, which is pretty significant, coach Tim Sharpe said.

While in Lille, Chapus and Weissenbach maintained daily

routines to keep themselves in prime physical shape.

Every morning, Chapus ate either pancakes or waffles. The night before every race, Weis-

senbach ate a full steak and a pasta entrée.

During the day, Chapus made sure to stay hydrated.

To keep from becoming anx-ious, “I try to occupy my-self with other activities, like hanging out with my friends,” Chapus said.

“Cami and I have be-come obsessed with G Fit

[part of the Gatorade Sports G Series], so we have that before

every race,” Weissenbach said. “We also have a bunch of lucky items we touch before races, es-pecially this stopwatch from the Olympics.”

To warm up prior to her rac-es, Weissenbach, who had a hip

injury last season, did exercises to prevent such and injury from re-curring. Chapus would do “shake-outs” every morning — exercises consisting of one mile of jogging and then some light stretching.

In terms of mental preparation, “I always jump super high three

times before each race, and then I smile,” Chapus said. “It calms my nerves, and it reminds me that I’m happy to do this.”

To ensure the athletes stay focused, the team re-frained from tourism.

“When we weren’t running our event, we were either training or at the track cheering on our teammates,” Weissenbach said. “We were there to bring back medals for the United States, so there wasn’t any sightseeing involved.”

To further guarantee that the athletes would focus on their races, they were not allowed to see their parents. The team stuck together to maintain a high level of over-all group concentration.

However, Sharpe, who went to France as a spectator, was allowed to see Chapus and Weissenbach and make sure the national coaches maintained the girls’ workout regimens.

“I developed a very close relationship with the [US team] distance coach and was always able to meet with the girls before their warm-ups and before they went in the call tent,” said Sharpe, who referred to himsef as a hybrid between spectator and coach. “Even though I wasn’t with them all the time, I was able to be with the girls at the most essential times to make them feel a little comfortable.”

“Of course, both girls will continue to improve,” he said. “The reality is, as well as both girls have done, they haven’t been training since they were little kids. Truth-fully, they’ve been doing this for a short time and have lots of room for improvements.”

GLOBE TROTTER: Cami Chapus ’12, 1588, runs the 1,500-meter event in France during the International Association of Athletics Federations World Youth Championships, above. Amy Weissenbach ’12 competes in the 800-meter race, bottom left.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF AMY WEISSENBACH

STU FORESTER/GETTY IMAGES SPORT/GETTY IMAGES

Junior wins in Mexico with US baseball

Continued from page C1

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF AMY WEISSENBACH

AMERICANS IN FRANCE: Amy Weissenbach ’12 left, and Cami Chapus ’12 competed in the IAAF World Youth Championships in France from July 6-10.

By DaviD Lim

Third baseman Arden Pabst ’13 took home a gold medal from the International Baseball Federation World Youth

Championships in Mexico after the 16U U.S. team shut out Cuba 9-0 in the final.

“[The tournament] didn’t go as well as I would have liked, but I did have a very good game against Venezuela,” Pabst said. “I played well when it really mattered. I hit two hits and scored two runs, and I started a couple of big rallies to come back, and we won it in ten innings.”

In that critical second round game that determined which team would progress to the final, the U.S. team was down five runs at the end of the eighth inning.

“We were down five runs,” Pabst said. The first guy of the inning struck out. Then I got up and I had two strikes on me, and I got a hit, and then I ended up scoring. Then we scored five runs in that inning, and we took the lead. I kind of started that rally.”

Venezuela scored a run in the top of the ninth inning to take a 15-14 lead. Pabst was the first hitter up for the United States in the bottom of the ninth.

“I hit a ground ball to third base, and the third baseman threw it away, so I got on second,” Pabst said. “They put a pinch runner in for me and he scored to tie up the game again,” Pabst said.

Pabst’s two runs helped propel the U.S. team into the finals in the ten inning 18-17 victory.

To qualify for the national team, he attended multi-stage trials at the 16U level of competition run by USA Baseball.

After a preliminary round in Arizona, the top 40 players were invited to a week-long tryout at the USA Baseball National Training Complex in Cary, N.C.

He was named to the team on Aug. 13 and, after a week of training with the team, headed off to the IBAF World Youth Championships in Lagos de Moreno, Mexico.

“It was pretty cool traveling as a team,” Pabst said. “We had our travel [sweatsuits] on, and [people] recognized us, so that was pretty cool.”

From the airport, Pabst and the team were escorted to the hotel by police and stayed in the guarded hotel along with a few other international teams.

In their final against Cuba, the U.S. team took the lead early and maintained defensive dominance throughout the game.

“I pretty much knew we were going to win, pretty much right off the bat, because we scored on them early,” Pabst said.

After the U.S. team won the tournament, Pabst had time to get to know some of his international opponents.

“We came back to the hotel and all the other teams were congratulating us, and then we would trade apparel,” Pabst said. “Everyone wanted USA apparel, so I actually ended up trading. I got two baseball mitts from the Chinese Taipei players, and one from the Australian guy.”

New transfer Max Fried ’12 and fellow pitcher Lucas Giolito ’12 were both in the process for trying out for the USA Baseball 18U Team, an age level above Pabst’s, but will not attend in order to recover from their summer

play in time for the spring season.Both players were named to the preliminary

28-man roster for the 18U team and originally planned to attend the tryouts. However, the Pan-American Championships were delayed from September to November due to a national disaster in the area, according to a USA Baseball press release, and would have forced both players to extend their pitching season without a break to recuperate.

The rescheduling of the tournament played a major role in Giolito’s decision to not participate in the tryouts.

“I definitely would have gone over, stayed in shape, and I would have left Sept. 12, hopefully make the team and then go to Cartagena in September, and them come back Oct. 2,” Giolito said. “But pushing it back and Team USA not pushing the trials back as well made it too hard for me to be able to go and get a good rest period.”

Fried, who like Giolito committed to UCLA last year, transferred to Harvard-Westlake after his former school, Montclair College Preparatory, shut down its athletics program. He said he is taking his break so he can focus on the season and winning league again this year.

“It doesn’t make sense for me to take time off for just my physical health and then try to get back into shape really fast and then take more time off and then get back into shape for the season,” Fried said.

“I feel like that would hinder my ability during spring, for school season, and the last thing I want to do is mess up or try to ruin anything that’s going to happen during the spring.”

SportS C5ChroniCle.hw.ComSept. 7, 2011

Students and an alumnus competed internationally this summer for the red, white and blue.

By marieL Brunman

As captain of the USA Women’s Cadet National water polo team, Morgan Hallock ’13 led the United States team to a silver medal at the Union Americana de Natacion Jr. Pan American Games in Puerto Rico from Aug. 4-13.

She began the tryout process over a year ago with the Olympic Development Program, the umbrella organiza-tion for the tournament.

After making the cut for the 70-girl team, Hallock competed in two tournaments in California. Her perfor-mance won her a spot on the 13-girl roster.

Most of her teammates were also from Southern Cali-fornia, but a few members were from Hawaii or Florida, Hallock said. The team traveled to Miami to practice to-gether before competing in San Juan, and at the end of the Miami training, Hallock was chosen as captain.

“Very quickly I recognized her ability to be an incredi-ble leader, and I was not disappointed,” Hallock’s National Team coach, Kim Everest, said. “Trying to pull a team together in a short period of time requires an athlete who can bond the team and command respect, and Morgan did both.”

Everest also admired Hallock’s strong work ethic and exceptional drive.

“I could count on her to handle situations where her teammates needed to learn responsibility, and I could count on her to uplift and inspire her teammates,” she said. “I am blessed to have had the opportunity to work with Morgan. She is an incredible young woman who will continue to be very successful in her life.”

Hallock appreciated the opportunity to lead the team through the tournament.

“It was an honor to be the leader of our national team and represent our country,” she said. “It was amazing to work with other talented, athletic girls who had a similar work ethic to me. The amazing thing about playing at a national level is everyone puts in the equal amount of ef-fort and time and are just as motivated to compete.”

Hallock was also chosen as the English-speaking rep-resentative to read the Athlete’s Oath during the opening ceremony that included an audience of players from teams hailing from Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Peru, Puerto Rico and Trinidad and Tobago.

“The different languages sometimes formed a barrier, but the USA girls were closest with both the Brazilian

men’s and women’s teams,” Hallock said. “Of course, we also cheered on and supported our USA men’s team.”

Although the members of the team were young, the team came home with a silver medal. Neither Hallock nor many of her teammates had competed internationally be-fore, and it was their first experience with different play-ing styles and toughness of other countries.

“Brazil was extremely physical and fast, while Canada was all my size and very strong,” Hallock said. “Through-out the tournament, we showed that even though we weren’t as experienced as some of the teams, we earned the right to be at the top.”

Ultimately, the American team lost in the finals to Canada by one.

“Canada versus. USA in any level of international play is like Loyola verseus. Harvard-Westlake and USC versus UCLA—a big deal,” Hallock said.

Although it was a tough loss, Hallock is using the defeat as incentive to work harder and hopefully defeat Canada at future tournaments.

Based on her performance in the Pan American Games, Hallock became eligible to qualify for the 2012 Youth World Championships in Australia next December.

“Through this experience, I have grown as a player, a leader and an American,” Hallock said. “Representing my country was one of the most amazing feelings and holding our flag high after being handed a silver medal doesn’t compare to anything else.”

Junior captains US girls’ water polo team in Puerto Rico, wins silver medal

TEAM CAPTAIN: Morgan Hallock ’13 captained the national 17U women’s youth water polo team to the final of the Pan-American Games. The United States narrowly lost to Canada during the final in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

PHOTOS PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF MORGAN HALLOCK

Alum takes 2nd with national rowing team in SloveniaBy Lauren SonnenBerg

Alex Osborne ’05 finished second at the World Rowing Championships in Bled, Slovenia this summer. Os-borne competed as a member of the U.S. Rowing team during the Aug. 28-Sept. 4 events.

His first competition was on Sun-day, Aug. 28 where the U.S. men’s Eight team finished second in its heat to Great Britain with a time of 5:35:48. In its next race, the semifinals, the team finished fourth in a race that Germany won.

Because of their performance in the semifinals, the U.S. competed in the “B” finals. In the finals, they finished in 5:38.93, second only to Ukraine.

This was Osborne’s second trip to the World Rowing Championship. Osborne previously competed in the 2009 event in Poland, where his team finished ninth.

Osborne, a Stanford graduate, had previously represented Stanford as a apart of the I Eight team, a row-ing team with eight members, and defeated the University of California, Berkeley in 2009. This victory earned them fifth place at the Intercollegiate Rowing Association Chamiponships. Osborne also assisted the team in earning the bronze medal at the IRA championships the following year.

“Alex came to Stanford with no prior rowing experience,” Stanford men’s rowing head coach and Os-borne’s former coach, Craig Amerkha-nian, said. “He brought qualities that were rich in family and team. Alex led us to our greatest success in 110 years of rowing at Stanford. Alex is a posi-tive force and contributor in whateer he chooses. At this time, rowing is his focus and the Olympic games his goal.”

Junior wins in Mexico with US baseball

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF THOMAS PABST

GOLD MEDALIST: Arden Pabst ’13 helped the U.S. baseball team claim a gold medal in the World Youth Championship final in Mexico.

Lucas Giolito ’12nathanson’s/chronicLe

Max Fried ’12rick giolito

Arden Pabst ’13nathanson’s/chronicLe

“Very quickly I recognized her ability to be an incredible leader, and I was not disappointed. Trying to pull a team together in a short period of time requires an athlete who can bond and command respect, and Morgan did both.”

—Kim Everest17U girls’ water polo coach

Loyola basketball games to move to neutral sitesBy Austin Lee

Basketball games against Loyola will be played at neutral sites this year in an attempt to solve overflow crowd issues, the athletic departments of the two schools have agreed.

The games between the two rivals have historically drawn huge crowds, with many fans and parents often not able see games due to size constraints of the gyms.

“We had a bit of an issue last year where we had people who wanted to see the game but couldn’t get in,” Athletic Direc-tor Terry Bar-num said. “We wanted to make sure that we had a gym that was big enough for ev-eryone to see the game.”

Construction has also made parking on and off campus more difficult, which would further aggravate the problem of excessive crowding during these games.

“It gets to the point where it’s a safety hazard. Very simply, that was the reason for the change, especially in light of the parking situation on Cold-water this year,” Associate Head of

School Audrius Barzdukas said.The Harvard-Westlake Athletic

Directors are currently scouting out possible locations for the Feb. 3 H-W home game, specifically one that would be able to seat a significantly larger crowd than Taper Gym’s maximum occupancy of 1000. Los Angeles Valley College, a main prospect, would seat 1800 people. However, too big a gym would also be a problem, Barzdukas said.

“Two thousand people in the Staples Center just feels empty,” Barzdukas

said. “You want to have some en-ergy. That’s part of what makes it a special game.”

The coaches and administra-tion do not expect any decline in fan attendance even with the move off-campus and, instead, expect an increase, as peo-ple will be assured of seating.

“I’m glad all of the fans will be able to be there,” Head Fanatic Jacob Scha-piro ’12 said. “We still always fill up the gym at Loyola in red, so a neutral loca-tion will be the same.”

At these off-campus sites, security will be provided by the venue or the school, and fan behavior will be regu-

lated just as much as at a home game.“Our fan behavior is the same

no matter where, whether it’s home or away,” Barnum said. “The facility doesn’t matter, so our guidelines and standards will stay in place no matter where we are.”

Head Coach Greg Hilliard said that will end up benefiting the team by get-

ting the players used to playing on neu-tral ground.

“It’s always tough to lose a home game, but it’s best for everyone and it works the same for them,” Hilliard said. “We will use it to prepare for the neutral site games we must play in the playoffs. The players will enjoy the at-mosphere.”

JUSTIN COHEN/VOX ARCHIVES

OVERCROWDED: From left, Head of Upper School Harry Salamandra, Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts, and Head of Security Jim Crawford speak to firemen during the basketball game with Loyola to solve the problem of overcrowding.

Sept. 7, 2011C6 SportS the ChroniCle

REVAMP: The pool was demolished over the summer. Construction is sched-uled to be completed by Sept. 2012.

DANIEL KIM/CHRONICLE

Construction work on pool, on Coldwater Canyon, affects sports teams’ practice and game schedulesBy MichAeL Aronson And Austin Lee

The construction work on the swimming stadium and Coldwater Canyon Avenue forces the boys’ water polo team to practice and play at three to four different pools and may change the cross country team’s practice site, Athletic Director Terry Barnum said.

The water polo team will use pools in the Pacoima area, University of California, Los Angeles and Los Ange-les Valley College instead of the upper school pool.

The construction will also prevent the team from playing its largely at-tended homecoming game which ended with four overtimes last year.

“I feel bad for the seniors who look forward to [the homecoming game]and for the fans who love seeing our team play, but in order for us to have a 50-meter pool we are going to have to give up something,” Athletic Director Terry Barnum said.

Utility player Nick Edel ’13 is also dissapointed with the loss of the home-coming game.

“It’s unfortunate that we don’t have a homecoming game this year because of how great the game was last year,” Edel ’13 said. “Nothing compares to a quadruple overtime win on homecom-ing.”

Barnum also illustrates commute issues that affect the team’s schedule, but he has faith in coach Brian Flacks ’05 to take care of his team.

“We are not going to do anything that’s going cause [the players] to suf-fer either athletically or academically,” Barnum said.

Flacks acknowledges the issues that arise from the construction, but he believes the long-term benefits out-weigh the issues.

“In a year we will have the best fa-cility in the country, and we are going to use this year as an opportunity and not make excuses,” Flacks said.

The pool’s construction is planned to be finished by September 2012; how-ever, the school is unable to begin con-struction because it has not been ap-proved by the city.

Cross Country Program Head Jo-

nas Koolsbergen and Head Coach Tim Sharpe are trying to create a training schedule that starts after construction has ended for the day, all equipment and trenches have been fenced in and the workers have gone off site.

The team may have to be driven down past the construction site before starting to run instead of just running off campus.

“When school starts, we should be practicing after the construction ends each day so the equipment and the trenches will be all fenced in,” Kools-bergen said. “If we have any concerns, we will bus or drive athletes to work-outs in order to put their safety first.”

Running out onto Coldwater has played a major part in the daily train-ing of the cross country team, with many of its workouts starting on Cold-water and circling the surrounding ar-eas.

“We go off campus almost every day to warm up and cool down,” Amy Weis-senbach ’12 said. “So I am a little bit worried about how that will affect our training.”

“Two thousand people in the Staples Center just feels empty. You want to have some energy. That’s part of what makes it a special game.”

—Audrius BarzdukasAssociate Head of School

Kristen Lee ’12UC Berkeley

Field Hockey

Lucy Tilton ’12ColumbiaVolleyball

Katie Price ’12BucknellVolleyball

College Bound

Montclair Prep’s announcement. “I chose Harvard-Westlake because

it has the best combination of baseball and academics,” Fried said. “I could not have asked for a better place to be.”

Fried was the only Montclair stu-dent to apply for the Upper School, Di-rector of Admissions Elizabeth Grego-ry said.

Gregory said some families in-quired for the Middle School, but the enrollment cap was filled.

The Admissions Office rarely ever accepts local students who are enter-ing their senior year, but these were extenuating circumstances, Gregory said.

“Local people, we rarely get, so in this case it’s very unusual for us to take someone,” she said, “but in this case, just because it’s a tough situation for the kids to be put in, we would really try and help them out.”

Gregory’s concern with accepting a student for his or her senior year stems from her worry that he or she will not be able to handle the rigorous academic environment, hurting the student’s college process.

“We would never take a kid who we

felt academically couldn’t handle the program,” she said. “No matter who they were or what their situation was, you have to be able to handle a rigorous program.”

The Admissions Office took Fried’s potential impact on the baseball team into consideration when the decision to admit him was made, but his par-ticular skills were not weighed any differently from those of other appli-cants who might excel in any one field, Gregory said.

“With anyone, if they’re a talented kid, it’s going to be a big part of their admission,” she said. “If they’re a su-perstar academic kid or a superstar swimmer, or whatever, we would be more interested in them than if they’re just a regular kid.”

Fried was admitted, Barzdukas said, because he fit Harvard-Westlake’s academic and athletic environment well.

“For every single person, to a large degree, school happiness and success is dependent on fit,” Barzdukas said. “Whatever your extracurricular tal-ents and interest, do you match up with where you’re going?”

In the classroom, Fried was an hon-or student at Montclair Prep, he said.

On the baseball field, he flirts with 94 miles per hour when he hurls his fastball and batted .380 last season.

Fried plays in the outfield when he’s not on the mound, and his ver-satility made him a desirable recruit last year, Fried said. Because Fried can play multiple positions, baseball Head Coach Matt LaCour said he does not yet know where Fried will play.

“We will wait until we get Max on the field to see exactly how he fits,” LaCour said. “Like everyone else in our program, he will find his niche through the fall and the winter. These things usually work themselves out rather easily.”

Fried already knows some Wolver-ine baseball players, and he said he fits in well with the program.

Fried worked out with the Har-vard-Westlake team over the summer and met fellow pitcher Lucas Giolito ’12 when they played on an Area Code team together.

“Lucas is probably the top high school pitcher in America,” Fried said. “Just the privilege of playing with him throughout the summer, and now be-ing able to do it next year, I just can’t wait. Our friendly competition and ri-valry will make us better.”

offers. “It showed me that all of my hard work was finally paying off.”

After receiving the offers, Edosom-wan said that he paid attention to the academic caliber of the schools, particularly as it relates to his de-sire to major in medicine.

“What’s im-portant is that I want to go to a good academic school,” he said. “I always thought, if basketball didn’t work out, and, God forbid some-thing happened to me and I was injured, I want to be able to get a good job and a good education that I could depend on.”

Edosomwan acknowledged that Harvard did not fit in with the rest of the schools, as it is not a well-known

basketball powerhouse, but said that its academic strength as well as the coaching staff attracted him.

“It’s Harvard,” he said. “It’s the best school in the world. Also, I really have built a relationship with the coaching

staff there. I see where the pro-gram is looking to go in terms of basketball, and the academics are already there.”

In addition to the AAU tourna-ments, colleges scouted Edosom-wan during last year’s high school season, according to Head Coach Greg Hilliard. He said that the

“travel ball” games where coaches are watching don’t show the entire picture.

“It’s sort of like watching an NBA All-star game, where no defense is played, and kids run up and down and

do their dunks and all of this sort of thing, and the college coaches know that it only shows them a little bit of the picture,” Hilliard said. “So [by watching] the high school season with organized defense with x’s and o’s, they can see if the player functions well in that situation.”

Edosomwan also participated in various invitation-only basketball camps, such as the NBA Top 100, where he was coached by Luke Wal-ton and Steve Blake of the Los Angeles Lakers, and Adidas Nations, where he was a part of team Africa.

Going forward, Edosomwan said that he plans on visiting the schools that remain on his list. He has sched-uled “official visits” with Cal, Harvard, USC and Wake Forest, and will likely visit one additional school. He is lim-ited by NCAA rules to five “official vis-its,” where his expenses are paid for by the university.

“He has just shot from being a per-son who none of the colleges were in-terested in a year ago to thirty legiti-mate offers,” Hilliard said.

Senior basketball standout narrows offers to 6, will visit Cal, Harvard, USC, Wake Forest

Baseball team gets new senior pitcher in transfer

Alum lands starting job

STARTING GIG: Will Oliver ’11 attempts a field goal during a University of Colorado at Boulder football practice. He will be the starting kicker this year as a true freshman.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF WILL OLIVER

chronicle.hw.com SportS C7Sept. 7, 2011

By Micah Sperling

The University of Colorado at Boul-der football team will feature true freshman Will Oliver ’11 as their start-ing kicker for this season.

After only two days in training camp, Oliver was named the starter for the Buffaloes over sophomore Justin Castor. On his first day, Oliver made 25 of 27 field goals, catching the attention of coach Jon Embree. On his second, he made 10 kicks in a row, including what Embree called a “money ball” in front of the entire team.

“He’s had two very good days,” Em-bree said at a season-opening press conference. “He was ready; he was pre-pared.”

“All I knew going in was that there was a really good kicker a year older than me,” Oliver said. “I also knew that he was competitive and wanted the job just as badly.”

In Oliver’s high school career, he made 18 of 23 field goals and all 50 of his extra-point attempts.

“The biggest thing with kicking is forgetting — having a short memory so you can get back on the field and feel you’re as good as you always were,” Oli-ver said. “Most kickers have done this a long time, especially when you get to

the college level. You wouldn’t be here if you’re not good. You have to just go back to your normal self and find your own rhythm.”

Oliver said he was “a little nervous” but did not let nerves affect his prepa-rations for the opening game against Hawaii last Saturday.

Although Embree named Oliver the starter, Oliver said he needs to keep working hard to keep his job.

“I’ve realized that all that being a starter means is that I have something to lose,” Oliver said. “I have to keep working not only to keep the job, but to secure it for now and the future.”

“He seems accurate from 46-48 yards. 50-plus will be a stretch,” Em-bree said. “I guess I’ll just have to have the offensive coordinator get us closer.”

Since the departure of Mason Cros-by for the Green Bay Packers in 2006, Colorado has suffered from placekick-ing problems. Embree hopes Oliver can be as unflappable as Crosby was, although Oliver’s leg strength does not compare to that of the Packers starter.

Oliver, however, said he is confident in his ability and feels at home in Boul-der.

“It gets no better than this,” he said. “Just look around, you’ve got moun-tains, clean air, it’s all just wonderful.”

Continued from page A1

SPOTTED: Zena Edosomwan ’12 dunks at the Pangos All-American Camp. He has been heavily recruited this summer.

NICK KOZA

Continued from page C1

GRAPHIC BY ROBBIE LOEB

“He has just shot from being a person who none of the colleges were interested in a year ago to thirty legitimate offers.”

—Greg Hilliard,Head Coach

AQHow have you grown as a quarterback over the past two years on the team?

“I would say I have grown a lot in the last two years. We have a good quarterback coach, and he has helped me a ton with my footwork. I think that is probably my big-gest improvement. I am better at understanding what I’m supposed to look at and what I’m supposed to do on every play.”

Kanoff:

After starting at the tail end of the 2010 season, quarterback Chad Kanoff ’13 will try to carry the Wolverines to success in his first full year as a starter.

In the pocket withChad Kanoff ’13

Sept. 7, 2011C8 SportS the ChroniCle

Starting Quarterback

Touchdowns3

Completion 47 %

What did you learn as a backup quarterback that will help your transition into the starting position?

“I took mental reps to prepare like I was in the game while [Max Heltzer ’11] was quarterback. You still pre-pare like it was you playing. I looked at every route and the opposing defense and tried to understand how it fits into the bigger picture.”

Kanoff:

What do you think are the team’s strengths and weaknesses as you enter the season?

“We have good skill positions, and we have a good offen-sive line but it is mostly younger kids. The line is [made up of] sophomores and juniors, and I think right now we only have one senior. Everyone is getting better at their positions and Jack Temko ’14 is coming along as a kicker because we lost [kicker] Nick Lenard ’12, and Temko will be stepping in as a starter.”

Kanoff:

Which of the games on the schedule stands out as a “big game” in your mind and why?

“St. Francis. It will be our first league game. We lost to them in our last game last year so we definitely want to beat them this year.”

Kanoff:

What are your long-term goals as a quarterback and how do you plan to achieve them?

“Just to play in college if I can. Right now I’m focused on this season.”

Kanoff:

What are your hopes for the success of the team this season?

“Our goal is to make the playoffs and see where we go from there. We can beat any team we want to. We just have to put in the effort.”

Kanoff:

By Michael aronson

DANIEL KIM/CHRONICLE

AQ

AQ

AQ

AQ

AQ

First game stats against Venice L(34-27): Interception

1NATHANSON’S/CHRONICLE