Vol6Issue 12 Redo

THESTUYVESANTSTANDARD

TO THE COMMUNITIES OF STUYVESANT HIGH SCHOOL, TRIBECA, AND BATTERY PARK CITY

April 12, 2007

“Your School, Your World—Your News”

Visit us at: www.stuystandard.org

VOL. 6, No. 12

SING! Review

On Friday, March 23, as thecurtain was pulled back to revealthe first production of the eve-ning, Senior SING, the audiencewere awed by the bright and crea-tive set. The story revolvedaround a terrorist group made upof vegetables threatening to de-stroy King Burger’s land and itsinhabitants. The cast was amazingand gave great performances. Thecostume crew did a fantastic jobmaking the various attires rangingfrom a burger costume to a picklegetup. All the dance crews werespectacular. The dancers were insync and the band played somegreat tunes. Personal favorites based on the audiences’ clapswere Indian dance, Irish dance,and Swing. Overall, the story wascreative with funny jokes in be-tween, a spectacular cast, andgreat dance crews. Next up was Soph-FroshSING! and based on reviews of the performance on Wednesday,many did not expect to be enjoy-In recent weeks, there have been some changes in StuyvesantHigh School’s administrative poli-cies. Unfortunately, for many of these changes proper notificationwas not been given out and reasons behind the change are unknown.The Student Union (SU) insti-tuted a new policy that all Sing!tickets had to be paid for withchecks. No concrete reason for thenew policy has been given, but ithas been suggested that the ad-ministration thought checks weresafer because they could not bestolen as easily as cash. Unfortu-nately, proper notification of thechange was not given to ticket purchasers. Up to last year, ticketscould be paid for either in cash or with a check. Both the ticket- buying website, www.singtix.com,and the Class of 2008’s website,www.stuy08.com failed to mentionthis at first. Later, the Class of 2008’s website was changed to

POLICY continues on page 3

reflect the new policy.The spring college trip has been cancelled. It was supposed toallow students to visit colleges inthe Mid-Atlantic region. The can-cellation was announced in theParents Association (PA) Bulletinand on the Class of ’08 website,where reasons were given. Stuyve-sant Principal, Stanley Teitel, haddelegated the responsibility of col-lege trips to Eleanor Archie, theAssistant Principal of Pupil Af-fairs. She has been sick and re-cently returned to Stuyvesant,leaving little time for planning.Moreover, the dates set for the tripwere during spring break. Becausethe dates contained a religiousholiday and were when many goon vacation, there were concernsover getting enough chaperones.Furthermore, because of the recentaddition of guidance counselors,Archie has more responsibilities.The Junior President, Michelleing the next hour. However, de-spite the criticisms, the produc-tion was tolerable. The story cen-tered on a bunch of prisoners who broke out of jail to run away toRussia. The cast was funny and believable enough but the set onthe other hand, encountered many problems. A prop fell during themiddle of a scene,the microphonestopped working,forcing us to strainto hear the chorussing during the Jazzdance, and compared with the other productions, thescenery fell short of outstanding. All thedance crews did fairly well, withthe exception of the Step crewand the Indian dance crew. TheStep crew was amazing and theincorporation of a battle betweenthe dancers was a fresh and verytrendy idea. Even without music,they were unbelievably great andenjoyable. However, the samecould not be said of the Indiandance. The dancers were not insync, the music was not even of Indian culture, and the boyslooked like they would rather bescrubbing toilets. However, eventhough the production only lastedforty five minutes instead of thenormal hour, compared to lastyears’ Soph Frosh, this one wasnot so bad.The Junior pro-duction was last but certainly notleast. The scen-ery with theclown drawn background andthe big paper mashay handwas very welldone. The story centered on onecircus’s competition with another circus that just moved into town.The cast did a wonderful job andthe dancing was amazing. Favor-ites included but were not limited

Policy Changes in Stuy

by Jennifer Schlesinger,

editor in chief

by Jerry Wang,

staff writer

Interview with Naomi Hinchen

by Allen Wang,

staff writer

SINGcontinues on page 2

Naomi Hinchen, a senior atStuyvesant High School, wasrecently a contestant on the gameshow Jeopardy. Hinchen, as wellas 14 other teens from across thenation, participated in the annualTeen Jeopardy tournament. After coming from behind to win her quarterfinal match, Hinchen lost inthe semifinals to eventualchampion David Walter of Wilmington, Delaware. Here, sheshares with us her thoughts aboutthis event.

The Stuyvesant Standard:

Whatdid you do to prepare for theshow? Any specifics?

Naomi:

I didn't do any sort of formal preparation at all; Ifigured that cramming wasn’tgoing to help right before theshow, and I wouldn’t have knownwhat to study anyway. But my parents made sure that I knew thename of the new U.N. SecretaryGeneral, Ban Ki-Moon, in case itcame up.

TSS:

Were there any particular question that you foundinteresting during the show?

Naomi:

There was one where theyshowed a map of Australia, andfrom seeing the map you wouldknow the answer without evenreading the clue. On the show,there’s a pause as we all look at itand think, “That’s way too easy. Itmust be a trick question.” Youdon't really notice the pause asmuch when it’s on TV, but I’msure the entire studio audience waswondering why no one rang insooner.

TSS:

What do you think yougained from this experience? Whatare your plans in the future interms of game shows, contests andetc.?

Naomi:

The best thing that Igained from the experience wasmaking friends with the other con-testants. I don’t have any specific

SING! Is an annual production put onby Stuyvesant students. There are threecompeting groups: seniors, juniors,and sophomores and freshmen. Eachgroup produces its own productionand is ranked by a panel of judges.

“Overall, it could beseen that all gradeshad given tremen-dous amounts of ef- fort into one of thelargest productions.”

INTERVIEW continues onpage 2

ScienceOlympiad at States

News

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Page 5

G i v e n b y S c i e n c e O l y m p i a d

Intel Science Talent Search:2007 Competition

News

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Page 3Mysapce? Facebook?The Perils of Online Friends

Op-Ed

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Page 7Teen Obesity

Science

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Page 11

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THESTUYVESANTSTANDARD

Founded 2001

“Your School, Your World—Your News”

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2 THE STUYVESANTSTANDARD April 12, 2007—VOL. 6, No. 12 NEWS

EDITORIAL

THE STUDENT UNION

Earlier this year, we reported on the inconsistencies at Student Union budget meetings. The right people failed to attend; other people voted intheir place. Minutes from the meeting could not be produced, andattendance could not be provided. We’re happy to say that, almost threemonths later, some of our concerns are finally being looked into.

We applaud President George Zisiadis’s decision to make changesin his second-term cabinet. Just because were appointed once does notmean that they are automatically guaranteed the same job again,especially if they fail at their basic duties, such as attending meetings.However, two developments trouble us. For one, nowhere in the StudentUnion’s constitution does it say that appointments are made on a term- by-term basis. Secondly, it was mentioned that the lone attendance filewas on a hard drive that became corrupted. Valuable files such as theseshould be backed up. The Student Union cannot risk losing files due to acomputer crash.

We also applaud the Student Union’s decision to look into itsconstitution. We have reported on many of the flaws that the document possesses, and a subcommittee is a step in the right direction. Thesubcommittee should take a look at Issues 6 and 8 as a starting point for discussion.

Stuyvesant is lucky to have a Student Union so dedicated to itsstudent body, something which the general population should takegreater advantage of. By fixing the flaws in the budget process as well asoutlining the specific duties of each officer, the Student Union can fulfillits duty as the representatives of the student body.

The Stuyvesant Standard

INTERVIEWcontinued from page 1

plans to go on other game shows — in fact, I’m forbidden to go onany others for six months — but Iwas recently in the National Vo-cabulary Champi-onship, though Ididn't win any-thing.

TSS:

You said“making friends”was the best thing.Can you describethat a bit?

Naomi:

It wasreally great tomeet so many in-teresting people,and we had a lot of fun hanging out together before,during and after the taping. After-wards there were a few jokes aboutthe outcome, such as when wewere playing Apples to Apples andDavid played a card that said “MyBank Account,” but there were nohard feelings about who beatwhom.

TSS:

You played extremely wellduring the quarterfinals, but not aswell during the semifinals. If youwere to done something differentlythe second time, whether it be pre- paring or anything if any, whatwould it be?

Naomi:

Firstly, I would work onmy buzzer reflexes. There were somany times when I didn't get aquestion because I couldn’t ring insoon enough. Also, I would havethought over my wagers a littlemore, because I was really terribleat wagering. But other than that, itwas luck of the draw. In the firstround I got a totalof $2800 for knowing my car-toons, and in thesecond round Iknew I wasscrewed when Ilooked up and thelast two categorieswere Biology andFrench. And thenthe next group gota category wherethey could onlyanswer two of the five clues, and Iknew every single one.

TSS:

How did you feel losing inthe semifinals? What were your overall reactions?

Naomi:

I was disappointed, butnot so much because I lost as because I didn’t do better. But thenFrank was on the next show and just barely lost because hemiscalculated his wager, and Ithink that’s a much worse situationto be in. If that had been me, Iwould still be kicking myself over it. At least losing by a lot meansthat I don't have to think “If I had just done X, Y and Z I could havewon.”

◙

“The best thing I gained from theexperience wasmaking friendswith the other contestants”

Naomi Hinchen

Jeopardy Contestant

NEWS April 12, 2007—VOL. 6, No. 12 THE STUYVESANTSTANDARD 3

THE STANDARDNEWS

Lee, is pushing for a college trip tothe Mid-Atlantic region early nextyear in order to make up for themissed trip.In response to concerns abouttoo much homework being givento students during vacation, a new policy was but into place. It wasannounced on the PA’s website.The new policy is the product of collaboration between Teitel, theStudent Leadership Team, and theteachers. The policy says thatteachers must not give more home-work than necessary for students toremember what they have learned.Furthermore, ample time must begiven to complete any projectseither before or after break so thatstudents who are unable to work can still do the assignment. More-over, no assignments may be giventhat mandate visiting places in New York. The policy is open-

POLICYcontinued from page 1

ended because of the differences inclasses and teaching style. Anycomplaints with the policy should be addressed to the Assistant Prin-cipals.This term, parents were notgiven the opportunity to visit on aschool day and see classes. This isa traditional part of Open SchoolWeek. It took place up to the fallterm of this school year. Unfortu-nately, very limited notice wasgiven out, leading many parents toshow up at Stuyvesant. These par-ents were told by the securityguards that the event was cancelledand they could not enter the build-ing. The only notification was asentence in the PA’s March Bulle-tin. Most parents had not yet re-ceived the bulletin via mail. ThePA did announce to its e-mail listthat the bulletin was up. However,many parents are not on the mail-ing list. In general, parents feel that proper notification should have been sent out.

◙

Intel Science TalentSearch Champion

Not the Usual IntelFinalists

by Liwei Mao,

staff writer

INTEL CHAMPIONcontinues on page 4

Each year, thousands of highschool students send in their application to the Intel ScienceTalent Search competition; 300semifinalist and 40 finalists arechosen of them. This year’sfinalist, Mary Masterman, wasawarded a $100,000 scholarship onMarch 13 in Washington for successfully building a home-madespectrograph.A spectro-graph is an opticalinstrument thatuses the light fre-quencies emitted by heated particlesto identify mole-cules. A standardspectroscope cancost as much as$100,000. Marywas able to build the spectrographat home for merely $300.“I wanted to build one thatwas lower-costing so it would beavailable to anyone interested,”Mary said. “The most challenging part was trying to get it to work.”According to Mary, the spec-trograph took her three months to build and another three months toget working. She found machiningthe parts and aligning the optics to be the most challenging part of the project. The end result, however,was rewarding. Her spectrographwas able to split light and use acamera to record the resultingspectra. Although there were limitsof the inexpensive laser she usedas her light source, she could makerelatively accurate measurements.A senior at Westmore HighSchool in Oklahoma City, Mary ishoping to enroll at either Stanfordor MIT.John Pardonfrom Chapel HillsHigh School in North Carolinawon second placeand a $75,000scholarship for hismathematics re-search of the un-folding of simpleclosed curves.Dmitry Vaintrobwas awarded third place for his project in mathemat-ics involving loophomology.In total, over 1,700 contestantsentered the competition this year.The 40 finalists each received a personal computer and a scholar-ship of at least $5,000. New York,as in the previous years, had thelargest number of finalists. Twelve New Yorkers were finalists; noneof them, unfortunately, were fromStuyvesant. Two of these studentsThe Intel Science TalentSearch dinner, in which the top 40finalists were commemorated for their work, took place on March13. For the third year in a row,neither Stuyvesant High Schoolstudents nor Bronx High School of Science students attended.Although Bronx Science andStuyvesant students were the“expected” finalists for this prestigious competition, that is nolonger the case, due to an increasein research programs in most highschools.

The Intel competition isspreadingthroughout thenation’s highschools. Previ-ously, mosthigh schoolsthat competedin this programwere situated in New York City, but this haschanged. Nowthere are 24other highschools thathave finalistson the top 40 list. Some of theseschools are just outside the city,while others are in the Midwest,such as the Illinois Mathematicsand Science Academy.

by Hesham Saleh,

staff writer

INTEL FINALISTScontinues on page 4

Why has there been such a drasticchange in finalists over the pastfew years? First, New Yorkerswere common finalists becausethey had the benefit of the subwaysystem, which allowed them toeasily travel to laboratories or hospitals to conduct their research.But now, the Internet has nearlyeliminated this advantage bymaking communication easier.Second, most rural high schoolshave started research programsdesigned to motivate and teachstudents about scientific studying.

The fact that more students fromdifferent areas are receiving better educations is outstanding, and hasexcited manyteachers and prin-cipals. Valerie J.Reidy, principal of Bronx Science,said “Am I happythat our kids aren’twinning first prizes? No. Butthat it’s travelingfar and wide andother kids are get-ting hooked, I’mthrilled about that.”Stanley Teitel, principal of Stuyvesant, expressedsimilar feelings. “They are not

The top 10 finalists of the Intel ScienceTalent Search 2007.

“One spectroscopecould cost asmust as $100,000. Mary was able tobuild the spectro-scope at home for merely $300.”

Principal AutonomyIncreased

by Jerry Wang,

staff writer

Power. For centuries, menhave fought over it, and peoplehave died for it. What exactly ismeant by power? For kings, itmeans more land; for businessmen,it means money, but what does itmean for a principal? Mayor Bloomberg’s administration is planning on giving New York City public school principals moreautonomy starting September.However, New York Citylawmakers are condemning thedecision and justifying their opinion by stating that there werenot enough achievements made by principals that deserved additionalauthority this year. Those whosupport the choice are beingdisparaged. Eric Nadelstern, chief executive of the school system’sempowerment initiative wascriticized for over two hours.Councilmember John Liu believesthat Nadelstern’s efforts are all talk and no action.As Peter Parker’s Uncle Benused to say, “With power, comesgreat responsibility.” SchoolsChancellor Joel I. Klein tried toreason with the critics by starting anew program called theAchievement Reporting andInnovation System which will hold principals accountable for their schools’ results. A five-year, $80million contract with I.B.M. will

AUTONOMYcontinues on page 4

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