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Friday, February 27, 2009 Volume 8 Issue 8
By: Rammiya NallainathanBy: Muhammad Tambraand Hesham Saleh
Continued on page 3
HVAC Is Out of HVAC Is Out of Our HandsOur Hands 
At Stuy many studentscomplain about the problems withthe temperature in some rooms.Students who sit next to the ventscomplain that it gives out cold air during the dead of winter and ex-cessive heat during warmer days.There always seems to be oneroom on a student’s schedule thathe or she dreads because of its ex-treme conditions. Some teacherseven refuse to teach in classroomsthat they deem to be too uncom-fortable.The custodial staff head,Mr. Lopa, responded to the ques-tion of why such a problem exists by saying “There is no problem,”and declined to comment further stating that the logistics of the is-sue were between him and Mr.Teitel. Other members of the cus-todial staff said that they do notknow about it and it is the engi-neer’s job to take care of it. Thecustodial engineer, Edward Malli-coat, was unable to be reached for comment.When approached for comment Mr. Teitel explained thatthe HVAC ( heating, ventilating,and air conditioning) system “runson an old operating system so wecan’t control some of the system.”And according to Teitel, the De- partment of Education does not plan to do anything about this.Teitel jokingly said, “We’re poor.They don’t have any money,” al-luding to the current state of theeconomy and cuts to school budg-ets across the country. And theschool administration will not bedoing anything to combat the prob-lem. Teitel explained that, “theschool itself doesn’t handle it.School Facilities [a company that provides “school administratorsand facility managers that providesafe, comfortable and modern cam- puses for students of all ages” ]takes care of it. The school will notspend any money on it.”Students have differingviews about the HVAC issue. Jun-ior Emily Zhang said, “generallythey’re [the condition of rooms]okay. But there are rooms whereit’s freezing all the time and it’s
Continued on page 3
In This Issue
Page 9A Look atStuy’s OwnMarkSurya
 Anissa Mak and Adam Sealfon are two of this year’s Intel competition finalists.
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Forty high school seniorswere named finalists of the 2009Intel Science Talent Search onJanuary 28, 2009. Two of the final-ists are Adam Sealfon and AnissaMak, students of Stuyvesant HighSchool. The Intel STS is Amer-ica’s oldest and most prestigious pre-college science competition for high school seniors. It is ownedand administered by Society for Science and the Public since 1942.Anissa Mak submitted amathematics project for the IntelScience Talent Search that createda certification algorithm for themodular decomposition of agraph. One cannot be sure that thecomputation of an algorithm isfree of error. However, one wayto check that a computation iscorrect is by using a certifyingalgorithm. Anissa’s project uses acertification algorithm for modu-lar decomposition.Anissa began working onher project in May 2008. Her math research teacher, Mr. Rubin-stein introduced her to mentor Dr.Ross McConnell, a professor atColorado State University. His
Stuyvesant Home toStuyvesant Home toTwo Intel FinalistsTwo Intel Finalists
By: Elissa Tam
Continued on page 3
 A Tribute to A Tribute toSari HalperSari Halper--DicksonDickson 
Sari Halper-Dickson,from Stuyvesant class of 1987, passed away the morning of Janu-ary 30, 2009 from cancer at theSloan-Kettering Hospital. Shewas the President of the Stuyve-sant High School Alumni Asso-ciation from 2002 to 2006 andserved on the Alumni Associationfor 13 years.As a student of Stuyve-sant High School, she was bestknown for being one of the man-agers for the high school footballteam, the Peglegs. She workeddiligently and was very close tothe team. After graduating in1987, She attended the State Uni-versity of New York at Bingham-ton and there she received aBachelor of Arts in Political Sci-ence in 1991, and an M.A. in Pub-lic Policy Analysis and Admini-stration in 1992.Halper-Dickson held posi-tions in various organizationsthroughout the city. She was on the New York City Board of Electionsfor Queens County. She was alsoone of the fifteen on the AdvisoryBoard for the Queens Council onthe Arts. In addition to this, Sariserved as Assistant Commissioner at the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewalunder David Diamond Counsel'sOffice and on the Roosevelt IslandOperating Corporation. Before she passed away, she was Director of 
Page 5TeachingMethodsMatterPage 3Impact ofStimulusOnEducation
 
2 The STUYVESANT STANDARD February 27, 2009–VOL.8, NO. 8
The ExecutiveBoard
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Publication
THE STUYVESANT STANDARD
is a non-profit publication produced bythe students of Stuyvesant High School.
THE STUYVESANT STANDARD
distributes 2,000 free copies on a bi-weekly basis to the students and faculty of Stuyvesant High School andthroughout the adjoining neighborhoods of TriBeCa and Battery Park City.
THE STUYVESANT STANDARD
welcomes letters from its readers. For aletter to be reproduced in print, a name and method of contact must be pro-vided.
THE STUYVESANT STANDARD
reserves the right to edit any publishedmaterial. The viewpoints of contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of the Standard staff.Copyright ©2009 THE STUYVESANT STANDARD
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Staff Editorial:Too Hard to Grinand Bear It
There a number of thingsabout a school environment that candistract students from learning. Stu-dents exhausted from juggling thedemands of extracurricular activi-ties, and academics, in the midst of their social obligations must com-mute to school and travel up anddown ten floors to reach their classes. The least any student couldask for is heating in the fall andwinter and cool air conditioning andthe spring and summer months inthe classrooms where they findthemselves for the majority of theschool day. Normal temperature condi-tions should not be treated as a lux-ury by the administration. Whereasthe faculty members responsible for ensuring that the HVAC (heatingventilating and air conditioning)system is functioning properly areunable to repair the outdated systemthemselves because the Departmentof Education is responsible for funding maintenance of the system,the Stuyvesant community shouldnot wait around for the Departmentof Education to take notice of thesheer magnitude of an issue thatthey have merely ignored in the past.The Stuyvesant Standardcalls upon representatives of theParents Association alongsidePrincipal Teitel to pressure the De- partment of Education into allocat-ing the necessary funds to updatethe HVAC system and train mem- bers of Stuyvesant’s custodial staff to not only operate the system, butto sustain it as well.Librarians should not haveto work in a space that is air condi-tioned in the dead of winter.Teachers should not be forced toadjust their regular classroom ac-tivities to accommodate a class fullof uncomfortable students. Mr.Waxman explained to his tenth period economics class: “For thefirst time since I started teachingat Stuyvesant I actually needed to put on a coat to keep warm in aclassroom.” Employees workingfor any company would be out-raged by the conditions Stuyve-sant’s faculty members have put upwith for so long.Therefore, because Stuy-vesant simply does not possess themeans to correct the HVAC prob-lem, the Department of Educationhas an undeniable obligation tomake certain that normal tempera-ture conditions are restored toStuyvesant High School.
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 As Stuyvesant High School’s onlyindependent school newspaper, we feelthat it is our responsibility to offereach and every student theopportunity to contribute to a newspublication. If you would like to joinany section of the StuyvesantStandard, or have any comments orquestions that you would like to runpassed us, please email us at:
EIC@stuystandard.org
.
 
 NEWS The STUYVESANT STANDARD February 27, 2009 –VOL.8, NO. 8 3
Public Affairs and then Director of Annual Giving for New York Hos- pital.On November 17, 2002, shemarried John Dickson in Manhat-tan. She and her husband lived inForest Hills, Queens. She had threechildren, Diana (five years old),Aleksander (three years old), andZachary (one year old). The eldesttwo, Diana and Aleksander, wereadopted from Russia.Being on the StuyvesantAlumni Association Board for thir-teen years, she was involved in or-ganizing many events and projectssuch as the 100th Anniversary StuyCentennial series of events, TheAlumni Spectator, Reunions, Allo-cations, and Scholarships andGrants.A Memorial Service washeld for Sari Halper-Dickson onFebruary 1, 2009, at the ForestPark Chapel.From now until March2nd, there is a New York Timesguestbook where you can leaveyour comments. Any contributionscan be made in memory of "Sari K.Halper Dickson" to Wide Horizonsfor Children (www.WHFC.org) or American Cancer Society. In addi-tion to this, the Sari Halper Dick-son '87 Memorial Scholarship has been established by the AlumniAssociation in her memory.
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TheStandardNews
 A Tribute toSari Halper-Dickson
Continued from page 1
Stuyvesant Home toTwo Intel Finalists
HVAC Is Out of Our Hands
Continued from page 1
kind of annoying to carry a sweater around for the entire day just for that one class.” Junior AnastassiaKapeles explained: “I find thatsome rooms are either way too hotor way too cold. It’s ridiculous. Ithink the school should do some-thing about it. I understand the issueabout the budget but at least theyshould do something to make uscomfortable.” Many teachers alsofind the situation unbearable attimes refusing to teach in the class-rooms with extreme temperatures.Teitel said they have the option of taking their classes to either one of the lecture halls. But some teachersand students may view this as adisruption to the class.With the winter coming toa close many students are breath-ing sighs of relief but also growingmore anxious as the warmer weather will cause their rooms togo from unbearably cold to un- bearably hot. They hope that theywill not have to deal with therooms infamous for their less thanacceptable conditions includingrooms 727, 427, and the rooms onthe ninth and tenth floors. Whenasked if students will see any im- provements to the situation Teitelsaid, “I don’t think you’ll see anyresolution.”
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 location led to an obstacle for Anissa’s project. “Graph theory isvisual,” says Anissa. However,Anissa communicated with her mentor through e-mails and tele- phone calls, which made it difficultto perceive what her mentor wastrying to convey. Anissa completedher project in November of 2008.Other teachers at Stuyvesant whohelped and encouraged her wereMr. Brooks and Ms. Pascu.“I really didn’t expect to become a finalist,” Anissa ex- plains, “especially since it was amath paper.” Unlike doing re-search for a science paper, doing amath research papers requires youto “discover something new.”Adam Sealfon submitted acomputer science project in whichhe studied algorithms for testing properties of hypergraphs. Hyper-graphs are used in areas such as biology and particle physics. Inthe study, Adam found the com- plexity gap between adaptive andnon-adaptive algorithms. An adap-tive algorithm is a query that de- pends on the outcome of previousqueries, whereas non-adaptive al-gorithms are queries that do notnecessarily depend on the outcomeof previous queries.Last year, four studentsfrom Stuyvesant were named final-ists, more than any school in thenation. This year, two studentsfrom Stuyvesant were named final-ists, both of which are math re-search papers. Students and teach-ers speculate that In the years tocome, Stuyvesant High Schoolstudents will continue to excel inthe annual Intel Science TalentSearch as they have in past years.
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The HVAC system at Stuyvesant has been the cause for a great deal of concern among students and faculty members
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Continued from page 1
Impact of Stimuluson Education
By: Muhammad Tambra
As the state of the UnitedStates economy worsens, theObama administration moves for-ward with an economic stimulus bill worth around $787 billion.Around $83 billion allocated spe-cifically for childcare, publicschools, and universities accordingto the New York Times. This isrelief to many schools across thecountry. As reported in an earlier article run by the Standard [BudgetCut Woes; Issue 6] the Mayor wants all City agencies to cut back in spending by 2.5% this schoolyear and 5% the next. In the caseof the Department of Educationthat will mean $180 million and$385 billion, respectively. And asreported earlier on the Stuyvesantwebsite, Stuyvesant faces a$340,000 cut to its budget this year and a projected figure of $754,000next year.Many students were re-lieved at learning the news. Junior Manuel Castro said, “thank good-ness that President Obama realizesthe value of public education. Idon’t know what the school systemwould do if they got even further cuts. As it is schools are known to be understaffed and have very lim-ited resources. This influx of money will help combat the cuts.”Senior Rofi Islam said, “the moneywill help out our financiallystarved schools who can barely payfor anything as it is. I think themoney should go towards reinforc-ing the already existing programsand also giving more to the artswhich are really overlooked inmost schools.” The money allo-cated to schools is reported to beused for payrolls for state andschool districts as money fromtaxes is dwindling according to theTimes.However some people areskeptical of the bill’s promised aid.Education Secretary Arne Duncansaid in a statement that the aid is,“not nearly as much as we need.”Some students also feel that it isnot enough just to pump in money.Junior Mark Mays said, “they [thegovernment] is doing a good thing by providing some money toschools in aid, however this is notenough. The stimulus providesshort-term relief to us but if lookedthrough a long terms lens it won’tdo much good. Once the moneyruns out what will they [the gov-ernment] do then? And who will pay off the massive debt that thegovernment is incurring trying tostabilize the country? It’s going to be us, our children, and maybeeven our children’s children.”The bill’s money alloca-tion to schools though is mostlyseen as a good thing. With every-thing else going down the tubesschools are pressing hard to makesure their students are not it toohard by the recessions widespreadeffects. According to a report bythe NY Times principals across thecity sent protest emails to the dep-uty schools chancellor in charge of finances, Kathleen Grimm, callingthe cuts unfair. Mayor Bloombergdisagrees though. “One of the greatdisciplines of managing anythingis to walk in and question every-thing you’re doing and say, ‘Let’ssee if you can do it with a smaller  budget,’ ” the mayor said in astatement to the Times, “That fo-cuses your attention on whichthings work and which thingsdon’t.” But as the influx of moneycomes in schools can breathe asmall sigh of relief.
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