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Tuesday, May 12, 2009 Volume 8 Issue 11
MSA Finds Success atMSA Finds Success atMIST CompetitionMIST Competition
Continued on page 3Continued on page 4
By: Rammiya Nallainathan
One of the community- building programs run by SPARK is the Peer Partnership Program,where students meet with the Spe-cial-Ed students during their lunch period every Thursday. The pro-gram was initiated in January of 2007 by Angel Colon, Stuyve-sant’s SPARK coordinator.The main organization,P.S. M721- Manhattan Occupa-tional Training Center (MOTC),responsible for these students islocated on 250 West, HoustonStreet. However, the school hasmany off-site locations. These fa-
T  S  S  /  M uh  amm a d T  am b r  a 
Members of the Stuyvesant Muslim Students Association celebrate the awards they won at the Muslim InterscholasticCompetition held at Hofstra University during spring recess.
cilities include Legacy HighSchool, Chelsea Vocational HighSchool, and Stuyvesant HighSchool. The main objective of theschool is, “to motivate all stake-holders toward independence by preparing them to be productiveand contributing members of soci-ety by providing them with oppor-tunities to have a dynamic educa-tional environment based on 'best practices' for meaningful and en-riched academic, social and occu- pational or work experiences.”At Stuyvesant, there areonly three classes of students fromP.S. M721. Some of the studentsattend the Stuyvesant site because
Peer PartnershipPeer PartnershipStudents Make Stuy Students Make Stuy Their HomeTheir Home 
This year Stuyvesant’sMuslim Students Association(MSA) partook in the Muslim Inter-scholastic Tournament also knownas MIST. MIST is a competitiondesigned to “to develop leadership, promote communication, and in-spire creativity while gaining adeeper understanding of Islam andMuslims,” according to the MISTwebsite getmistified.com. Thiscompetition was brought to the at-tention of the Stuyvesant HighSchool MSA by Stuyvesant alumand former MSA president UbaidBandukra. The executive board of the Stuyvesant MSA felt that thiscompetition would help promote asense of pride among the membersof the MSA and help foster theclub’s unity.The MIST competition hasan Islamic focus, but is not justabout Islam. It has 35 competitionsincluding poetry, debate, basketball,web design and much more. TheStuyMSA team participated in anumber of these competitions.They placed first in the followingcompetitions: nasheed boy’s rap, boy’s basketball, 2D Islamic Art,Memorization, Tajweed, PreparedEssay, and Debate. The team wasranked in the top three for a number of other competitions as well andended up coming in third placeoverall, qualifying for nationals.The Bronx Science MSA won first place as some MSA members pre-dicted they would.Mahfuzur Rahman TamimMiah, the co-vice president of theMSA, was the main organizer of theteam, and was instrumental in get-ting everything prepared. He alsowon 2nd place overall and earned acash prize for his participation.When the MSA decided to partici- pate in the competition, there was
Science OlympiadScience OlympiadTakes Tenth inTakes Tenth inCompetitionCompetition
The annual New York StateScience Olympiad State Competi-tion was held at U.S. MilitaryAcademy at West Point on March21, 2009. Stuyvesant’s ScienceOlympiad team placed tenth in thestate out of forty-nine participatinghigh schools.Scoring on the New York State Science Olympiad is basedon rank. Students are ranked ineach event with a number, 1 beingthe highest rank. The numbers arethen added up for each school, andthe schools are placed according tothe total points (the lower the bet-ter). Fayetteville-Manlius HighSchool came in first place with 172 points. In tenth place, Stuyvesanthad 485 points. Stuyvesant rankedfirst in two events, Cell Biologyand Electric Vehicle.The captains of the Stuy-vesant Biology Olympiad team areKarl Guo and April Lee. Therewere five biology related eventswhich are categorized as Life, Per-sonal & Social Science: Cell Biol-ogy, Disease Detectives, Ecology,Health Science and Herpetology.Most of these events were taken astests, though some events such as
Continued on page 3
InThisIssue
 
P a g e 3
JuniorsCelebrateSpirit Week 
P a g e 5
 An Easily ManipulatedNation
P a g e 7
 VisionCorrection:
Contact Lensesand Eyeglasses
By: Jenny ShanBy: Shahzad Anwar
 
2 The STUYVESANT STANDARD May 12, 2009–VOL.8, NO. 11
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.
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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:
Getting Others toGive Back 
There have been only ahandful of times in the past fewyears in which student-run organi-zations have united the student- body with the objective of giving back. Fortunately however, Stuyve-sant students have had the privilegeof participating in two such eventsin the past few weeks, namely, theSTRIVE Earth Day Festival and the2nd Annual Fundraising Carnivalfor St. Jude’s Research Hospital.Both events proved to be successful,not only in promoting a sense of community among students, butalso in raising awareness andmoney for two very notable causes.Members of the STRIVEclub and the Free Hugs club wereextremely successful in their effortsto attract a large focus group of stu-dents to the events. In fact, it wasclear that due to the popularity of the events, students as well as ad-ministrators were enjoying them-selves at the same time as they wereeither raising money for cancer re-search or learning how to lead amore eco-friendly life.The Stuyvesant Standardcommends STRIVE and Free Hugson their successful efforts to helpget others to give back. It is our sincere hope that other student or-ganizations will follow in their footsteps for the future. It came as a pleasant surprise that even as APexams began creeping up on stu-dents, and even after seniors re-ceived news from colleges anduniversities, the members of STRIVE and Free Hugs did nothesitate to take the time to con-sider the prospect of somehowmaking a change for the better even if it meant temporarily settingtheir own personal commitmentsaside.The well-known and per-haps overly used expression, “Towhom much is given, much is ex- pected,” clearly resonates with theidea that as privileged students, itis our responsibility to step outsideof ourselves for the greater good of humanity. While some studentsmay feel as though their efforts tosecure change would prove to befruitless, the success of STRIVEand Free Hugs in getting others togive back exemplifies the impactthat the vision of just a handful of students can have on the lives of others. We have the potential tochange the world.
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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 May 12, 2009 –VOL.8, NO. 11 3
TheStandardNews
Stuy MSA FindsSuccess at MISTCompetition
Continued from page 1
concern that there would not beenough students to float a team.Since the competition took placeduring spring recess, some studentswithin the MSA opted not to partici- pate. However the executive boardwas able to wrangle up a sizeableteam of about 20 members. Therewas also a large debate over theteam’s name. With names like“Stuy Stallions” and “Stuy Stars”floating around the team finally de-cided upon “Empire Untouchables”in the end.This year’s competitiontook place at Hofstra University,located in Long Island. The StuyMIST team faced a challenge withdetermining how the memberswould make the trip to Hofstra. Be-cause none of the team memberscould drive they had to rely on thegenerosity of team member’s par-ents and friends to drive them up toHofstra.One of the drivers wascaught speeding and given a ticketon the way to the competition, andas the MSA members learned, mak-ing it to the competition on timewas not worth the risk associatedwith driving over 90 mph on a rodewhere the speed limit is 45 mph tomake up for lost time.Danielle Lebenson, a mem- ber of the StuyMSA executivecouncil and first place winner for the Prepared Essay competitionsaid, “The first day was disorgan-ized and unpromising, but the nexttwo days were unforgettable. Therewas an atmosphere of brotherhoodand sisterhood that can't really beeasily found elsewhere, combinedwith friendly competition and reallyinteresting workshops. I think thatwe went into MIST hoping to justcompete in some stuff and feel likewe were involved, but what we leftwith was greater; I know that, atleast for the sisters in MSA that par-ticipated, it was a really good bond-ing experience. For an MSA thatisn't really as "tight" as we wouldlike it to be, this gave us a chance toreally hang out with each other,learn about each other, work to-gether, etc. In building up teamspirit, we built up a strong MSA bond that we definitely didn't have before."The Stuyvesant MSA feelsa sense of accomplishment andhopes to do better next year, “andmaybe even win first place”, addeda confident Shehab Hasan.
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Science OlympiadTakes Tenthin Competition
Cell Biology required students toidentify cells while Herpetologyrequired students to identify liveanimals. Students worked in pairs.The captains of the Stuy-vesant Chemistry Olympiad teamare Rena Chen and Charles Choi.The three chemistry events wereChemistry Lab, EnvironmentalChemistry, and Forensics. Eachevent consisted of a series of mis-cellaneous questions and an ex- periment. Two people would work together on each event.The captain of the earthscience team is Jenny Zhang. TheEarth and Space Science eventswere Astronomy, Dynamic Planet,Fossils, and Remote Sensing.Other events were PhysicsLab, Technical Problem Solving,Experimental Design, Solar Power,Egg-O-Naut, Elevated Bridge, andJunkyard Challenge. Some eventsrequired students to do experi-ments and answer questions(including Physics Lab, TechnicalProblem Solving, and Experimen-tal Design) while the other eventsrequired the students to buildthings ( including Egg-O-Naut,Elevated Bridge, and JunkyardChallenge). David Tan is the cap-tain of the Physics Olympiad team,while the captain for the technol-ogy team is Oscar Liu.Though the StuyvesantScience Olympiad Team does nothave teachers who specially coachthe team, the science teachers oc-casionally help the team out whennecessary. The captains are mainlyresponsible for preparing the team.“We have to pretty much teach people ourselves based on what wehave learned from previous cap-tains and what we can learn byourselves” says Charles Choi, cap-tain of the chemistry team.When asked how he feltabout the team coming in tenth,Karl Guo, captain of the biologyteam replied, “We expected to bein the top ten. We’ve [got top tenat States] for three years in a rownow. We hope to continue thestreak to maybe get more fundingfor the team.”With additional fundingand more assistance from teachers,the Science Olympiad Team mem- bers anticipate that they will con-tinue to excel in the competitionsin the future.
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Continued from page 1Continued on page 4
Juniors CelebrateSpirit Week 
March 30 through April 3marked the first ever Junior SpiritWeek held at Stuy. The event wasorganized by the Junior President,Valeriya Tsitron, in an attempt to promote Junior unity and also rallyschool spirit. Each day had its owncolor theme. Monday was red,Tuesday was yellow, Wednesdaywas green, Thursday was pink, andFriday was blue. Juniors were en-couraged to wear shirts corre-sponding to the color theme of theday. There were also events on thefirst floor near the rear of the thea-tre. These events involved cha-rades, board games, and a remix of some SING! performances. Therewas a lot of hype for the event andeven a Facebook group created inorder to promote it.A lot of students felt it wasa good way to promote unity and asense of pride among the class.Sophomore Rebecca Chang said,“I thought it was really cool howthe juniors were able to organizeall of this and establish themselvesas a dominant force in the school. Ithink being in the shadow of thesenior year makes them feel lessimportant and in this way they canshow Stuy that they’re proud of who they are.” Junior AnastassiaKapeles added, “I think Junior Spirit week is an awesome idea. As juniors we’re extremely stresseddue to a lot of things, AP’s, SAT’s,and the prospect of applying tocollege. I think that this gave us achance to say ‘hey, we’re awe-some!’”On the other hand, noteveryone shared in the enthusiasmsurrounding spirit week. They arefearful of school sectionalism. Andothers feel it’s a bit early to becelebrating. Senior Mehrab Islamsaid, “I think it’s a bit early for aspirit week. They’ll have plenty of senior spirit days.” Junior ManuelThe Stuyvesant MongolianThroat Singing Club was startedin the spring of 2008 and hassince then grown into a clubwith over 25 members. Patrick Rozgonyi, president of the Mon-golian Throat Singing Club, waslured by the art of throat singing by watching a close friend inaction. Patrick began to practicerigorously everyday and eventu-ally developed the skills to beable to teach others how tothroat sing.Patrick understood thatMongolian throat singing wasan unusual and widely unknowntalent that had to be promoted.Therefore, he created a club de-voted to the cause of spreadingMongolian and Inuit tradition.The rhythmic hymns of Mongo-lian throat singing are very deli-cate and have been a part of Mongolian culture for centuries.Throat singing is a complexform of singing that comes fromthe bottom of the throat, con-trary to the common form of singing we hear on the radio as part of the more conventionalsphere of music. The soundwaves generated by the throatresonate to the environment andcan be tuned by widening andshutting the mouth.Many Stuyvesant studentsare stunned when they hear thistype of music. Patrick Fu, a jun-ior at Stuyvesant, stated: “I wasshocked the first time I heardPatrick throat sing. It was soinhuman like. I kept lookingaround the room, expecting thenoise to come from a machineor an animal. Finally I realizedPatrick made such unorthodoxnoises.” Throat singing is trulyexotic and is respected in theInuit and Mongolian tribes.Throat singing, a long-lastingcustom in Mongolia, is learnedat a very young age so that chil-
By: Mohammed RahmanBy: Muhammad Tambra
Mongolian ThroatSinging Club Draws Attention
Continued on page 4
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