The Student Voice of St. George’s Independent School Volume XIII, Issue ISeptember 2014

Gryphon Gazette•

Opinion Entertainment Features Sports

• • • •Otherlands Food Re-view

Flik Dining serves St. George’s

Mascot Head Passing

This school year’s new texting policy, preventing students and faculty from communicating via text, was put in place in order to prevent future inappropri-ate situations from arising at St. George’s. The purpose of the latest regulation, as Mr. Will Bladt explained, is to protect students from being put into intense cir-cumstances and under more pressure than already present.

The reason for this new change in communication is due to incidents that have occurred at other schools.

A school in Los Angeles, where Mr. Bladt’s wife pre-viously worked, had a situ-ation arise that stirred up investigations. A recently

“Veracrossing” into a new system

Student information system Veracross is replac-ing sixteen school systems this year in an attempt to improve school operation, but some students are un-happy with this change.

The bulk of complaints from students were re-garding the differences between Veracross and the student portal from previous years. Since it is so early in the year, the only functions that stu-dents have been able to use are class webpages, but eventually they will be able to see any other in-formation they may need.

This new system has the

Caroline’s Column: the summer experience

News

• Camp IMPACT finishes fourth year

Cont. on Page 3

Cont. on Page 2

Courtney Harshbarger ’15

TTYL: teacher-student texting bannedCaroline Cannon ’15

Courtney Harshbarger ’15

The

•

Top Stories

graduated senior girl post-ed an essay online about what happened to her while she was still in high school.

“I do not think it is fair for students to deal with that kind of stuff,” Mr. Bladt said.

In her junior year, her male teacher made un-called for advances. It first started with emails, then texts, and finally an inap-propriate encounter. Once the story got out, eight other girls came forward with similar stories and the teacher was fired.

“I am not saying the peo-ple at this school are that way, but I want to protect the kids,” said Mr. Bladt.

capacity to carry out the functions of the old stu-dent portal as well as those of fifteen other school sys-tems that were previously used separately from each other. As problems arise, solutions are sought out.

“Veracross software en-gineers are willing to engi-neer the product to make it better fit the school’s needs” said Mr. Will Bladt.

Veracross gets rid of the need for multiple people to enter the same infor-mation into different sys-tems by providing a single program through which all facets of the school can connect and share in-

formation. Although Ve-racross does not have some of the specific benefits to the old systems, it will be better for the school over-all.

“Everyone has to make sacrifices. However, there are all these different ben-efits” said Mr. Bladt. Once the program is up and run-ning properly, students will be able to view their grades, homework assign-ments, attendance and many more useful things that the portal could not offer. Many students are not optimistic about these updates.

Senior Cole McLemore and sophomore Henry Adkins struggle with Veracross. Some students raised concerns about the system.

Though an error message may not appear, teachers and students are not allowed to text one another. This new policy has already helped other schools in preventing future incidents.

Juliana Wall ’15(altered photo)

2 NewsSeptember The Gryphon Gazette• •

Features EditorNewspaper Staff

Co-Editors-in-Chief

Dr. Margaret Robertson

Copy Editors

Layout Editor

Photo Editor

Opinion Editor

Sports Editor

News Editor

Advisor

Entertainment Editor

New faculty arrive in a time of change

Taylor Owens ’15

Staff WritersLexie Marotta & Taylor Owens

Caroline Cannon

Textbooks at St. George’s have become available onlineHeather Stevenson ’16

Twenty-two teachers, staff, and faculty new to the school arrived at the St. George’s Collierville cam-pus during a time of changes to the school system.

Recently, St. George’s has moved to Flik Independent School Dining and Veracross School Information Software, as well as introduced new furnishings to the school and new policies affecting the teacher and student out of class dynamic.

School President Bill Taylor, said that transitions and change are “extremely healthy for schools and teachers” and that it is “easier for teachers new to St. George’s” to in-tegrate themselves into school cul-ture and life.

Teachers and faculty that are new to the school have experienced all the adjustments that the school is currently undergoing. For some newbies, change is welcome and has been an outlet to ease the switch to a new school.

New Pre-Calculus and Geometry teacher, Mr. James Oxsalida, said

that it was “comforting” coming into a school that is in transition.

“It’s like being the new kid and you feel a little lost, but, in this case, everyone feels a little lost,” said Mr. Oxsalida.

New Assistant Dean of Students Kayla Irvin, said that “there is so much to learn” during her first year at St. George’s and that “everyone has been extremely helpful and inten-tional in easing the transition.”

“Change is an inevitable part of working in schools,” said Upper School Director Tom Morris, and said that the addition of new teach-ers at this time brings “new energies, perspectives, and passions for stu-dents.”

Mr. Morris said, “We are in the midst of a year of great change” and that the new faculty are the “best part of this year’s changes.”

Faculty and teachers new to the school may be coming in at a time of transition; however, changes are of-ten part of a healthy school environ-ment and bound to occur.

New teacher, Mr. Roszel, teaching his English I class. Mr. Roszel came to St. George’s this school year, along with twenty-two other new teachers and faculty.

Annie Vento ’17

The start of the 2014-2015 school year for many students has meant the purchase of access codes rather than textbooks. The math, history, and biology departments have made the switch to have the course textbook accessible from a computer.

School President Bill Taylor said that the decision is going to help out students in the long run.

“Your life in jobs and just navigat-ing the world is going to have to in-volve things beyond books and you are going to find ways to manage that information, online books is a step in that direction,” said Mr. Taylor. “Who knows what things are going to be like twenty years from now, but my guess is it’s not going to be confined between two bound covers.”

Upper school math teacher Page McMullen said that some good things have come from the change.

“I like that students get instant feedback and immediately know if they have done it wrong or right. I like that I get to see very quickly the homework and see [that] we need to go over this [particular] problem.”

Ms. McMullen also found some concerns about MyMathLab.

“What happens if somebody doesn’t have [wireless access] at home to the Internet, or what if we can’t access it here?” said Ms. McMullen.

The history courses, mainly for ju-

niors and seniors this year were en-couraged to make the switch.

“I think the pros,” Mrs. Charnes Martin, head of the history depart-ment said, “are that they’re cheaper, that you get extra resources, [but] I think some of the cons are going to be it’s going to take some getting used to for some kids who really still like a textbook.”

“Another pro,” said Mrs. Charnes Martin, “is that a lot of colleges are using e-textbooks, so we are getting you guys ready for that collegiate ex-perience.”

However, students are having some mixed feelings about online text-books. Junior Allie Harbert found some positives and negatives to the e-texts.

“I think a pro would be it lightens your load on how much you have to take home and carry around every-day,” said Harbert, “but a con would be what if your power goes out or computer crashes, you don’t have anything else to resort too.”

Bill Taylor has tried to keep minds open to the change.

“What we’re trying to do is to help students out, so you’re not lugging 50/60 lbs. around in your backpack. You have resources available to you anywhere. I think that [it] is going to be an adjustment…it is just going to take a bit of time.”

Textbooks at St. George’s are going online. Now a majority of our resources have been compiled onto a computer.

Heather Stevenson ’16

Tatum Nix, Heather Stevenson, & Annie Vento

Juliana Wall

Anna Marie Beard

Lexie Marotta

Taylor Owens

Nathan Weinreich

Courtney Harshbarger

Zach Obaji, Grant Webb, Katie Boyle, Miriam Brown, Emily Persons, & Kai Taylor

Camp IMPACT concluded its fourth year of summer camps this summer as it introduced a new pro-gram specifically for counselors-in-training and continued to welcome campers from all schools.

With so many different plans students had for the summer, St. George’s worked to create a sum-mer camp for kids that gave older students an opportunity to gain job experience, and Camp IMPACT was born. Headed by Coach Cate Foy and Ms. Julie Loftin, Camp IMPACT is de-signed to keep rising 1st through 6th graders active and thinking as they are immersed in games of soccer, re-hearsals for a play put on at the end of each week, or even fun in the pool.

Although camp sessions are limit-ed to five days, many children spend more than one week attending Camp IMPACT and have participated for several years. This past summer, Hay-ley and Thomas Lambert, who are sixth graders at St. George’s, spent the last summer they were eligible at IMPACT there, Hayley spending four weeks and Thomas spending three.

“I loved trying to pull the coun-selors down on the waterslide,” said Hayley. Similarly, Thomas also said that his favorite memory of IMPACT was all of the games and the water-slide at the big carnival during his first year attending.

“I like going knowing that my friends are going,” said Emma Riales, who spent three weeks of her sum-mer at IMPACT. This factor made re-turning each year less warrisome, but

Veracross receives mixed feelingsContinued from page 1

NewsSeptember The Student Voice of St. George’s Independent School• • 3

rather something to look forward to. Because IMPACT is located at St.

George’s, but is not exclusively for St. George’s students, it is considered an opportunity for campers to bond with their old friends over the summer while also meeting people from differ-ent schools.

Looking forward to attending Camp IMPACT again is also the case for high school students who apply to become counselors at the camp, as many of them have spent past summers train-ing to work there as a summer job.

“The most rewarding part is when the kids really start to like you,” said Megan Umansky, a St. George’s soph-omore. “You feel like a great person when those kids always come to you wanting a piggy back ride or just want to talk.”

St. George’s seniors and even gradu-ates are also more than willing to re-turn to school for the summer.

“It was a good way for me to stay connected to the St. George’s com-munity, which I wasn’t completely ready to leave after I graduated,” said Dean Brown, who graduated from St. George’s, class of 2014. He spent this past summer working at Camp IMPACT before leaving to begin his freshman year at the University of Vir-ginia.

For more information about Camp IMPACT, contact Coach Foy or Ms. Loftin.

Applications for campers, counsel-ors-in-training, and counselors be-come available in the spring through the summer camp brochure.

TTYL: teacher-student texting banned

Camp IMPACT finishes fourth year

“I don’t want to bother trying to fig-ure out how [Veracross] works” said Henry Adkins, class of 2017.

Mr. Bladt addressed student com-plaints like this one by encouraging everyone to take the time to learn how Veracross operates.

“Everyone needs to have a growth mindset and be open to a different way of doing things,” said Mr. Bladt.

“There is definitely a learning curve,” said Cole McLemore, class of 2015,

“I understand reasons behind it but as both a teacher and parent, sometimes it is the easiest means of communication when I cannot call or email,” Mrs. Page McMullen, upper school math teacher, said in regards to the subject.

“Since I was an assistant director for the middle school play, commu-nication via texting was essential to the success of the performance,” said senior Murry Goldberg. He said how easy it was for Mr. Brown to text him saying if he was going to be late for rehearsal and then Murry could relay the information to everyone else.

Mr. Bladt points out that students can be impulsive. A concern here is

Continued from page 1

that students might text teachers in-appropriately without using proper judgment on how to react to certain things.

Mr. Zack Adcock said that it is probably a good thing to have this new policy set in place. He said that the fact that students and teachers have such a close relationship that they are comfortable texting is ad-mirable, but “the purpose of it is to ensure there is a level of formality between students and teachers.”

All in all, the reason for the teach-er-student texting prevention is to ensure the safety of both faculty members and students.

Annie Vento ’17Campers express their love for IMPACT with Jenga pieces during their free time. Within the rotation, kids had time to play board games in-doors, as well as playing intramural sports and water activities.

about the software. He did not like a few things about the class webpages, but admitted that the program was better at providing an overview than the portal had been.

Many students have complained about the new system, but soft-ware engineers are working with the school to find solutions to problems and improve the system. Any valid complaints are welcome, as they could help improve the software.

Annie Vento ’17

4

Flik Dining serves St. George’s

St. George’s switched their din-ing service from Sodexo to Flik Independent School Dining as of this school year. The first lunch that was served provided a differ-ent experience than Sodexo had provided previously.

“The food is better qual-ity than Sodexo” said senior Cole McLemore.

St. George’s is the first school that Flik Dining will be serving in the Southeast region. The compa-ny hopes to spread to other inde-pendent schools in the area.

Flik Dining is known for their fresh and organic ingredients that are used when preparing their meals. Their menus are designed specifically for the school that they are serving. All of their in-gredients are prepared fresh daily.

This includes smoking their own meats and cutting up vegetables. Executive Chef Quan Anderson is in charge of a team of 11 chefs cur-rently working in the St. George’s kitchens.

“We are trying to bring something new and different to St. George’s…just trying to do some upgrading” said Chef Anderson, “We are mak-ing sure that we are providing qual-ity food and quality product each and every day”.

Upper School Director Tom Mor-ris said the switch from Sodexo to Flik was decided by School Presi-dent Bill Taylor, who is very pleased with the change.

“The move to Flik afforded the school an opportunity to partner with a company with long experi-

Lexie Marotta ’15

FeaturesSeptember The Gryphon Gazette• •

ence in independent schools,” said Mr. Morris.

The change in dining services has been the subject of a lot of conver-sation among students and teach-ers.

“It’s something different. I’ve been teaching here for nine years, and it was always the same thing,” said art teacher Danny Broadway.

“I really like that there are lots of options and that a lot of it is healthy,” said Sophomore Cecilia Cordera who is also pleased with the new food services.

Several students have expressed their disappointment at the lack of certain packaged foods, like Fla-min’ Hot Cheetos. Senior Curt Ben-nett said that he does miss Sodexo’s chocolate chip cookies.

Flik offers several benefits for parents as well. Parents can see what their children are buying and are able to load money onto their accounts online without having to make sure the check they sent in made it to the front desk.

“This new service is definite-ly an improvement,” said Laura Cordera, a St. George’s parent.

The switch in dining services also meant a switch from the lunch card to the PIN number. Some stu-dents were unsure about whether they could remember their num-ber every day.

“The pin is easy to memorize and easier than remembering my lunch card every day,” said Jacob Gettig ’20, “it will be a good and accepted change.”

Students line up to enter their pin numbers in order to purchase their meals. The new check-out system led to slow lines at the start of the school year.

Zach Obaji ’15

5

New carpet, new you: adoption of Flik results in redesigned lunchroom

Anna Marie Beard ’15

FeaturesSeptember The Student Voice of St. George’s Independent School• •

Students use the new Flik setup. This corner, formerly dedicated to microwaves, now houses panini presses. Anna Marie Beard ’15

One of the many changes result-ing from the switch to Flik Independent School Dining Services is the adoption of a new lunchroom design. Several of these changes are very visible, such as the addition of panini presses where the microwaves were previously, or the movement of the silverware dispensary. Others have been more subtle, such as relocation of the soup line, or the new

carpet. Many students have been in favor of these changes.

“It looks fresh and clean,” said senior Murry Goldberg.

“It looks really nice,” said Kate Stod-dard, another senior. “I like Flik a lot bet-ter than Sodexo.” Other students echoed their opinions, adding that they espe-cially enjoyed having a cleaner carpet.

Goldberg said that the previous carpet

was so dirty that it “made your socks as black as the night sky.”

Stoddard said that the previous car-pet was “really gross… with food and dirt mashed into it.”

Ms. Hillery Efkeman, a librarian, said, “I really like where they have the silver-ware in the dining room now because it improves the flow [of traffic] and you only get what [silverware] you need.”

The silverware had previously been in-side the food dispensary, at the begin-ning of the “hot lunch” line. It is now located roughly in the center of the din-ing room.

Some students were not entirely satis-fied with the changes.

“I don’t like the fact that they don’t have a chocolate milk fountain,” said se-nior Chris Dinicolantionio.

“It tasted like cafeteria food. The soup was good, it was close to home, but it tasted like cafeteria food.”

-Mr. Luther Mercer

“I appreciate the options that Flik has given me, and it is a lot easier than making my own lunch. I am a happy vegetarian.”

-Kathryn Smith

“[With Sodexo] I mostly just ate sandwiches and the same thing everyday, which was very boring. I like that they have vegetarian op-tions and that the food is a lot healthier.”

-Francesca Healy

Zach Obaji ’15 Zach Obaji ’15 Zach Obaji ’15

Vegetarians go vocal about Flik

6 SportsSeptember The Gryphon Gazette• •

Open the 2004 St. George’s year-book to the athletic section. Flip past the fall sports and winter sports. When you reach the second page of spring sports, examine the small, black-and-white varsity boys’ tennis picture closely. You will see three boys included in the varsity tennis picture - two awkwardly sit-ting in front of the net and one standing behind it. All three boys are in their school clothes and squinting into the sun. They are joined by their coach, Mr. Bill Taylor. Compare this picture with the most recent boys’ tennis picture. You will notice that the tennis team now consists of fourteen boys and Coaches Mark and Ronny Bran. These two pictures indicate that St. George’s athletics have come a long way in a short amount of time. Accord-ing to Coach Cole Hoppe, 295 of 387 St. George’s high school students, or 76.22 percent, participated in at least one varsity sport last year. In only twelve years, the athletic program has won seventeen team state championships and eleven individual championships. When the St. George’s Collierville Cam-pus first opened in 2002, the school did not have a single varsity athletic team, just junior varsity teams. School presi-dent Bill Taylor, said that even then, families came out to watch and sup-port the small, junior varsity teams. “I remember a football game when we had to line cars up because it was

getting too dark. There were no lights of course, so that’s how we finished the game- with car lights,” said Mr. Taylor. After two years, varsity tennis teams were formed. These teams were shortly followed by varsity cheer, football, cross-country, golf, soccer, wrestling, and basketball teams. Sophomore Sydney Brown said that this switch from junior varsity to varsity was essential to the school’s athletic progress.“Playing on JV means you get to de-velop more as a player, but playing on varsity means that you get to excel at the highest level of play,” said Brown. The St. George’s athletic record sug-gests that the program did indeed excel.At the beginning, independent sports such as golf thrived because they relied on indi-vidual competitors instead of large teams. “We’ve had two golfers, [alumni Hunter Kraus and Grant Hirschman], who have won three individual medalist awards,” Ms. Sha-ron Lathum, the executive athletic assistant, said. “There’s only three boys in the whole state of Tennessee to ever have done that.” Despite having teams that were new to varsity sports, after two years, St. George’s won four state championships: football, boys’ golf, girls’ soccer, and boys’ soccer. Freshman Kate Seabrook attributes this early accomplishment to St. George’s athlet-ics being underestimated by other schools. “You have more fire in you when you’re an underdog,” said Seabrook. Within the next six years, the success

dramatically increased as twelve more team state championships and seven individual championships were won. Recently, the St. George’s legacy has started to include more unconventional sports, such as water polo, whose first team won a state champion-ship this past year. Despite these victories, Coach Cole Hoppe denies that these accom-plishments make it harder to be successful. “Our student-athletes know that suc-cess is not defined by championships,” Coach Hoppe said. “Our athletes work hard every year to create their own legacy.” However, the school’s legacy of excellence has not just been about state titles. fifty St. George’s student-athletes have gone on to play a sport in college; one alum, Elliot Wil-liams, currently plays in the NBA. The late Coach Ken Netherland became the win-ningest high school football coach in Ten-nessee history while he was at St. George’s. St. George’s has also had numerous athletes named to all-district and all-state teams. Nine individual athletes, eleven coaches, and four scholar-athletes have won awards at Best of the Preps. As a school, St. George’s has won four times in the Best of the Preps team champions’ category. According to new athletic director Tom Densford, the school is looking to continue upholding this legacy for decades to come.“It’s amazing that we are where we are in twelve years. I don’t know where it’s going, but it’s going to be a fun ride,” said Mr. Densford .

A LEGACY OF EXCELLENCE

Miriam Brown ’17

(Left photo) Coach Bill Taylor and first varsity tennis team pose for a yearbook picture. There was one ninth grader on the team who graduated in 2006 and two eighth graders who graduated the follow-ing year.

(Right photo) Coach Whicker flaunts his five state championship rings. Girls’ soc-cer won three of his five state champion-ships, and the boys’ team won two.

Source: Sarah Cowan

Miriam Brown

Miriam Brown

STATS

295Last year,

of

387students were on one varsity team.

12In

years we’ve had:

17state championships,

11individual

championships,

50student athletes

went on to play a college sport.

The opinions expressed in this section reflect the views of individual writers and are not necessarily those of the Gryphon Gazette or its staff.7

Caroline’s Column: the summer experience

Sometimes summer is not as relaxing as one hopes and dreams. An example of this was my most recent summer, the summer of lost aspirations. Though trips to Greece and the Naval Academy may seem to be filled with fond memories, this was not the case for Caroline’s 2014 summer.

To start off the trip to Greece, my feeble body was stricken with air-sickness. It took three trips to the back lavatory to be able to finish out the flight comfortably in my 47A seat. Relieved when the flight landed, I scurried off the plane to go get my bag from luggage claim.

The carousel went round and around but to no avail did my four wheeled, blue bag appear. I quick-ly came to the conclusion that it was dropped into the Atlantic Ocean or during our connecting flight in Rome, the Italian Mafia really wanted my size nine and a half Asics running shoes.

At last! The bag arrived our last night in Athens just before we moved to Crete. When the next morning came, I soon realized that my bag was being checked to the same airline that lost it in the first place. Thankfully it was a direct flight and my luggage came through safe and sound. I immedi-ately put on my running shoes and went for what I thought would be a nice, easy run.

After being honked at twice by

Caroline Cannon ’15

Change is afootGoing from humble contributors

on our school newspaper to the Edi-tors-in-Chief has been quite a change for us. Filling the void that last year’s fearless leader Regan left has definitely been a tough job with big shoes to fill.

This transition to being the leaders of not only the paper, but also leaders of the school as seniors has led us to the rather abrupt realization that change is indeed a part of life. It will happen whether we want it to or not, and so, sometimes we have to accept it and move forward.

Not only is change a part of every day that we live, it is also part of our school. St. George’s has undergone a lot of changes as the school year has begun and we have all our strong opinions on what has been altered this year.

The school is changing. From new dining, to new faculty members, to new policies, and to new online sys-tems, some have said that they find St. George’s to be rendered almost unrec-ognizable. For those of us who have been here for years, we are used to the occasional change, but this year seems to require more adapting.

All of these new adjustments have become very apparent to us ever since the school year began; however, af-ter reflecting on our time here at St. George’s we realized each year comes with its share of big changes.

There are little ones beginning their first year of kindergarten. This is a big deal! Not only are we all undergoing

these small changes in the school sys-tem but there are some of us who are just starting school for the first time.

6th graders are starting their first year of middle school. Personally, we would consider middle school to be the biggest challenge in our school careers. These were the years you figured out what your identity as an adult may look like. I think those of us who have made it out of middle school will acknowledge it was a tough time, full of change.

Freshmen are starting their first year of high school. With the move to the upper school comes a lot more indepen-dence and the transition comes with the realization that college is not that far off, and that now, their grades do matter.

And finally the seniors. The biggest change in our lives so far is just around the corner. We are all facing our college decision. In a year, we will no longer live with our families, we will be with new groups of people. However, St. George’s is a place that embraces and encourages change for the better. St. George’s con-nects change with personal growth.

Some people love change and thrive in new situations. We will readily admit that we are not always so confident in the outcome when it comes to changes that heavily affect our lives. However, it is true that acclimating to change is a difficult necessity. Our St. George’s family has risen to the challenge and pressed on in the implementation of these changes, and we will continue to do so this school year.

Lexie Marotta ’15 and Taylor Owens ’15

the same man, I then started on my trek up the 98-degree angle hill that continued for five miles. Extremely dehydrated with my blood boiling hot enough to make macaroni and cheese, I conclud-ed it was time for me to turn back.

I soon discovered that I did not have a room key and was locked out of every building. I befriend-ed the maintenance woman, and she let me into my room where I collapsed onto the floor.

Fast forward a week, and it is off to the United States Naval Acad-emy. I thought I was going to im-prove immensely but my endeav-ors came to an abrupt stop with a pole. This then led to a concus-sion.

This incident put a damper on my running abilities for the next two weeks. Right when I thought I could run again, a surprise visit to the wisdom teeth stealers was in order.

Another two weeks passed and cross-country started. To my-self, I stated, “Nothing more will happen to me this summer!” The statement was true but on the fateful morning of Friday Au-gust fifteenth, a car grazed my leg while enjoying my daily run. The moral of this story is never let your guard down, especially when you think it is no longer your sea-son of demise.

Sports OpinionSeptember The Student Voice of St. George’s Independent School• •

Courtney Harshbarger ’15

Zach Obaji ’15iPads at the front desk photograph guests and students. Changes at St. George’s include a new system for checking in visitors.

11

8 EntertainmentSeptember The Gryphon Gazette• •

Courtney Harshbarger ’15

Submarine (2010)Nathan Weinreich ’15

The image is courtesy of Warp Film Productions.

Despite its title, the 2010 directorial debut by British actor Richard Ayoade (The IT Crowd, The Boxtrolls) has little to do with naval crafts. Submarine tells the story of 15-year-old loner Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts) as he navigates the twisted world of relationships. His odd and sudden romance with the enigmatic Jordana Bevan (Yasmin Page), whose “only real faults are her sporadic bouts of eczema” according to Oliver, puts forth a series of challenges that he clumsily conquers. Oliver and Jordana don their own unique colors (Ol-iver’s being blue, Jordana’s being Red) and their own unique styles, but as the two fall deeper in love, they begin to show hints of the other’s color in their dress. They do not merge colors to make purple however, for the two are still very much separate entities; instead they begin to show both emotionally and sartorially

the pieces that they have tak-en from each other’s person-ality and added to their own. While Oliver struggles to stay afloat in his relation-ship with Jordana, he also faces the loss of passion in his parent’s relationship. He fears that his mother has rekindled an old flame, and that his father is not brave

Otherlands Coffee Bar in midtown is definitely worth the drive. The restau-rant has a nice atmosphere with cute little tables and

local artists’ work on the walls. Live music plays ev-ery Friday and Saturday from 8pm to midnight and it is a great place to hang

out on the weekend. There is coffee, food, cool and weird gifts, and live music. During my visit, I ordered a cappuccino and a bagel

sandwich. The cappuccino was very well made: the espresso had a nice strong flavor and a texture that was extremely silky. The foam that topped the cappuccino was my favorite part. It was incredibly fluffy and added a touch of sweetness to my day. The bagel sandwich was surprisingly good. I do not usually enjoy bagel sand-wiches because of the messi-ness and the usual lack of effort put into them, but this particular one was fan-tastic. The sandwich came with a choice of bagel (I chose plain), cheddar, to-mato slices, and a secret sauce. I also paid an extra fif-teen cents for cream cheese. While the individual in-gredients do not sound all that amazing, the sandwich was delectable. The bagel was toasted perfectly so that there were no hard crunchy parts but it was completely warm and soft. There was

also a nice toasty aftertaste that left me wanting more. The tomato slices and the cheddar cheese tasted de-licious together. Whatever the secret sauce is made of, it definitely works! There was a tangy flavor in the sauce that really made me fall in love with the sand-wich. I was very tempted to order another sandwich because I ate mine much too quickly. The sauce had some kind of spice in it that gave the sandwich a very unique taste that I cannot relate to anything I have eaten before. Although I can usually recreate reci-pes at home, I was pleas-antly surprised at my in-ability to identify the secret ingredient in the sauce. This cute little coffee bar in the heart of midtown is a fantastic place to go do homework or just hang out and have some coffee and a perfect bagel sandwich.

A stylized love story lacking naval ships

Otherlands sits in the heart of midtown. Coffee drinkers enjoyed delicious food and drinks during their visit.

Courtney Harshbarger ’15

enough to face her about it. What follows is a neurotic and manipulative plight to save his parent’s marriage that leads to a lack of regard for his own romantic problems. Submarine is a dramatic masterpiece of a directo-rial debut. The symmetrical framing is reminiscent of Wes Anderson’s cinematog-

raphy, yet Ayoade retains an element of British flair that makes it all his own. The di-chotomy between the orches-tral music playing within Ol-iver’s own head as the sort of soundtrack to the biopic that is his life and the music writ-ten by Arctic Monkeys front man Alex Turner that exists physically on his mix tape

displays the two sides of the protagonist: the obsessive-compulsive man who wants to control everything and the lonely boy who wants to be loved. With beautiful per-formances, brilliant writing, and a unique aesthetic to it, Submarine truly is, as Oliver Tate puts it, “An important film. Watch it with respect.”

Otherlands serves fantastic food