EQUALITY NOW: At a gay marriage rally in Chicago March 25, activists gather to ‘demand legal equality’ as they await the Supreme Court hearing of the most recent gay marriage bill. The activists were also at the rally to support the bill going through the Illinois House. Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

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thetheoracle.glenbrook225.orgOR ACLE

Rosie Kellystaff reporter

The Illinois Senate passed legislation to legalize gay marriage in Illinois on Febru-ary 14, and the bill is awaiting a vote in the Illinois House of Representatives.

The House currently has the bill out of committee and on the docket, according to Laura Fine, Illinois House Representa-tive for Glenview and Northbrook. If the House passes the bill, it will be signed by Illinois Governor Pat Quinn and become Illinois law, according to the Chicago Tri-bune.

According to Fine, the House has taken ‘roll calls,’ or informal votes to see if the bill has enough representatives on board to pass the bill. The bill is a few votes shy of the necessary 60 for passage. The Illi-nois Congress is not in session right now, but Fine said sponsors of the bill are work-

ing hard to get remaining ballots. “The people who are working on the

bill are really talking to people and mak-ing them have a better understanding of the bill and what it means so they can gain their support,” Fine said.

The major op-position has come from re-ligious stand-points according to senior Max Sendor, Presi-dent of the Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) at South. A lot of religions define marriage as between a man and a woman, and Sendor believes that some don’t want to stray from that viewpoint.

“People are very hardwired in their val-

ues of family, and they don’t want to vary [politically] from their personal ideas,” Sendor said.

Other opposition is grounded in party politics, according to Fine, who supports

the bill. There could be some representa-tives that might per-sonally support the bill but feel like they can’t vote for it be-cause of the constit-uents they are rep-resenting and those opinions.

Fine said that the recent media pub-licity from major

political figures like Hillary Clinton and Republican Senator Rob Portman, both who have recently come out in support of gay marriage, could help Illinois’ changes.

Fine also thinks that the March Supreme Court hearings about California’s legisla-tion banning gay marriage (Proposition 8) and the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act are helping to spotlight the issue.

“Especially [U.S. Senator Mark Kirk from Illinois] as a Republican coming out and saying [gay marriage] is something they support, it’s easier for someone else to say [...] if the leaders in my party sup-port it, then I can support it as well,” Fine said.

Fine’s choice to support gay marriage is shared with many at South. According to an Oracle-conducted survey of 217 stu-dents, 85 percent support Illinois legaliz-ing gay marriage.

Cheryl Hope, staff sponsor of the GSA, sees the numbers in support of gay mar-riage on an upward trend. Hope attributes

Illinois Senate passes bill for gay marriage, House vote may legalize

Sarah Jaleel & Kathryn Jaslikowskico-editors in chief

Two bombs detonated 12 seconds apart near the Boston Marathon finish line at 2:50 p.m. April 15, causing three fatalities and at least 175 injuries, according to The Boston Globe. The cause of the explosions was unknown, according to a White House official when The Oracle went to press.

Among the more than 27,000 runners participating in the marathon were Di-ana Starcevich, English administrative as-sistant, and her husband, Scott; Paul Her-zog, former South guidance counselor; and their friends Peggy and Matt Dettl-off (mother and son). Diana said that she crossed the finish line approximately 15 minutes before the blasts went off.

“I was asking a guy where the bus was

for my gear check, and we were talking, and I heard that boom, and I mean, that was loud,” Starcevich said. “I knew right away […] it just didn’t sound right. […] My husband and I were leaving and then just that quick, that second one went off […] No one knew what was wrong, and people were running past us, leaving, and we had to go back in the direction people were running from be-cause […] we had agreed to meet [there].”

Herzog explained he met up with Diana, Scott and Matt at their designated area, but the last notice they had gotten from Peggy was a text message at her 40k mark, about two miles to the finish line. According to Diana, it took them about an hour and half before they made con-tact with Peggy. Herzog said the relief he felt once the group reached her was tremendous.

“Peggy walked up Heartbreak Hill [during the mara-thon], and she should’ve been running, and I would’ve usually yelled at her for being a slacker, but because of

Explosions at Boston Marathon hit runners, spectators, affect members of South community

gay marriage illegal

gay marriage legal

no laws about gay marriage

domestic partnerships legal

civil unions legal

The Illinois State Congress will soon vote on a bill to legalize gay marriage, and civil unions are legal in the state, thus requiring both colors.Information Source: Talking Points MemoGraphic by Sarah Jaleel & Kathryn Jaslikowski

“Even though I have my strong beliefs about sex and marriage, it is not my duty, nor the government’s, to impose upon anyone else my beliefs.”-Junior Jeffrey Mathew

See GAY MARRIAGE page 5

RUNNING FOR COVER: On Bolyston St. near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, two explosions hit a crowd of people. According to The New York Times, dozens of people were amputated from the blasts as rescue workers rushed in. FlickrStorm See BOSTON page 2

April 19, 2013 news 2North Shore students participate in growing charitable traditionFaith Savaianoco-news editorSally Youasst. a&e editor

The 10th annual student-run Burger Day raised a re-cord amount of approximately $74,000-75,000 April 15. The event was held at the Plaza Del Prado McDonald’s in Northbrook and was led by Burger Day Team mem-bers from GBN, GBS, New Trier and North Shore Coun-try Day.

The GBS Burger Day Team members, sophomore Hen-ry Dickson, junior Johnny Cowhey and senior Paul Ma-sini, advertised the event around GBS by selling t-shirts for $10 with 100 percent of these funds, along with the burgers sold on Burger Day 10, being donated to Ronald McDonald House Charities.

“Ronald McDonald House Charities is a great charity that supports kids in a hospital,” Cowhey said. “It opens their doors for families that have children staying indefi-nitely at hospitals in order to make the healing process easier on everyone.”

Now in its ninth year, Burger Day originally began as a prank among five friends from Field Middle School who attempted to purchase as many burgers as possible from the Plaza Del Prado McDonald’s. The five friends expanded the number of people who took place in every successive Burger Day until the fourth occurrence of the orchestrated prank.

“After the fourth time this happened, […] [the partici-pants] bought over one thousand burgers,” Cowhey said. “The owner of the local McDonald’s approached the kids and told them that buying out the burgers from a Mc-Donald’s is impossible and what if they turned it into a charity event? This is how the event was born.”

According to Josh Tolmatsky, Burger Day President, Ronald McDonald House Charities employee and GBN Burger Day Team member, the event featured new as-pects including a title sponsorship of $10,000 provided by Dr. Pepper.

“Getting a title sponsor is very exciting,” Tolmatsky said. “The entire Burger Day Team and I presented to a representative from Dr. Pepper who runs their McDon-ald’s account for the Midwest.”

Dr. Pepper was one of 40 sponsors for Burger Day 10—up from 28 sponsors last year. Also new this year were a series of entertainers alongside Ronald McDonald such as Benny the Bull and the Incredi-Bulls.

“Having the entertainers was absolutely awesome,” Tolmatsky said. “I thought it added an entire new ele-ment to the event that really made it a lot more fun for everyone.”

In the spirit of the first Burger Day, there is an annual burger-eating contest in which teams from participating

schools attempt to eat as many burgers in a half hour as possible. Students from GBN, GBS and New Trier formed teams of four. Juniors Denatra Moshi, Aaron Rowe, James Roberts, and Peter Balabanos represented GBS.

GBS fell three burgers short of GBN’s winning amount of 61 burgers, roughly 4,000 calories per team member, according to Tolmatsky.

Moreover, Lake Park High School participated in Burger Day 10 for the first year .

“[Cowhey] connected us to Lake Park High School through his brother who is a teacher there,” Tolmatsky said. “They actually have community service class that enacts various projects so they will be starting their own Burger Day event, [...] but they will have the basic Burg-er Day event to help raise funds for the charity.”

As Burger Day expands to other schools and areas, Cowhey reflected on GBS’s place as a founding Burger Day school.

“GBS has been one of two schools that has seen the event grow from the start,” Cowhey said. “Half of the original founders were from GBS when it was still a prank. Now, the event is passed down from GBS students to GBS students, and the event continues to live on.”

HAMBURGER HELPERS: Biting into their burgers, juniors Richard Pearl, Matt Chorvat and Chris Neuhaus participate in Burger Day 10 at McDonald’s April 15. This was the first year that New Trier and North Shore Country Day joined GBN and GBS at the same location to celebrate Burger Day. Photo by Jackie Cortopassi

BITES BY THE NUMBER...

Information provided by Burger Day Team Members

that, she was probably a minute behind the finish, where she should have been [if she hadn’t walked up the hill] right at the time of the explosion,” Herzog said.

Similar stories of miraculous coincidences are spring-ing up, according to Herzog. Adam Vevang, Boston Uni-versity (BU) student and 2012 South graduate, said that he and his friends were planning to go to the finish line around 2:30 p.m. but decided to eat in the cafeteria first. Vevang and his friends learned of the explosions from the cafeteria TV.

“We could’ve been stand-ing right where the second explosion went off […] I don’t like to think about it just be-cause I’m really thankful that for some reason, my stomach wanted me to eat [and that] I’m here right now,” Vevang said.

According to Vevang, his cousin also goes to BU, and Vevang couldn’t contact him as phones were ringing con-stantly yet cell service was not cooperating in the hours after the explosions. He said that students at BU were walking up and down the river on phones, shouting out whenever they were able to get ahold of someone.

“I wasn’t able to get ahold of my cousin for two hours [...] That was hard because you start to think the worst,” Vevang said. “I started to hear my cousin’s voice in my head, and I started crying because I couldn’t help it […] You can’t help but think the worst but hope for the best.”

Vevang described the atmosphere in Bos-ton April 16 as tense and cautious. According to him, it is odd that such a celebrated day in the city has suddenly become an event full of grief, and sirens can be heard frequently throughout the city, adding to the sense of

panic that something else could happen at any second.

“You walk down the streets on our campus, and you can’t read anyone’s mind, but it seems like everyone’s got a thought bub-ble that you can see above their heads, and you know exactly what they’re thinking about, and it’s quiet, and it’s eerie,” Vevang said.

Despite the fact that the Bos-ton Marathon will now always be associated with the bomb-

ings, according to Herzog and Diana, they will not let it stop them from competing in fu-ture races, even in Boston.

“One of our friends back in Chicago said, ‘You know what, we can’t let our kids go to school, that’s dangerous. We can’t go to mov-ie theaters, that’s dangerous. We can’t go to a sporting event, that’s dangerous now’,” Her-zog said. “I think we all agreed we’re not go-ing to let them win by scaring us away […] We can’t let this ruin a really positive experi-ence.”

BOSTON, continued from front page

“I started crying be-cause I couldn’t help it [...] You can’t help but think the worst but hope for the best.”-Adam Vevang, 2012 South graduate and current BU student

Graphic by Wyatt Richter

news April 19, 2013 3

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Desi Club celebrates arrival of spring with colorful Holi festival

POWDER PLAY: Showering each other with colorful powder, members of South’s Desi Club celebrate the Hindu festival of Holi for the second year at South. Senior Seena Kurian said she brought the idea of celebrating Holi to Desi Club last year after remembering celebrating the holiday while visiting India in eighth grade. Photo by Wyatt Richter

Ruhi Bhaidanistaff reporter

Desi Club celebrat-ed Holi, the Hindu spring festival of col-ors, at South in the ARC courtyard March 21.

According to junior Joris Powathil, the par-ticipants wore white clothing and threw colored powder at each other.

“Everybody dresses in white to signify that everybody is equal in the eyes of God,” Pow-athil said. “So, every-body just throws col-ors at each other and nobody knows who’s poor and who’s not be-cause they’re all wear-ing white.”

According to Se-jal Schullo, Desi Club sponsor, the white clothing is a tradition long embedded within the celebration of Holi due to India’s caste system.

“In India, there’s still a lot of influence from caste system, even though it’s il-legal,” Schullo said. “And so everybody wears white on that day so you can’t tell from outward appearance what socioeconomic group a person is because everybody is wearing the same color. And it’s not fancy; it’s just plain white clothing.”

According to Schullo, Holi is the Hindu celebration of the coming of spring as well as the god Krishna, who is an avatar of Vishnu.

“It is really a celebration of good versus evil,” Schullo said. “It’s also a celebration of kind of re-birth and a re-generation of good things that come with the spring: the flowers, the trees [and] the fertility of things.”

According to Schullo, Holi is traditionally celebrated with religious observance, dancing, singing, bonfires and the throwing of colored powder and water.

Schullo said the members of Desi Club have a memo-rable tradition during the celebration to cover Schullo in

powder as well.“After they get all powdered up and they get caked

with the different rainbow colors, they decide to kind of come in and do a group hug with me in the center which makes [a] colorful mess,” Schullo said. “And it’s one of our last events, especially for the seniors who are leaving, and so it’s a nice little moment of their gratitude as well as their excitement for being part of this organization and doing something that is both fun and educational.”

Though Holi is typically a Hindu festival, the majority of students in Desi Club who celebrated it are South In-dian Christians, according to Powathil.

“Our Desi Club only had three members that were ac-tually Hindu,” Powathil said. “However, it was a great cultural experience for every single one of us. We got to

learn about the significance behind Holi.”According to Schullo, celebrating Holi achieved the

goal of Desi Club to increase awareness of Indian culture at South.

Schullo said that Desi Club thought about the idea of allowing everyone at South to participate in the event when they began planning, but ended up being held only for Desi Club members because they wanted the participants to understand the culture and significance behind Holi.

“It’s a fun activity and we don’t want people to just do it to do it,” Schullo said. “We want them to understand the meaning behind it. We want them to understand why it is they’re doing it, what the holiday is, what it signifies in terms of social and political issues in India.”

April 19, 20134 news Holocaust speaker teaches through living historyTammy Cravennews editorCarolyn Kellyasst. news editor

Holocaust survivor Aaron Elster spoke about his experiences to U.S. History students March 15.

Elster was 11 years old when his mother, father and younger sis-ter were killed by Nazis. Elster escaped from the group being sent to the concentration camps from the ghetto where he was living in Poland. He was a hidden child until the country was liberated, and he was reunited with his older sister who had also been hidden by the same family. After the end of WWII, Elster lived in a Polish or-phanage until coming to the United States.

According to Stacy Flannery, social studies teacher, Elster’s pre-sentation, which he has done for the past three years at South, re-flected the course’s focus on personalizing what students are read-ing about in textbooks.

“I think one of the things all of our speakers have done is con-nect with the kids and give them a sense of why their story matters to them and how they can take something from their story and use it in their own lives,” Flannery said. “I don’t think [Elster] thinks anyone in that room is going to be subject to the experiences that he had, […] but evil exists in locker rooms and lunch tables and lots of other places, and here is as a model and inspiration to all of those kids about reasons which they can be upstanders in their own world.”

After Elster told his story, junior Alexis Landsman said she had a better understanding of what she learned about the Holocaust.

“All these numbers are thrown at you, like six million people died, there were this many tens of thousands of concentration camps,” Landsman said. “I think that it takes away the human sense of what was really going on. I think that [Elster’s] presen-tation just showed that each person [...] from the Holocaust had a story that was noteworthy.”

Although Elster spoke about being forced out of his home and his cold, hungry winters hidden in an attic, he consistently men-tioned that he “wanted to live so desperately.”

Listening to the presentation, Terrence Jozwik, Social Studies Department instructional supervisor, took away the message not to be a bystander.

“And he alludes to even in this day and age, there are still prob-lems out there, and we read about them in the newspapers and we kind of say, ‘Oh, those poor people. Somebody should do some-thing,’ but the idea is you are that somebody, perhaps, and you should do something,” Jozwik said.

Junior Gabby Medovoy, who volunteers at the Holocaust Mu-seum in Skokie, hopes that students continue to share stories like Elster’s.

“[Elster] has suffered through so much, and he’s still going around today and sharing his story,” Medovoy said. “He’s looking to us [to tell future generations] we cannot let this happen again.”

According to Flannery, she hopes the students’ positive reac-tions to Elster, evidenced by the long line of students thanking El-ster and buying his book, meant that they understand the value of hearing a survivor’s story.

“I tell my own students there’s a chance if you have younger

siblings they might not have this opportunity, […] and so I tell them one day you’re going to be able to tell your child, ‘I heard someone speak who lived through this and let me tell you what they told me,’” Flannery said. “I want them to see the value in the fleeting nature of the moment, and I really think they get that.”

While Flannery recognizes that students won’t always be able to hear a Holocaust survivor speak, she hopes that Elster’s presence will live on through her teaching.

“I don’t want to be pessimistic, but our teaching of [the Holocaust] will be diminished,” Flannery said. “I’d like to think I’m really good at [teaching], but someone who stands in front of you and lived it, I can’t deliver.”

Jozwik said teaching history after all survivors of an event are gone is the history teacher’s dilemma.

“Now that those people are gone, we have to keep the stories alive,” Jozwik said. “But that’s the job of the history teacher to make that past come alive as best we can even though those participants are no longer around.”

Richard Pearlstaff reporter

The Business Professionals of America (BPA) chapter at South has continued to have success this school year.

According to BPA sponsor Rosanna Mc-Manamon, BPA members participate in competitions against BPA chapters from other schools. In each competition, partic-ipants compete in a maximum of two of four possible categories.

“It’s really divided into four areas,” Mc-Manamon said. “Financial, which is like ac-counting; administrator support, which is the Microsoft Office package; information technology, which is technical computer stuff; and then management and marketing of human resources, which is presentations having to do with human resource manage-ment or interview skills.”

According to McManamon, there are three competitions: Area, State and Nation-als. Nearly each of the 40 BPA members qualified for the State competition after participating in the Area competition. At the State competition, seven members qual-ified for Nationals, which will be held May

7-12 in Orlando. Juniors Hinna Raja and Nick Langas re-ceived first place in their respective categories.

According to BPA president Max Mattappillil, students are preparing for Nationals by taking tests from previous competitions and asking McManamon for advice.

“Before, people would just enter an event without knowing much about it, but taking a practice test and fa-miliarizing themselves with the material really helped boost scores,” Mattappillil said.

Another success for the BPA chapter at South was re-ceiving the Professional Cup, a trophy given to the most outstanding BPA chapter in regards to service outside of the school. Judges chose the deserving chapter based on descriptions of the services that students wrote.

Numerous BPA members also received Statesmen Torch Awards, given to students for success in all seven ‘torches’ of leadership: service, cooperation, knowledge, friendship, hope and faith, love and patriotism.

Finally, McManamon said, as State Officer, junior An-astasia Athas led a team of seven students from other schools to raise over $4,500 for the Special Olympics.

McManamon and Mattappillil are hopeful that BPA will continue to be successful next year, despite BPA’s new requirement for members to be enrolled in a busi-ness class. This could lower BPA participation.

“We’ve had a strong group of members that did very, very well this year, and I’m sure they’ll join next year,” Mattappillil said.

BPA demonstrates achievements in competitions, serviceDOWN TO BUSINESS: Represent-ing South’s Business Profession-als of America (BPA) chap-ter, juniors Max Mat-tappillil and Joel Mathew present their awards. Ac-cording to junior Joseph Varughese, some students received the Merit Scholar Award this year, an award for students with 90 per-cent or higher on a test about knowledge of the BPA pro-gram. Photo courtesy of Rosan-na McManamon

Photo by Marley HambourgerGraphic by Wyatt Richter

Aaron Achstaff reporter

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who will go by the papal name Fran-cis, was elected Pope by a gath-ering of Catholic cardinals in Vatican City March 13.

Despite his Italian heritage, Argentinian Pope Francis is the first non-European to fill this position in over a millennium. Another distinguishing fact is that he is the first pope from the Americas and the first Jesuit pope. He is taking over for Pope Benedict XVI, the first pope to step down since the fifteenth century.

Joanna Lialios, Western Re-ligions teacher, believes his traits demonstrated as a mem-ber of the papacy and as a self-less member of the Catholic faith also distinguish him from his predecessors and other mem-bers of the papacy.

“One thing that really stands out about Pope Francis is his de-votion to the poor and his dedi-cation to living out his role as a servant of others,“ Lialios said. “A major criticism of popes of the past, and some would say their downfall, is getting wrapped up in the prestige of the position [...] Pope Francis has shown that although he is the Pope, he is not going to be distracted by the more prestigious and material elements of the position.“

Father Thomas Hickey, priest at OLPH Church in Glenview, agrees that there are aspects of Pope Francis’ rule that may be eye-opening for Christians and non-Christians alike.

“I think it will change a lot of perspectives because most of the world’s [Christians are from] the Southern Hemisphere,” Hickey said. “This man coming from Bue-nos Aires comes out of a very different experience than Western Europe. […] He comes less out of a bureaucracy than he does a pastor.”

Senior Shawn Kurian, a Catholic, agrees with Hickey that Pope Francis will change perspectives, but Kurian also observes a stereotype that exists within Roman Ca-tholicism.

“[Because] he is non-European […] he can certainly at-tract members from South America in particular, but [he can also attract] more people in general because he has broken the stigma of ‘white Catholic believers,’” Kurian said.

Hickey believes the manner in which some controversial

issues are viewed has the potential to change.“Part of it will not be in so much the laws, [but] in the

tone in which we talk about people who are divorced or who are gay or poor,” Hickey said. “I think some of the teaching he will probably do will have us come to a great-er understanding of poverty in the world. […] That’s been a lot of his life.”

Other issues being debated in addition to gay rights, divorce and poverty are celibacy, abortion and priests’ inability to marry, according to Lialios. However, Lialios believes that he may not be willing to make changes or decisions as quickly as many Catholics would like.

“Many people believe that the Catholic Church needs to change its views to fit modern times, but the pope has shown a level of conservatism in the past that leads me to believe he will not budge on certain issues,“ Lialios said.

Considering Pope Francis’ modern beliefs, Lialios sees him changing the way popes contact leaders of other faiths around the world.

“In the Christian world, there’s already been prog-ress in improving relations with the Eastern Orthodox

Church by the meeting of Pope Francis with the Patriarch of Constantinople, thus softening centuries-old tensions between the two Churches,“ Lialios said. “It is an incredi-bly big step in [...] which could have lasting significance.“

Despite the new pope’s accomplishments in his cur-rent position and in those prior, some have feared that he is too elderly and will serve a relatively short time until his death, assuming that he continues the general trend of popes occupying the position for life. His age may be a positive quality because he has more experience in the papacy and “hopefully more wisdom,” Lialios said.

In addition, Hickey believes that the papacy was not ready for a term as long as John Paul II or other previ-ously long-standing popes. Hickey believes that it is rea-sonable to expect Francis to have a great deal of influence and even give the Church a “new face,“ even if he does only fill his position for a relatively short time.

“It’s interesting to me that since he spent mass on Holy Thursday at a youth detention center in Rome, I’ve heard of two bishops in the United States who went to prisons and did similar things; it’s kind of follow the leader,” Hickey said.

GAY MARRIAGE, continued from front page

FRESH FACE: Riding in the papamobile, newly elected Pope Francis spends time at his inauguration mass at St. Peter’s square at the Vatican March 19. Joanna Li-

alios, Western Religions teacher, believes Pope Francis’ humility, shown by his actions of riding his bike or taking the bus to work as an archbishop and choosing to

live in a simple apartment rather than the archbishop’s residency, will allow him to serve as a positive example for the Church. (Maurizio Brambatti/Ansa/Zuma Press/MCT)

Pope’s humility, devotion to poor impress communitynews April 19, 2013 5

the trend to an increase in people coming out in recent years, and people becom-ing more familiar with the reality of those around them being gay. The publicity and awareness have helped increase support for marriage equality and are turning it from a political issue to a civil rights issue.

“I think most people have made [the] de-cision based on fairness and equality and equal rights,” Hope said.

Those surveyed who opposed the legal-ization cited religious and personal rea-sons. Junior Krystian Szorc believes that both government and religion are key to leading peaceful and happy lives.

“I believe God made it very clear that it takes a man and a woman to produce a happy, healthy life,” Szorc said. “I believe that all people should go about this stan-

dard, and for those who don’t want to, a law should be put in place to keep them in line. I know others may disagree, but this is just my opinion.”

Hope responds to the religious oppo-nents that there is a difference between a le-gal marriage and a religious marriage and argues that religion doesn’t have to play a part in the political aspect.

Junior Jeffrey Mathew believes that personal opinions should not inhibit legalization.

“Even though I have my strong beliefs about sex and marriage, it is not my duty, nor the government’s, to im-pose upon anyone else my beliefs,” Mathew said.

If Illinois were to legalize gay marriage, it would be-come the tenth state in the United States to do so. Illinois has been one of six states to offer civil unions to same-sex couples since summer 2011.

According to the Oracle-conducted survey, of the 15 percent of students against legalizing gay marriage, 73 percent support the current civil union legislation.

Sendor does not believe that civil unions are as com-prehensive as a marriage, and they often result in legal confusion.

“The laws get really hazy when it comes to civil unions,” Sendor said. “People tend to err on the side of conservative in that situation and are a lot less [coopera-tive].”

Some common differences between a marriage and a civil union include hospital rights and health care ben-efits, issues with child adoption and estate taxes.

According to CNN, there are approximately 1,100 fed-eral benefits to marriage, not all of which are encom-passed by civil unions.

If the legislation passes the House, it will allow for gay students and staff at South to gain equal standing with straight peers within the law.

“In this country, every-one should be free to marry who they love.”

-Laura Fine, Illinois House Representative for

Glenview

“We took an important step with the passage of

civil unions, but it is now time to pass full mar-

riage equality.”

-Daniel Biss, Illinois State Senator for Glenview

The editorial expresses the opinion of the majority of the editorial board and not necessarily that of the publisher, adviser, school administration or staff. editorialApril 19, 20136

is published monthly by students at Glenbrook South High School, 4000 W. Lake Ave., Glenview, IL 60026.

The opinions expressed in The Ora-cle are that of the writer(s) and not necessarily of the staff or school.

The Oracle neither endorses nor re-jects the products and services advertised.

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No uniform excuse, response for students who sleep in class

Next year, South will join thousands of high schools across the country in installing Project Lead the Way (PLTW), a national move-ment to involve American students in Science, Technology, Engineer-ing and Mathematics (STEM). For the 2013-2014 school year, South will add two new courses: Introduction to Engineering Design and Principles of Engineering, before potentially adding six new courses the following year.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Statistics, the fastest growing ca-reer fields in the U.S. are STEM-related, increasing annually at about 21.4 percent. For this reason, the Oracle Editorial Board strongly en-courages students at South to take full advantage of the PLTW move-ment coming to our school next year and applauds the district for electing to participate.

Nationally, STEM is crucial for the U.S.’s survival in global compe-tition. In 2011, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCFES)

conducted the International Mathematics and Science Study, testing students in more than 60 countries in math and science proficiency. While the U.S. did not rank particularly low (ninth place in eighth grade math, tenth place in eighth grade science), PLTW aims to push the U.S. higher into the rankings of a competitive STEM world.

Additionally, while 46.7 percent of Chinese university students graduate with STEM degrees, only 5.6 percent of Americans do, ac-cording to lessoncast.org. According to NCFES, with only six in one hundred American high school students choosing to pursue a degree in STEM, it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with emerg-ing careers that require STEM preparation.

The Editorial Board hopes students will take full advantage of South’s PLTW opportunities, as there are numerous advantages to joining the program. In an economy where the unemployment rate reached 7.9 percent in January 2013, according to the Bureau of La-

bor Statistics, joining PLTW in high school can set students up to enter the job market easily post-college.

PLTW also gives real students invalu-able real-world experi-ence that will prepare them for STEM-related careers. Even students who feel they lack an affinity for math or sci-ence may find that the creative, design aspect of STEM appealing.

Lastly, by taking PLTW classes, South students will make America stronger, not just globally, but also domestically. In the 2013 State of the Union address, President Barack Obama called for opportunities in high school to “better equip graduates for the demands of a high-tech economy.” The Edito-rial Board is proud that South will be helping to make that happen.

Whether it’s because of an issue at home, too much homework or just exhaustion, sleeping in class sometimes seems necessary or un-avoidable. Other times, however, there isn’t a reason except for the fact that the student feels sleeping would be a better use of their time.

The Editorial Board views the issue of sleeping in class as one that should be treated on a case-by-case basis. While students should be doing their best to stay engaged during class, we believe that teach-ers should also be more understanding towards the students who only fall asleep every so often.

In an Oracle-conducted survey of 58 teachers, 23 mentioned some variation of just strictly “waking them up” or “pranking them” as their method of waking sleeping students. The Editorial Board views this as a problem because there are often legitimate reasons as to why the students are falling asleep.

Faculty should consider the factors that may be at play when a stu-dent sleeps, such as insomnia or family troubles. The Editorial Board encourages students like this to seek help for their problems, whether that be with a school social worker or a good friend. We also ask that teachers keep an eye out for students potentially in these situations and let them sleep before addressing them after class.

Jean Simmons, consumer science teacher, agrees with the notion that extenuating circumstances may be present when students fall asleep in class and treats them accordingly.

“When students fall asleep, I assume something in their life is out of balance,” Simmons said. “I wake them, talk with them, then send them to the nurse to either go home ill, stay at school and sleep in the nurses’ office, or perhaps discuss an […] emotional problem they are trying to work through.”

On the other end of the spectrum, Spanish teacher Mark Bauman, doesn’t allow sleeping in class, like 22 of his 58 counterparts in the Oracle-conducted survey. Although he understands the variety of reasons behind a student’s sleepiness, he finds it necessary to wake the student.

“I don’t tolerate it, and if someone is sleeping in class, I usually yell at them or say something about them in Spanish to draw the class’s attention towards them, and then once I have their attention, I call on them repeatedly to perk up,” Bauman said.

While we do agree that teachers who habitually wake students up have good intentions, the Editorial Board believes that waking a stu-dent up, especially in a dramatic manner, is more of a distraction to the class than helpful to the tired student. Occasionally, there are stu-

dents who literally cannot keep their eyes open during class and in-voluntarily fall asleep. Waking them up will not add a lively presence to the classroom.

In addition, the Editorial Board would like to address that it is the student’s responsibility to make up the work that he or she has missed. The student will probably need to spend his or her own time at home trying to relearn the material. Senior Nicolle De Roeck, who says she sleeps in class about twice a week in different classes, agrees with this principle.

There is no question that the students at South are stretched thin with their participation in academics, extracurriculars, jobs, etc. When caffeine or other methods of staying awake don’t work, fall-ing asleep in class every once in a while may be justifiable for some students under certain circumstances, and the Editorial Board asks teachers to let up on those who do not abuse this proposition.

The Oracle Editorial Board VoteAgree: 19 Disagree: 4 Abstain: 2

DRAMATIZATION

FUTURE TRAILBLAZERS: Hard at work, junior Atticus Hebson and junior Cormac O’Brien use NXT Mindstorm Programming to program a robot built out of Legos to complete a challenge in Honors Engineering Physics. Next year, students will have the opportunity to enhance their engineering studies with Introduction to Engineering Design and Principles of Engineering. Photo by Evan Richter

Students should take full advantage of PLTW opportunity

7opinionsReliving memories of middle school bullying allows for self-reflection

April 19, 2013

Julia Jacobsasst. opinions editor

“What was the worst time in your life?” I asked senior Danielle Finnegan. Without hesitation she answered, “middle school”, as I expected she would. If I could, I too would stuff middle school into a shoebox, jump up and down on it for a while and then bury it deep in the backyard beside my dead pets. Whether it’s the surge of hormones, the seemingly arbitrary array of rules or the constant reminders that you’re really not a person yet, there must be something about middle school that makes it the darkest time before our mid-life crises.

For Finnegan, the trauma can be resurrected with a couple clicks of the mouse. The teasing about her weight began in sixth grade and escalated into what felt like a battle between her and the entire school. The ringlead-ers of this effort succeeded in not only creating a toxic school environment for Finnegan but one at home as well through the near-obsolete social media phenom-enon called MySpace. They created a page specifically designed to host gossip about Finnegan, encouraging outsiders to instant message the AIM screen name with questions or new information about her.

In this biting, spiteful excerpt written five years ago, Finnegan’s classmate compares her to Cinderella, refer-ring to her as “Danerella”:

Not only does this excerpt show that our kindergarten teachers need to do more to ensure we accurately under-stand the message of fairytales, it encapsulates the cru-elty Finnegan endured amidst the most emotionally vul-nerable years of her childhood.

Although the majority of information has been deleted and the hundreds of “friends” have dwindled to only a

few, the site remains alive, buried in the vast sea of the web. But despite this site, along with prank calls containing nothing but a slew of ex-pletives and a social atmosphere that ultimately led her to eat lunch in a bathroom stall, Finnegan forgives her tormentors. Finnegan suffered from years of depression, yet she still for-gives the people who did nothing to deserve it.

This floored me. Forgiveness happens when people tell you that they’re sorry, that they regret their words and actions, not when they torture you for years and then push the “eject” button while you hurtle into the psychological unknown. Yet when I observe Finnegan now, pre-paring to graduate in less than two months, here’s what I notice: she ex-udes color and smiles a lot. She is un-abashedly positive and complimen-tary.

She is so full of life because forgiveness allowed her to transition healthily into a new high school identity. For all victims of bullying, holding lifelong grudges will not relieve you of your past but will become a continuously negative impact on your life. You are the only one who has the power to filter out the bad parts of a memory and take full advantage of the good.

This requires not disposing of the memory that seems like unwant-ed baggage but carrying it with you wherever you go to remind you that you are in a remarkably better place now. When you tuck that unhappy identity away so that its only rem-nant becomes the oldest photo in your sequence of Facebook profile pictures, the wisdom gained from that experience is lost.

Because this idea is a bit abstract, allow senior Victoria Sampson’s* sto-ry to bring it to life. In seventh grade, when Sampson reached 165 lbs, the

mockery she received reached a simi-lar peak that prompted her to do any-thing she could to shed the weight. This meant limiting her caloric intake to 400 calories a day, which according to Medical News Today, is less than 25 percent of the number of calories she should have been eating.

During the summer after her fresh-man year, Sampson had plummeted to 110 lbs and would frantically exer-cise each day the number on the scale was too high. It is without question that the bullying Sampson endured had a profoundly negative impact on her relationship with food, but with-out it, it may have taken decades for her to seek a healthier lifestyle. After years of hidden eating followed by years of secret starvation, Sampson believes she has finally found a mid-dle ground.

“Although it was a struggle to get there, I got there,” Sampson said.

After years of teasing and friend-lessness due to Tourette syndrome, Jane Packer, a 2011 GBS graduate, also got there. Her middle school peers’ taunting ranged from calling her a “nerd” for showing interest during classroom discussions to ac-cusing her of dramatizing her tics for attention.

The part of Packer’s story that had the most impact on her though, was the resounding lack of a support system throughout her three years in middle school. Though her par-ents were actively trying to improve her situation, within the walls of the school, she felt that she was truly go-ing at it alone.

Instead of withdrawing into a cor-ner of inevitable loneliness, Packer entered high school with a desire to make connections with a newly- ma-tured student body, even fostering a friendship with a girl who used to throw things at her in the locker room. Now, Packer holds substan-tive, meaningful relationships that trample the memories of her one-woman army that had to face a bar-rage of senseless mockery alone.

In my own story of redemp-tion, I am not the victim, but the bully. Though the memory feels re-moved, as if this fourth grade self ex-isted only in a dream, I definitely re-call teasing one boy in particular. For what? I don’t remember. The teasing may have not had a life-changing ef-fect on him, but because I don’t know if that’s true, I decided to act.

The particular person I teased end-ed up becoming a friend of mine, which made it that much easier to say, “I’m sorry.” He forgave me, then joked about the fact that if I tried to abuse him now, he could probably take me (he is now more than a foot taller than me). Although when I think about it, it sickens me to think that I may have caused others pain, I am not sorry it happened. Those memories from seven years ago have bred in me a hypersensitivity to the feelings of others and an innate desire to be a source of comfort rather than a source of grief.

Like Finnegan, Sampson and Pack-er, the wisdom I gained from this dark period of my life was transfor-mative. Whether we admit it or not, our present identities are forever linked to our past, so the least we can do is take away lessons that propel us into better future selves.

*Name changed to protect identity.

PAST REVISITED: For the first time in years, Senior Danielle Finnegan stands in front of her alma mater, Springman Middle School. Throughout sixth and seventh grades, Finnegan was a constant target for her peers who created a MySpace page dedicated to “gossip” about her. At South, Finnegan found her niche in the Theater Department as a freshman, quickly recreating her identity at a new school. Photo by Evan Richter

Illustration by Ellen Takagi

“In this story though the prince doesnt pick her but picks the princess. Which danerella wish she was. But no she never will be. Shell never be as pretty, or as thin, or as nice or even as rich. She cant even get friends. So how does this story end? Well exactly how it started. Danerella is still the loner, loser, fata** b*tch who no one likes.

”

DONE WITH DRONES: During a protest against drone attacks in Pakistan’s tribal region, a protester carries a burning US flag in Multan on Oct. 13, 2012. According to the Globe and Mail, drone strikes that kill civilians are said to breed terrorism and pro-vide ample terrorism group recruits. Photo from S.S. Mirza

opinionsApril 19, 20138

Violent games desensitize players to violence, reward killing

US citizens vulnerable to drone attacks; Obama must act

Claire Fishercolumnist

Aiming a perfect gunshot right through your friend’s chest. Stealing a car and shooting a cop that’s on your tail. Sneaking up on an enemy and slitting his throat from behind. These may all sound like scenes from a gory movie (or good ways to end up in jail), but they’re simply parts of many teens’ favorite pastime: playing violent video games.

According to a recent Oracle-conducted survey of 209 students, 48 percent play violent video games. South is no exception; according to ign.com, of the 213 million video games sold in the United States in 2012, five of the top 10 most popular games were violent. Video games have always been a fun way to escape from reality, but lately, these violent games haven’t seemed so innocent.

According to huffingtonpost.com, Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook Elementary killer, and Anders Breivik, the man who killed 69 people in a mass shooting at a sum-mer camp in Norway, in 2011, both frequently played

violent video games before they committed mass mur-der. People want answers when tragedy strikes, and some have blamed the video game industry. So, the question is: do violent video games cause violence in real life?

Unfortunately, there isn’t a clear answer to this ques-tion, but some think that violent games can cause mood changes. Sophomore Sabrina Palmer notices that her younger brother becomes more aggressive after playing violent video games.

“After he plays [Call of Duty], he tends to push around the dog, and he likes to hit me and my sister,” Palmer said. “He is more irritable.”

According to The New York Times, it’s true that vid-eo games can cause short-term aggression. However, while 15 minutes of getting pushed around might be annoying, violent video games aren’t proven to cause anything more.

So maybe the jury is still out on the ability of vio-lent video games to incite mass murder, but there’s still something twisted about trying to kill another human being, even in a virtual world.

According to scienceblogs.com, the military has been reported to use violent video games to desensitize sol-diers so they stay calm in combat. For the gamers that aren’t training for battle, however, I see an issue with becoming so numb to violence.

Junior Christian Wilke doesn’t see an issue with kill-

ing in video games.“Whether you’re killing people or aliens, or [you’re

playing] Tetris, and you’re getting rid of blocks, I think it’s all the same,” Wilke said. “I don’t play to kill, I play to win.”

This is a prime example of desensitization. It is true that the goal of most video games is to kill in some way, but there’s a problem if you’re able to see the brutality of shooting a person until blood spews as equivalent to removing blocks. Think of the message it’s sending - we see killing people as a game.

That message might be taken even more seriously if you’re exposed to violent video games at a young age. According to the same Oracle-conducted survey, 45 per-cent of students who play violent video games started playing before middle school.

There’s a good reason for age requirements on games. According to drphil.com, violent video games teach kids incorrect moral consequences by awarding killing with extra points instead of a jail sentence. Additionally, violent games train children to externalize strong feel-ings through violence, impede social skills and weaken the ability to control anger.

Though there may not be enough solid research at this point to create a direct correlation between these games and real life violence, that doesn’t close the issue. People still need to watch that the line between fantasy and real life doesn’t blur.

Chris Callahancolumnist

We all know that we got Osama bin Laden in Paki-stan two years ago. But what people don’t talk about is how we failed up until that day in 2011.

For example, according to The Nation, in Feb. 2002, an unmanned CIA Predator drone shot at a site in Pakistan suspected to harbor bin Laden. It was the first-ever in-dependent attack by a US drone. Soon after the attack, accounts from locals revealed the actual victims of the strike: civilians collecting scrap metal.

This first strike started a pattern that has continued for the last 11 years. The US sends in a drone to strike suspected terrorist cells, we get it wrong and innocent people die.

This is not likely to end anytime soon; according to The New York Times, a drone base just opened in Niger, ensuring drone presence in Africa for the foreseeable future. And the military loves the ability to train a drone pilot in a shorter amount of time than a real pilot and keep them safely behind a joystick at mission control.

Drones are bad. I don’t want to sugarcoat it. Accord-ing to Pakistani estimates, casualties from drone strikes may be as high as 98 percent civilian – and remember that the US also conducts drone activities in Yemen, So-malia and, now, out of Niger. While these numbers may be overstated, even a conservative estimate of 75 per-cent is an astounding number of civilians killed.

Innocent people do not deserve to die because the government thinks that they might live near a terror-ist. The entire strategy behind terrorism is to kill civil-ians to create fear in another country, society or group. But if our “war on terror” involves the same killing of noncombatants, are we really better than the terrorists we fight?

Obviously, the argument remains that drones kill ter-rorists, so it’s worth it. But drones are also counterpro-

ductive. When an American drone kills civilians, the family and friends of those civilians aren’t likely to hold hands and sing Kumbaya if and when American troops come through the area; they’re much more likely to be easy recruits for al Qaeda and the Taliban.

And according to the Globe and Mail, drones create these effects even without killing anyone. How would you feel if China had flying cameras with rocket launch-ers attached in our skies all the time?

However, that isn’t the worst part. According to The New York Times, for several years President Obama has used the 2001 law authorizing military force against al Qaeda to theoretically justify drone attacks against any-

one, including US citizens on US soil.This means that if you were suspected of being a ter-

rorist by the US government, you could be fired upon by a drone over your house. Forget “right to a speedy trial in front of a jury of his peers” - you are now dead to the US government.

This is an offense to the Constitution and to every cit-izen’s due process rights. Every single US citizen de-serves to face his or her accuser and be assumed inno-cent until proven guilty. I can only hope that President Obama rethinks the way his administration conducts counterterrorism operations and forgoes the drone op-tion.

photos from Google images

Kathryn Jaslikowskico-editor in chief

“We’re a ship without a captain, and there’s a typhoon coming.”

It was April 1947, and the Brooklyn Dodgers were without a manager. Leo Durocher was suspended, and his replacement had quit after two games.

Dodgers’ owner Branch Rickey was desperate for an experienced manager who could weather the proclaimed “typhoon” headed their way. As it would turn out, Rick-ey didn’t have to worry so much because the typhoon that carried Jack Roosevelt Robinson had already begun to crash upon the shores of the US, destroying segrega-tion in sports, eradicating the tradition of baseball as a “white man’s game” and leaving behind the most influ-ential ball player of all time.

42, the Jackie Robinson biopic released April 12, is the story behind the man who “broke the color barrier” in Major League baseball. Rickey (Harrison Ford) spends a couple days searching the black baseball leagues before he comes up with Robinson (Chadwick Boseman), and thus, history was made.

Just seven days after Robinson’s debut on the Dodg-ers, Phillies’ manager Ben Chapman (Alan Tudyk) stood outside his dugout telling Robinson to “get back to the cotton fields.” This scene is Boseman’s most impressive performance as his character struggles to control his tem-per. Fed up with Chapman’s chirping, Robinson retreats to the locker room, smashing his bat against the wall in frustration again and again. Boseman’s sincere and raw sobs connect him emotionally to the audience.

Casting the iconic Ford added a layer of theatrical tal-ent that balanced the inadequacies of some of the lesser-

known actors. His portrayal of complex Rickey is spot-on as the owner uses every excuse to explain adding Robin-son to the team, from finances to publicity, before finally admitting the truth to Robinson in a private moment: “It was something unfair at the heart of the game I loved, and I ignored it […] you let me love baseball again.”

My major complaint about the film is that it lacks some character development. After only a few scenes together, Robinson tells Wendell Smith (Andre Holland), a writer for the Pittsburgh Courier covering his rise to fame, that Smith is one of the only people Robinson can count on. I hadn’t even known that Rob-inson was fond of Smith, as he seemed to reject Smith’s constant presence in their oth-er shared scenes.

The nature of the movie called for painful themes to be addressed: the constant use of the “n-word”; the reali-ty of segregation; and the con-stant death threats Robinson received. These elements put the film where it belongs in the timeline of history when the US, over 100 years after ending slavery, was still a di-vided society. It is not pretty to watch, but it was reality.

This movie should not just appeal to baseball fans be-cause it is not a movie about baseball. It is a movie about a time period in history that

sometimes makes me ashamed to admit that I’m Ameri-can. It tells the story of the incredible Jackie Robinson, who is not only a legendary baseball player, but also a reverential figure in the civil rights fight. After all, he was the first player to have his number, 42, universally retired from all major league sports, and the great Martin Luther King Jr. called him “a legend.”

reviews April 19, 2013 9Will Gouldmusic critic

It’s been a long seven years since Justin Timberlake’s last solo album, Futuresex/Lovesounds, and the anticipated follow-up, The 20/20 Experience, was released March 15.

While I was never an avid Timberlake fan, my seventh-grade self in no way hesitated to get down and boogie to 2006’s smash-single, “Sexyback”. Considering my meek exposure to Timberlake’s music, I was expecting roughly 45 minutes of “Sexyback”. While that would have been good enough for one listen, I am far more satisfied with this robust and diverse effort.

“Pusher Love Girl” sets the tone for the al-bum, opening with Disney-esque strings and promptly dropping into a smooth groove that I just can’t help but nod my head to. Once Timberlake adds his trademarked croon to the mix, there is nothing to do but hum along with the deceptively simple melody. Timberlake’s voice even makes the repetitive lyrics, a collection of narcotic sim-iles about his lover, compelling.

Normally, an eight-minute song would be

out of place on a pop record, but, “Pusher Love Girl”, sets the stage in that regard as well. At a whopping 70 minutes, with only three songs less than seven minutes long, the album is the definition of getting your money’s worth. While many songs have ambient introductions and conclusions leading into the next tune, it makes for an engaging experience when heard from end-to-end.

“Suit & Tie”, the first single for this album, is sure to be the next dance floor staple. It has already found a home on radio stations like Kiss FM and the Mix, and will defi-nitely make its way onto many summer playlists.

One of the most memorable moments on the entire re-cord is Jay Z’s verse on, “Suit & Tie”. Atop a minimal

halftime beat, Jay Z’s aggressive flow adds an inter-esting aspect to an already catchy song.

Following this single is my favorite song on this entire record, “Don’t Hold The Wall”. The beat is comprised of ancestral drums and handclaps, alongside a group of peo-ple chanting as if around a fire. The hyp-notizing vocal sample from which the song draws its title is repeated throughout the chorus, serving as a home base for this ex-perimental track to return to before ventur-

ing back out into the uncharted wilderness of pop-dance-tribalism.

In the time since its release, the second single, “Mir-rors”, has become wildly popular. Undoubtedly, this is due to its more conventional take on the rhythm & blues with which Timberlake has become so comfortable.

Normally, I would have an issue with this sort of ge-neric track getting more recognition than other, more “out there” songs like, “Don’t Hold the Wall”, and, “Spaceship Coupe”, but this song has such an infectious melody and relatable lyrics that I have nothing to say. It will likely join “Suit & Tie” on contemporary radio shortly.

When it comes down to it, there aren’t many negative remarks to be said about The 20/20 Experience. Aside from occasionally boring lyricism, this is an incredibly well put-together and thought-out record, showcasing a fan-tastic vocal performance by Justin Timberlake along with solid production by J-Roc and Timbaland, alongside oth-er established producers. I eagerly await the release of the “second half” of The 20/20 Experience this November.

Timberlake’s 20/20 Experience proves he hasn’t lost his touch

Jackie Robinson biopic captures reality of racism in baseball, history

TEAMMATES: During a game in Cincinnati, Pee Wee Reese (Lucas Black) throws his arm around Jackie Robinson (Chadwick Boseman) in response to the crowd’s outlandish racism. This moment, which actually happened, is memorialized at KeySpan Park in Brooklyn. Photo from shockya.com

THE JT EXPERIENCE: Releasing his third studio album 20/20 Experience last month after a six year break from music, Justin Timberlake has had an exten-sive career. Here are a few of his noteworthy projects and moments during the hiatus and throughout his life. (1) In 1993, Timberlake joined the cast Mickey Mouse Club along-side future star Ryan Gosling and future girlfriend Britney Spears. (2) In 1998, boy band ‘Nsync released their first album with Timber-lake as their frontman. (3) In 2004, Timberlake made a stir at the Super Bowl when he accidently ex-posed Janet Jackson’s breast during the half-time show. (4) Begin-ning in 2010, Timber-lake pursued an acting career starring in films like Bad Teacher and The Social Network. (5) In October 2012, Timberlake married his on-and-off girlfriend of five years, Jes-sica Biel. (6) In March Timberlake joined the elite SNL five-timers club for hosting the show his fifth time.

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Photos from Google images

featuresApril 19, 201310

Marshall Harris, English teacher and Oracle advisor, was a vendor at Wrigley Field for ten years during high school, college, and his first few years of teaching. He be-gan working at Wrigley Field during his sophomore year of high school.

“It was a lot of fun and extra money,” Harris said. “It was an awesome experience.”

According to Harris, his experience consisted of walk-ing up and down the aisles trying to make a sale and af-terwards getting to watch the game for the last two in-nings, a practice not appreciated by his bosses.

He explained that there were many cool aspects of his job.

“They hire everyone, there’s no interview process, you

basically just go and sign up,” Harris explained. “If I were a sophomore in high school or a junior in high school right now, I would go get that job, especially if I were a big baseball fan.”

Harris witnessed some historic moments while work-ing at a stadium with thousands of people and cameras.

“In the summer of 1998, Sammy Sosa was going after the all-time home run record and when he broke it, […] I was on TV,” Harris said. “I was selling beer in an aisle and I was right behind where the hitter stands so you can see me, and I was on Sportscenter at night, and all my friends were calling me.”

Harris says he was also about 50 feet away from the fa-mous “Bartman incident” in October of 2003.

Teachers reminisce on past careers, previous job experience

Political science teacher David Kane, who was a law-yer before becoming a teacher, says he was not passionate about his previous job.

“Other than sports, there’s not another job where someone’s actively trying to make you lose,” Kane said. “I liked being a lawyer but I didn’t have a huge passion for it; I’m not a person who loves arguing.”

Although Kane was not one for arguing, he still believes there were some pros to being a lawyer.

“Some of the best days are when I’d have trials or big motions; there’s nothing like the feeling of coming out of a trial and having won it,” Kane said.

Despite those moments of happiness, Kane realized that that job was not meant for him. He recalled a Thanksgiving

dinner with his dad where a moment of epiphany occurred to him.

“My dad was leaving the next day for somewhere in Iowa and I was making fun of him, like, ‘Dad, [you] know your house is paid for, the kids are all out of college, we’re all married--why are you leaving Friday after Thanksgiv-ing?’,” Kane said. “And he told me, ‘I love what I do’.”

His dad’s actions really made Kane stop and think about his own career choice.

“That was the moment I said I don’t love what I do, [and] I would quit my job tomorrow,” Kane said. “My dad, who was in his mid 60’s, was driving halfway across the country because he loves what he does; I have to find something that I love to do.”

Another teacher who had an interesting job before coming to South is science teach-er Jenny Friedmann, who was a professional actress prior to her teaching career.

“[Acting] started off very rewarding, [...] and it eventually got to be less rewarding and more frustrating,” Friedmann said. “You can be really talented and do all the right things and still not get cast or not be success-ful or not be able to build a career on it.”

According to Friedmann, in order to pur-sue an acting career she had to maintain many day jobs, which included retail, temp-ing, and others.

“When I liked my job, it made it easier to keep up with the rigorous schedule, [but] when I didn’t like my job, it was harder,” Friedmann said.

Friedmann explains that her favorite part of acting was being able to interpret one thing in many ways.

“I was naturally good at reading lines and making characters come to life, “ Freidma-nn said. “I loved that I could make the same person say the same thing ten different ways and it would mean something completely different each way.”

According to Friedmann, sometimes she still notices her experiences with acting in her personality.

“You can always tell when I’m tired in the classroom,” Friedmann said. “I’ll start get-ting really goofy. That’s when my theatre side comes out.”

Friedmann feels that her day jobs and her career as a professional actress have helped her become a better teacher.

“A little life experience helps anyone who’s going to teach anything,” Friedmann said. “Anyone who has spent time [...] doing more interesting things [brings] more to the front of the classroom.”

BEER, HERE: During the 2003 playoffs, English teacher Mar-shall Harris worked as a vendor at Wrigely Field with his brother and friends: (L to R) Adam Carter, Kevin Harris, Mark Carman, and Harris. Photo courtesy of Marshall Harris

ACT IT OUT: Before her career as a science teacher, Jen-nifer Friedmann pursued a career as a professional actress. Starting in college, she worked for about ten years at the-atres like the Live Bait Theatre, the Prop Theatre, and the Writers’ Theatre. Photo courtesy of Jennifer Friedmann

Maggie Engels & Ariana Nufio staff reporters

COMMENCEMENT CEREMONY: After graduating from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1989 with a degree in political science, social studies teacher David Kane studied law at DePaul University. In 1993, Kane graduated with a J.D. (juris doctor degree) from DePaul University and worked as a lawyer from 1993 to 2006. Photo courtesy of David Kane

Marshall HarrisEnglish Teacher

Jennifer FriedmannScience Teacher

David KaneSocial Studies Teacher

Peer mentors provide engaging learning environment for students with special needs

features April 19, 2013 11

Calli Haramarasstaff reporter

While capturing the mind and interest of a large portion of South’s student body, the highly interactive peer mentor pro-gram has continued on the rising path af-ter years of fluctuation. What started with just three handpicked mentors now com-pares to the 120 students serving as peer mentors this year.

The peer mentor program was started 26 years ago to determine whether or not peers could impact stu-dents with special needs in a different way than teachers, according to Mary Jaeger, peer mentor director. After numer-ous years of peer mentoring, Jaeger continues to see positive results.

“After 26 years, it still amazes me how the special needs students will per-form for the peer over the teacher,” Jaeger said.

In every special edu-cation class throughout

the day, there is at least one peer mentor, according to Jaeger. A typical day for a peer mentor depends on the class and the number of students. According to sopho-more Sam Garman, a current peer men-tor, everyday tasks with the students can range from reading to mathematics to games in P.E class.

According to Jaeger, a peer mentor can work with just one student or multiple students at a time with each activity. The peer mentors get the students started, on

task and engaged.Peer mentors can also assist in

the Adapted Physical Educa-tion class, a gym class for

students with special needs that offers more adult help. According to Dawn Fendt, phys-

ical education teach-er, the class is also less

competitive than other P.E classes.

“The peer mentors make a huge difference in my class because of the re-lationships between these

adapted students and the mentors,” Fendt said. “They don’t just work with them in P.E, but [they] become friends with them during the regular school day also. Overall, the true friendships that are made that make these students feel good about themselves, that can be life chang-ing.”

Not only does the peer mentor pro-gram affect students with special needs, but also the peer mentors and teachers themselves. According to Garman, she has learned to become more patient and understanding of special needs students. Also, peer mentoring has interested Gar-man in the possibility of be-coming a special educa-tion teacher.

Similarly, junior Quinn Abrams’ two semesters of

peer mentoring have resulted in a posi-tive outcome.

“[I learned] just to accept everyone for who they are no matter if they have a dis-ability or not because they’re all great people,” Abrams said. “I look at people in a […] better way now, like if I don’t know them I’m not going to judge them.”

Fendt continues to see a daily impact on herself in her Adapted Physical Edu-cation class.

“I could be having a really bad day and when I get to 4th period with this class, it just makes me smile and gets me back in such a great mood,” Fendt said. “I think I learn more about life from these students

sometimes than they learn from me.”Encompassing all the great as-

pects of peer mentoring, Abrams feels it’s a course everyone should experience.

“I recommend everyone should do [peer mentoring] because you learn a lot from it, and I would say it’s one of the best classes I’ve ever taken at this school,” Abrams

said.

A HELPING HAND: Reading together dur-ing class, senior peer mentor Erin Mincer (left) points to pictures as she works with a student (right). Mincer is one of 120 peer men-tors currently enrolled in the peer mentor-ing program at South. Photo by Evan Richter

DANCING QUEENS: Dancing togeth-er during class time, seniors Taylor Sharwell (left) and So-phie Hartler (middle) work as peer men-tors with Christie (right). Activities in an average peer mentor classes range from read-ing and mathemat-ics to games in P.E class. Photos by Evan Richter

Who are your friends?

12

62 55percent of South

students who accepted

Sarah Letterman

percent of South students who

say they would not accept

an unknownrequester

according to an Oracle-conducted

survey of 179 students

Camille (CJ) Parkco-features editorShea Anthonyasst. features editor

You’re casually scrolling through Facebook when a tempting red notification appears on your top bar. Curious, you click on the blue silhouette that denotes a friend request and take a good look at this potential friend. She has good looks and mutual friends, but you don’t immediately recog-nize her from her name or her photo. This presents a dilemma common amongst teen Facebook users: whether or not to accept a friend request.

This scenario is widespread and for several South students, this described their exact expe-rience. In order to collect data on the leniency of students’ acceptance of Facebook friend requests, The Oracle conducted a month-long investigative experiment.

Seventy-five students from each grade were chosen at random to receive a friend request from an Oracle-created account under the pseudonym of “Sarah Letterman”. Out of the 300 students who were sent requests, 62 percent accepted. Con-trary to this result, according to an Oracle-con-ducted survey of 179 students, 56 percent said they wouldn’t accept a friend request from an un-known person.

Junior Trey Buckingham was one of the 64 per-cent who accepted Letterman as a friend.

“The mutual friends I had with her were close friends, which gave me more confidence that this girl really did exist and attended South,” Bucking-ham said. “When I saw that she had that many mutual friends and went to South, I figured I had met her before or must have seen her around.”

Similarly, freshman Jamie Reynolds accepted Letterman’s friend request due to the substantial amount of mutual friends, paired with the alleged fact that Letterman attended South.

“I accept people I don’t know, but only if they go to my school and have a lot of the same friends with me or are in the ‘friend group’ of one of my friends,” Reynolds said. “Now that I consider it though, it’s creepy, especially since you don’t know the person.”

Accepting requests from unknown people con-flicts with the childhood lesson: stranger danger.

ACEYOURFRIENDS

Graphics by Evan Richter and Wyatt Richter

The Oracle conducted an investigative ex-periment by creating a Facebook identi-ty under the name of “Sarah Letterman” and sending requests to South students in order to collect data on students’ on-line leniency concerning accepting friend requests from unknown persons.

Who are your friends?

13

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PERCEN

T OF STUD

ENTS W

HO A

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freshmen

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FRESH FACE: By creating a fake Facebook identity, Sarah Letterman, The Oracle was able to collect data concerning the leniency of South students with their social networking. Sev-enty-five students from each grade were chosen to receive requests from the fake identity.

6368

7365

5145

percent of South students who say Facebook is private

percent of South students who say they are not per-sonally connected to all of their Facebook friends

percent of South stu-dents who say they are not comfortable with a stranger looking at their profile

percent of South students who say they would accept an un-known requester

Nowadays, “stranger danger” doesn’t just mean somebody offering children candy from a van, but it has evolved as online networking has expanded.

Journalist Amy Summers from socialtimes.com echoes these sentiments, emphasizing the hazard of being too trustworthy online.

“The scariest thing about this technology is that we never know who we’re talking to,” Summers said. “Strangers from all over the world can now be following not only children, but teenagers and mature adults from all over the world.”

Senior Grace Pittner follows the “stranger dan-ger” rule when it comes to Facebook friends. Ac-cording to Pittner, there is no point in accepting friend requests from unknown people.

“I chose not to accept Letterman because I didn’t know who she was,” Pittner said. “I accept friends that I talk with at school a lot and have some classes with.”

Like Pittner, sophomore Breck Murphy decid-ed against accepting Letter-man. According to Murphy, she, or a close friend, needs to know the name of the re-quester in order to accept.

“If [the name] sounds un-familiar or there are few mu-tual friends, then I imme-diately deny the request,” Breck said.

While some, like Pittner and Murphy, declined the request, other South Facebook users decided to send a request to Let-terman. Amongst the request senders was fresh-man Mclain Murphy.

“I friended her because she was always pop-ping up on the ‘People You May Know’ list, and the name sounded familiar,” Mclain said.

Similarly, sophomore John Hennelly requested to be friends with the account, basing his rationale on mutual friends and school information.

“It says she goes to GBS and maybe I would meet her,” Hennelly said.“I do friend people that have many mutual friends and go to GBS.”

While some students are more lenient with their online friends, others tend to question unknown requesters. One example is senior Vika Petlakh.

According to Petlakh, she denied Letterman’s request due to the fact that she did not recall meet-

ing her. Petlakh sent a message to the fake ac-count, asking if they knew each other.

“[I normally reach out to unfamiliar requesters] to be able to better filter my friend requests and who can view stuff on my profile,” Petlakh said.

Like Petlakh, senior Victor Balan questioned the account by sending a message, yet unlike Petlakh, he did so after accepting the request. According to Balan, he questioned the account in case she was a new student and “to see why she added me.”

According to the Oracle-conducted survey, 52 percent of students would feel uncomfortable with a stranger looking through their online pro-file. To accommodate these sentiments, Facebook has several privacy settings.

One recent modification on Facebook involves the concept of “stranger danger.” According to Facebook, it is against their Terms and Conditions for people to send friend requests to people they do not know, and such activity could be consid-

ered harassment.According to the survey,

14 percent of students believe that Facebook privacy set-tings are not secure; however, Breck disagrees.

“Facebook does all that it can to protect its users,” Breck said. “I think it’s actually peo-ple who don’t protect their privacy enough.”

Reynolds offered an explanation to the alleged lack of privacy settings usage.

“I do think [Facebook privacy settings] are rela-tively secure, except I feel like no one dares to use all the privacy settings for a few reasons,” Reyn-olds said. “It could make it harder to make Face-book ‘friends’ if everything’s blocked off.”

During the investigative experiment, the ac-count received several warnings from Facebook about sending requests to people who said they did not know Letterman. Recently, Facebook has been asking receivers of friend requests if they know the requester in real life. If the answer is no, Facebook warns the sender of the request and po-tentially blocks them from sending more requests.

Though Facebook is taking extra safety precau-tions, it’s ultimately up to each individual to de-cide the availability of his or her profile.

“Facebook does all that it can to protect its users. I think it’s actually people who don’t protect their privacy enough.” -Soph-omore Breck Murphy

NOT-SO-LA-ZY SUSAN: In Kathmandu, Nepal, Susan Flickinger, social studies teacher, stands with a crowd of school children she met on a hike up to a Buddhist temple (above). Standing in front of the Taj Mahal (bottom left) and the Great Wall of China (bottom right), Flickinger takes advantage of her time abroad in India and China, respectively. Flick-inger has traveled to various foreign countries and at-tempts to incorporate her first-hand experi-ence abroad into her classroom lessons. Photos courtesy of Susan Flickinger

Years after traveling, Flickinger encourages students to gain own experiencefeaturesApril 19, 201314

Caroline Bergstaff reporter

Costa Rica, Spain, Ireland, India and Korea: these are just some of the places Susan Flickinger, social studies teacher, has traveled.

“All during college and in high school, I loved the adventure of travel,” Flickinger said. “I was al-ways interested in other people’s ways of life.”

According to Flickinger, her first trips to Costa Rica and Spain in high school gave her the “traveling bug.”

After working throughout college, Flickinger became interested in East-ern philosophies.

“I had really met a lot of people who had taught English abroad whenever I was in Europe [...],” Flickinger said. “I ended up finding a program in Korea thinking that I’d stay a year and back-pack Southeast Asia, [...] and [I] ended up staying another year [in Korea] and meeting my now-husband.”

According to Flickinger, her future husband was instrumental in helping her feel comfortable in Korea.

“This guy who I had known, that is now my husband, had kind of become a friend, and he and a group of Koreans were like, ‘Hey do you need some help?’” Flickinger said. “And they just helped me do a lot of things I couldn’t do because I wasn’t fluent in the language [...] We start-ed dating about seven months later.”

Flickinger decided to marry her hus-band in Korea rather than in the United States in order to introduce her family to Korean culture, honor her husband’s heri-tage and be respectful of his family’s tradi-tions.

Five months ago, Flickinger and her husband had a baby boy named Ian, whose name they carefully selected.

“The most important thing for us was to have a name that was reflective of both cultures but that is also more simple to pronounce,” Flickinger said.

In addition to meeting her husband and getting mar-ried as a result of her travels, Flickinger was inspired by the places she visited to become a teacher.

“I was always like, ‘No, I am never going to become a teacher; I’m not interested in it,’ even though my parents loved their job,” Flickinger said. “I saw all the grading

they were doing and thought it wasn’t for me. Then when I went [to Asia] and started teaching English, I knew teaching was something I wanted to do. I totally fell in love with it.”

Flickinger feels that traveling has particularly influ-enced her teaching of English Language Learner stu-dents.

“I feel that it is an important element of my teaching because I do feel you can’t understand what it’s like to be in another country, to move to another culture, to be in a country that’s not your native language, unless you have been immersed in that kind of experience yourself,”

Flickinger said.The students of Flickinger’s Pacific

Rim class feel her travels have positive-ly affected their learning.

“Normally in class, you get what’s right out of the textbook, but her first

hand experiences allow us to better understand the true views on things versus the objective stances taken by textbooks,” sophomore Jane Brennan said.

According to sophomore Chris Clifford, Flickinger’s classroom has an exciting learning environment.

“[Flickinger] is always excited about what she is teach-ing and happy to be in class,” Clifford said. “She makes her students want to learn and makes the topics covered interesting and easy to follow.”

When teaching her students, the main message Flick-inger wants to get across is the importance of traveling.

“My message to [students] all throughout the semes-ter is don’t just listen to me, don’t just listen to my sto-ries, go live it yourself,” Flickinger said. “I want them to know what it is like to feel the ‘other’, to be the ‘other’ and to be challenged with the complexities of traveling [...] Traveling can help you realize kind of how insignifi-cant you are, in the greater world, and it brings a sense

of humility that I think you can only acquire by going outside of your

bubble.”

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Addie Lyonstaff reporter

Bailing hay and feeding cows aren’t part of an average student’s afternoon activities. 4H is a pro-gram at Wagner Farm that gives young Glenview residents a rare opportunity to experience farm life.

According to Todd Price, director of the Wagner Farm branch of 4H, the initial purpose of the pro-gram was to teach kids without higher-level edu-cation the skills necessary to follow in their par-ents’ footsteps in working on farms.

“These early 4H clubs learned things [like] how to grade corn, which was important during that time,” Price said. “For the female members, they would talk about how to raise kids or prepare meals.”

Price explained that although 4H has changed since its start, it still teaches kids important life skills.

“I don’t think [the program] has [lost its value] because it still is teaching lessons that I don’t think you can get anywhere else,” Price said.

Junior Claire Rowlands is in her ninth year at 4H and is now the vice president.

“In my first five years, I raised lambs, then for five years I raised cows,” Rowlands said. “We have to buy them, walk them, clip them, feed them, wash them and address any other needs.”

Junior Marguerite Daus, member of 4H, talked about the added responsibility of the dairy pro-gram.

“The [cow] program is a lot more rigorous than the lamb program because it’s older kids, more re-sponsibility and a bigger animal,” Daus said. “So, you have to do more chores, more walking and more training.”

Rowlands talked about how at the end of July, all of their hard work culminates in the Lake County Fair, which occurs in Green Lake, Wisconsin and includes many games, activities and food, according to Rowlands.

“Every year at the end of July,we take them to this big event at the Lake County Fair where we stay there for a week and show our animals,” Rowlands said.

There are many requirements that go along with being an active member of 4H, according to Daus.

“You need to be involved with at least two events ev-ery year,” Daus said. “For example, I make different fam-ily recipes every year, or [you] can choose to make cre-ative poster boards and knit.”

Along with individual responsibilities, Daus empha-sized how the members of 4H must function as a group.

“We meet once a month every Tuesday during the

school year,” Daus said. “During the summer we don’t [...] since we’re always at the farm anyway.”

Rowlands has created positive and lasting relation-ships with many of the other members of the 4H.

“Wagner Farm has been basically my second home,” Rowlands said. “I spend so much time there with a great group of friends that I’ve made through the program.”

Price described the high demand in the community to be a member of the program.

“Our club is usually about 50 members, which is one of the biggest clubs in the state of Illinois,” Price said. “And in the past few years we have had upwards of 80 people on the waiting list.”

According to Price, it is difficult to be chosen due to the popularity of the program. The new members of 4H are chosen using a random lottery system whenever a new

spot opens.Daus feels lucky to have been chosen to participate in

4H program.“I definitely think it’s a great and an extremely unique

opportunity because many kids who live in the suburbs of Chicago don’t usually get the opportunity to own an animal and have this experience,” Daus said.

Price believes the 4H program is an opportunity for members to discover their passions and gain valuable ex-perience not attainable elsewhere.

“I have a program that’s going to bring you to life,” Price said. “I think that everyone has different niches and this is a great program for people who have this interest. So I don’t think this program is better than any experi-ence you could get on a sports team or doing anything else, I just think it’s a different one.”

4H program provides farm experience for Glenview youth

South students take AP tests without enrolling in AP classesDani Tuchman & Hailey Hauldrenstaff reporters

At the end of the year, Advanced Placement (AP) stu-dents put what they’ve learned to the test when taking the infamous AP exams. While many believe taking an AP exam after a year of covering material is difficult enough, some South students go the extra mile by tak-ing AP exams without being in the designated AP class.

Sophomore Areesha Majheed is one of these stu-dents who is planning to take an AP test with-out taking the course. Majheed says her Chem-Phys teacher, Jim Glynn, suggested she take the AP Chemistry exam to test her knowledge on the subject.

“I want to see where I am in Chemistry, because I’m not sure if it’s my stronghold or not,” Ma-jheed said. “I think taking the AP exam will show me where I am in the class.”

Because Mahjheed is currently enrolled in AP European His-tory, she has had ex-periences with AP tests and touched on the difference between AP and normal test ques-tions.

“[AP exam questions] aren’t fact based,” Ma-

jheed said. “Even if you know the material and you know how to answer it, there will be a twist in [the question]. To answer it you have to think about the question and combine [what it’s asking] with everything you know.”

Senior Peter Westerfield is enrolled in numerous AP classes and feels like taking an AP exam after a year of learning the material in a classroom makes the exam ex-perience less stressful.

“We get time in class to prepare, and that’s a big help,” Westerfield said. “I know that if

you were taking the test alone, you’d have to find your own time to study and learn [... ] I think it’s a lot easier to use a book and notes that you’ve used the entire year to look back

on.” Elizabeth

Lupfer, AP Eu-ropean histo-ry teacher, has had a lot of ex-perience teach-

ing and preparing students for AP exams, and she believes that stu-dents lose some

key benefits when they opt not to take

the actual class, only the test.

“I think the courses offer a lot in the day-

to-day class,” Lupfer said. “You learn a lot from other students. There’s a lot of great discussions and insights, and our group analysis is fun. These are experiences that you’re not going to have on your own.”

Along with Majheed, junior Atticus Hebson has decid-ed to teach himself the AP Music Theory material instead of attending the actual class, due to scheduling issues.

“I can’t take the class because it’s third period and I have Academy periods one, two, and three,” Hebson said.

“I haven’t really been pre-paring aside from what I do every day, which is practicing music, playing piano and singing.”

AP Spanish teacher Jorge Zamora is in agree-ment with Lupfer that it is very important to en-roll in the class along with taking the exam.

Though Lupfer does see many benefits to tak-

ing the class, she noted that some colleges may find it admirable if a student gets a good score on an AP exam without taking the class.

Hebson stresses the importance of time management and structure while studying for AP tests without taking a class.

“One of the problems that I had with studying AP Mac-ro last year was that I just tried to figure it out as I went along,” Hebson said. “Structure it and make sure that you know what you’re doing so that you’re not throwing away 87 dollars [in exam fees].”

“Structure it and make sure you know what you’re doing so you’re not throwing away 87 dollars [in exam fees].”-Junior Atticus Hebson

features April 19, 2013 15

PAGEANT PRINCESS: At the Illinois state fair, junior Jenny Hinkamp poses with her cow for a costume contest. Hinkamp dressed her cow up as “Little Moo Lake County” in honor of Little Miss Lake County, an annual title that’s given to an individual at the fair. Photo courtesy of Jenny Hinkamp

DRAMATIZATION

Orsinger builds relationship with newly discovered biological sister

featuresApril 19, 201316

Nish Asokan & Don Savaianostaff reporters

Everyone always said they looked alike, but they nev-er knew why; that is, until they found out that they were actually sisters.

Sophomore Rachel Orsinger and her sister Jennifer Gottemoller were both born in China and admitted to the same orphanage. The biological data about them, however, was lost.

Two families from Glenview and Palos Park, the Orsingers and the Gottemollers, respec-tively, both adopted children from the international agency Life Link.

The Orsingers ended up adopting Rachel, and the Gottemollers adopted Jennifer. In the process, Rachel and Jennifer became friends, ac-cording to Rachel.

“We were adopted in the summer of 1996, and that was right before [the adoption process] got long [and

tedious],” Rachel said. “I was nine months old, [...] and [Jennifer] was three years old.”

According to Rachel, she and Jennifer, as well as their families, remained close.

“[Our families] celebrated holidays [together], and [Jennifer and I] went out together a lot,” Rachel said. “When we were younger [and] our schedules were less

busy, every summer [...] we’d always go downtown and get a hotel room with just our moms and us [...] and go to Navy Pier and the American Girl store, and I thought that was always fun.”

According to Rachel, the adop-tion agency did not know at the time that the two girls were relat-ed because they didn’t have their birth records.

Rachel’s mom was the one to suggest a DNA test for the girls.

“A lot of people say we looked alike, [...] but I didn’t think so,” Rachel said. “When I was in sixth grade and Jennifer was a freshman in high school, they were just

like, ‘Let’s do a DNA test.’”The DNA cotton swab test came back and confirmed

the sisters were biologically related with a high score of 89 percent, according to Rachel.

“We were family friends, and then in the middle we found out we were sisters,” Rachel said. “It made us a little closer.”

According to Rachel, when the girls found out, they had a joint mass and party to celebrate in the spring of 2009.

“We held a big celebration at my old house in Palos Park with all of Rachel’s family and friends,” Jennifer said. “It was definitely different from all the other parties I had. Who’d expect to have a party for finding a biologi-cal sister?”

At the party, Rachel recalled that Jennifer’s grand-mother even mistook her for being Jennifer from behind because they looked so alike.

“I believe this experience was put into my life for a rea-son,” Jennifer said. “I can’t understand it quite yet, but I know someday I will. As for now, Rachel and I remain [...] friends, and maybe [there will] come a day when we will rely more on each other.”

“I believe this experience was put into my life for a reason. I can’t understand it quite yet, but I know someday I will.”-Jennifer Gottemoller

THEN NOWSISTA SISTA: As children (photo on left) sophomore Rachel Orsinger (right) and Jennifer Gottemoller (left) didn’t know they were related. Now (photo on right) the two have discovered they are biological sisters. Orsinger and Gottemoller were both adopted in China by different parents and grew up in Glenview and Palos Park, Illinois, respectively, before discovering through a DNA test that they are related. Photos courtesy of Rachel Orsinger

a&e April 19, 2013 17Working together strengthens Wojcik family bond

Before he was old enough to hold an instrument, Aaron Wojcik, assistant director of band, was a part of South’s marching band. His father, Gregory Wojcik, director of

bands, took him to his first concert when he was just two weeks old.

“He was born in January, we had a concert in February [and] he was there,” Gregory said. “Right from infancy, he

was a part of the GBS marching band.”

This year though, Aaron left the audience to take his father’s

side as his assistant director. Aaron explained that while he

went to a different High School and participated in its marching band, he grew up with South’s band pro-

gram, either as an observer or teacher. Now Aaron and Gregory work side-by-side and co-teach almost all of their classes.

“We work together as a

team, and we have for many, many years.” Aaron said.

Gregory added that he sees the value in already hav-ing a relationship with his assistant director.

“You get to see your son every day, and when you get older, not a lot of parents get to do that,” Gregory said. “I’m a lucky guy because I get to work with my son, and I get to work with something I love and something I know he loves. [...] We’ve always been close, now we’re two feet apart.”

According to freshman Christina Kokoris, it’s their strong relationship that helps them work well together.

“They make jokes together, and you get to see their similarities and differences,” Kokoris said.

However, both Aaron and Gregory will agree that be-ing co-workers has changed their relationship.

“There [are] differences in how we communicate with each other,” Aaron said. “Even outside of the office, we refer to each other as Mr. Wojcik, which is something that was unprecedented a year ago.”

According to Aaron, while he thinks they have made that adjustment quickly, there have still been moments where they need to get used to that change.

“It’s happened a couple times where he says, ‘Mr. Wojcik, what do you think about this?’” Aaron said. “I’m like ‘We’re having dinner!’ It definitely has made a change, but nothing drastic. We’ve always kept a very friendly, professional nature.”

Even with these changes in their relationship, Aaron is

glad he works with his father. He explained that his father is his men-tor and his inspiration for his work. He was able to use that inspiration at the winter band concert when he was handed the baton.

“It was cool because he was [...] taking over the band,” Greg-ory said. “It’s handing off what you’ve done for 35 years. [...] I’m very proud to pass the baton to him. [...] It’s a changing of the times. It’s a little bit sad because it’s like, ‘Okay, old man, get out of the way.’”

According to Aaron, even if the baton hadn’t been physically hand-ed to him, he would still be excited for his future at South.

“[I] absolutely [have a future here at South],” Aaron said. “This is [...] my dream job. It’s not some-thing that happens when you get your dream job on your first go.”

Mollie Kramerstaff reporter

According to Scott Glass, teenagers under-stand how to operate social technology per-fectly. In fact, according to Glass, they spend so much of their time on social media that they don’t know much about other technologies. So, Glass created the new English elective, Media Collage, for them to do just that.

According to Glass, he teaches what it means to be a learner and a creator (or an originator) in this society that is so dominated by technol-ogy and the Internet.

“It’s looking at all of these tools and the In-ternet that we have at our disposal because when you think about the Internet it can be very overwhelming, and it can be difficult to understand. ‘What can I use to navigate on-line and find the things that I want to find?’ So what I’m trying to do with this class is make it a place where together the students and I can explore and experiment with all these things and collect what we know,” Glass said.

English Instructional Supervisor Susan Levine-Kelley feels that teaching methods are always being adjusted and re-imagined, and Glass has introduced another way.

“[Media Collage] incorporates Glass’s vision of the needs of technology literacy in the 21st century in terms of how that all gets integrated in education and learn-ing,” Levine-Kelley said.

According to senior Gabby Gottfried, most students know how to use technology, but this class teaches stu-dents to understand that there’s more out there and bet-ter ways to use it. For example, students in the class have started using Facebook and Twitter to complete research projects by learning to get surveys out on the internet.

“We’re just trying to widen our skills and see what these different devices and the internet can do for us on more than just a social level,” Gottfried said.

According to Glass, in order to accomplish that, the class consists of many projects online and using different applications. He describes the environment of the class as being very free and student-driven.

“I think as teachers we all hope to learn something as we’re teaching, and this first year of Media Collage I have learned so much and that shows how collaborative the class is,” Glass said.

Junior Haley Wilson described Media Collage as her favorite class because of the things she’s learned and be-cause of Glass’s attitude towards the class.

“I’ve always believed that if a teacher really likes their job and their class then it’s just a better class,” Wilson said.

According to senior Max Sendor, the class is a good class to have at GBS. A lot of student influence goes into what they do, and that’s what makes it such an exciting class.

“One of the most recent projects we’re working on is designing your own perfect learning environment,” Sen-dor said. “That project was developed just from a ran-dom class discussion [we] were having that transformed into an interesting project idea.”

Wilson is also really enjoying designing her own perfect learn-ing environment. She’s using her new presentation and communi-cation skills in order to complete this project.

“I just had a Google hangout, which is like a Skype kind of thing, with the Superintendent to present him my idea, and I had a Google hangout with people from Missouri who have done their school in the way that I want our school to be like,” Wilson said. “You’re really just learning how to use all of these tools, and it’s the coolest thing I’ve ever done.”

According to Glass, he thinks this class is interesting as well since he has actually been trying for ten years to create Media Col-lage, and now that it’s finally been passed, he’s really enjoying it.

“It’s made me remember what it’s like to be a first-year teach-er, just that feeling of, ‘Oh, okay, I made it through that day, now

what am I going to do tomorrow?’” Glass said. “That kind of feeling is really exciting and fun.”

Sendor said he likes the class too and believes that the things he’s learning in Media Collage are going to help him for the rest of his life in school and professionally.

“The things I’ve learned in [the class] are just really ap-plicable to things in general as far as just the different stuff he teaches,” Sendor says. “Every day we’re learning about a new application or a new internet site that could be useful to us now and later on.”

Gottfried also agreed that the class is very relevant to society and how technology factors into that.

“I think that everybody is going to be affected one way or another by technology, whether it’s just sitting at a computer every day or just being social online or busi-ness wise,” Gottfried said. “So everybody should be ex-posed to the different technology out there that we have the opportunity to learn about in this class.”

Media Collage class equips students with skills to master technology

COLLABORATIVE CLASSROOM: During a Media Collage class, teacher Scott Glass makes a joke to his students. Media Collage, an English elective that was just introduced this year, helps students understand how to use internet technology in a meaningful manner. Photo by Jacqueline DeWitt

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Photos by Jackie Cortopassi and Jacqueline DeWitt

North and South unite to combinetalents for this year’s spring musical

Kali Crokestaff reporter

The choir room is filled with excitement as enthusiastic students from both South and North come together and blend their voices into one beautiful melody. Whether it is through singing, acting or dancing, these students have been working hard to bring together the story of love, intolerance and tragedy.

This is a typical rehearsal for this year’s Glenbrook Musical West Side Story cast, directed by Stevi Marks and Marty Sirvatka. According to Marks, West Side Story was chosen not only for its quality of plot, music and dance, but also for its relevance to the cast performing it.

“The show offers an opportunity for our students to experience theater at a very high level yet find relevance to their own lives,” Marks said. “Additionally, we chose the musical because we knew we had the students to play the roles and members of our orchestra who could play this difficult score.”

The plot of West Side Story takes place in Manhattan Island, New York and revolves around the forbidden love between Tony and Maria and the consequences of their relationship. The story is a twist on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, as the “star-cross’d lovers” are forced to face the disapproving opinions of their friends and families.

Like the two opposing families of Romeo and Juliet, the Jets and the Sharks represent the two rival gangs of New York trying to keep the couple apart. Tony, played by South senior Tim Kirby and North senior Nathan Salstone, is a Polish immigrant and former member of the Jets who falls in love with Puerto Rican immigrant Maria, played by North seniors Julia Levinson and Rebecca Elowe. The conflict is that Maria’s brother Bernardo is the leader of the rival gang of Sharks and will do anything to

keep them from being together.

As a story that consists of intense love and tragic death, it was important that this year’s cast consisted of not only singers, but also strong actors, according to Sirvatka.

“We’re looking for triple threats,” Sirvatka said. “In this particular case, there is music and then there are songs that go in the middle of the dialogue.

There’s a whole bunch of speaking, so we’re looking for great acting.”

Aside from singing and acting, West Side Story also focuses heavily on stylized dance. For junior Hannah Schiller, who plays Bernardo’s girlfriend Anita,

this dancing aspect is very important in communicating plot and emotion.

“West Side Story was one of the first shows that used dance to advance the plot, so getting to perform it is different than any other show I’ve been in,” Schiller said. “The emotions and the story and the setting are raw and intense, and one of our biggest goals is to portray these strong features to the audience.”

Another important component used to communicate plot is the music played by the pit orchestra. According to Marissa Takaki, sophomore pit member, a lot of the intense nature of the story has to do with the live music.

“It is important to have live music as opposed to a track because it gives the singers more musical freedom to pull and stretch their lines,” Takaki said. “The track doesn’t have the right character, feeling or emotion that is incorporated with real players.”

Senior Melanie McNulty, who also plays Anita, agrees with Takaki on the importance of drawing the audience into the characters’ lives and story. It is also their presence and excitement that

McNulty enjoys before every show.“[Performing] is definitely

extremely nerve-wracking, but I love the adrenaline rush that comes with the audience in the house when

you walk out on the stage,” McNulty said. “The story is very moving, and the hatred and love are so intense. You can r e a l l y b e c o m e invested as an audience member.”

Junior Jeffrey Mathew, who plays Shark member Chino, explains that in addition to performing for the audience, o n e of the best parts about musical is being able to work with new students.

“Meeting new people from North is by far my favorite part of the musical,” Mathew said. “Already, I have met so many enthusiastic, funny and t a l e n t e d kids. It really is a privilege to work with them.”

Sophomore Julia Packer, S h a r k m e m b e r Rosalia, is also in accordance with Mathew.

“It’s so much fun to work with so many new people,” Packer said. “Everyone is so enthusiastic and we all have the same goal, which is

to make the show as great as it can be. Being involved in the musical is such a wonderful experience, and something I think everyone looks forward to every year.”

This year is Stevi Marks’s final year directing the musical. West Side Story

will be held May 1-4 at 7:30 p.m. in the South auditorium.

a&eApril 19, 201318

TRIPLE THREAT: Acting, singing and dancing, both North and South students

rehearse for the final perfor-mances of West Side Story that will take place May 1-4. Above

are leads Nathan Salstone as Tony and Rebecca

Elowe as Maria; left are actors Melanie McNulty as Anita and William Rude as Bernardo.

Photos by Evan Richter

“I love the adrenaline rush that comes with the audience in the house when you walk out on the stage.”-Senior Melanie McNulty

a&e April 19, 2013 19

Seniors direct one-acts to wrap up four years in Drama DepartmentEmily Mitchellstaff reporter

As a way to conclude a year filled with numer-ous plays, V-Show skits and other productions, the Drama Department puts on short, fun skits called one-acts. The unique thing about them is that all are written or selected, directed and per-formed by students, specifically the seniors.

This year, the five directors are seniors Kev-in McDermott, Molly Quinn, Raina Payne, Al-lie Kahan and Andrew Bennett. Several other seniors and underclassmen are their actors. Ac-cording to the seniors, this is a way for them to take on the responsibilities of creating their own plays and getting to work with people to create a performance of their own.

The requirements of becoming a senior direc-tor include completing an application, writing or choosing a play and having experience in the Drama Department.

According to Bennett, he is especially ready to take on this opportunity.

“It’s really exciting and something I had been look-ing forward to since I saw my sister’s [one-act] in 2009,” Bennett said. “I am really happy to be a part of this and would advise every future senior [involved in drama] to do this.”

Allie agreed and is excited to show off her comedy starring her sister, sophomore Janie Kahan, as well as ju-nior Danny Fookson as the leads.

According to Allie, most of the acts have three to four

actors, and overall, about 20 participants total from the Drama Department. Allie said this experience is bitter-sweet since it is the last production the Drama Depart-ment will do.

“I think that my cast is doing a fantastic job,” Allie said. “I’m proud that this will be the final piece that I leave behind.”

Payne felt the same way as Allie and said that it is a good real-world type of experience as well as a great way to end the year.

“You have to feel passionate about what you’re presenting,” Payne said. “You also have to be able to fight for the people that you want to star in your scene.”

Senior Matt Miller decided to act in one of the plays rather than direct this year.

“The entire atmosphere and experience of doing senior-directed one-acts is just [really] relaxed,” Miller said. “I’d argue that some peo-ple’s best work is shown during [the one-acts] because all of your practice time is spent on perfecting this one scene.”

McDermott agreed and said rehearsals are always a learning experience since the students get to be in charge.

“It’s fun [working with Miller] because he’s really talented,” McDermott said. “It’s good because he takes my advice but keeps his own [personality]. He can have a cool mix, and I like that.”

After weeks of rehearsing, the shows will be performed on April 25 in the Drama Dance Room, and according to McDermott, the shows

will be a great culmination of everything they have learned throughout their four years.

Bennett and other seniors agree and feel like this is a great way to end the year for the Drama Department.

“It hasn’t hit me yet that this is the last thing I’ll ever be able to do for the GBS Drama Department,” Bennett said. “This is the best way I could have ended it because of how I get to use all the knowledge and experience I gained.”

LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION: In preparation for the senior directed one acts, director Andrew Bennet assists actor Josh Biales with his script. The senior directed one acts will be performed April 25 in the Drama Dance Room. Photo by KK Kuramitsu

Elliot’s instruction inspires students to pursue photographyTori Brown & Victoria Sunkelstaff reporters

Photography teacher Amie Elliot cap-tures her passion for creating art through her unique teaching style and methods of connecting with students.

As a teacher of 19 years, Elliot de-scribes her teaching style as learning through discovery.

“You have to learn the basics before you can go off in new directions and cre-ate something totally original,” Elliot said.

According to Elliot’s students, her teaching style gives them the freedom to learn on their own. Freshman Tommy Hagerty, who took Photos 1, was posi-tively affected by her teaching style.

“She really lets you go out and almost learn all by yourself with her guiding you the whole way,” Hagerty said.

Students claim her laid-back style makes her easy to connect with. Elliot readily spends her free time helping stu-dents with projects for her class or out-side of her classes.

Senior Olivia Kane, Photos 5 student, credits her success as an artist to Elliot’s extra help.

“In those independent study classes that I had to fit into my schedule because I didn’t have room for a photos class, [El-liot] would teach me during her free pe-riods and assist me and guide me in my photos project,” Kane said.

However, Elliot gives equal help to students of all levels and abilities. According to her less-experienced students, she helps them get the feel of new skills and techniques throughout the course.

“One time at the beginning of our series of film proj-ects, we needed to learn how to load our film onto the roll inside the darkroom,” Hagerty said. “After several destroyed rolls, I asked Ms. Elliot to help, and for a few times she would go into the room with me until I finally was able to get the feel of things and successfully load the film right on time for our final projects.”

According to her students, there is huge improvement in their skill levels from the start to the end of the course.

GBS graduate Atticus Ludwig began his photography career in Elliot’s class and is now studying at The Art In-stitute of Chicago.

“I went from snapping pictures whenever I went on vacation to working with film and my hands and chemi-cals in the darkroom,” Ludwig said. “It really piqued my

interest from the get-go.” Elliot not only aids her students in photography, but

in other areas of their interest as well. According to Kane, she owes her future in art to Elliot’s guidance.

“I had Elliot review my photos [for my AP Art port-folio],” Kane said. “I actually ended up applying to AP Art and I made it. Without her guidance in picking out [the art in] my portfolio, I probably wouldn’t be in AP Art today.”

According to Elliot, her helping nature is fueled by her passion to show others the world in different and unique ways.

“I hope what they do in class retrains or teaches their eyes to look in another way,” Elliot said. “[I hope what they learn] teaches them to look at the world with a dif-ferent perspective.”

One perspective Elliot can easily see the world through is an artistic and visual perspective. Dave Hill, wood-working teacher, described a time when this talent of El-

liot’s made an important impact on a Homecoming float design shaped like the house from the Pixar movie Up.

“We struggled with that house design because we wanted it to really look like it was flying,” Hill said. “When you have an artistic eye [like Elliot’s], you change the proportions and the perspectives on things [...] she [has] that.”

Despite her passion and experience, Elliot does not consider herself a professional artist.

“A professional photographer would be somebody who makes money from their art, and that again takes marketing and takes ambition in that direction,” Elliot said. “I feel like that is not my skill set. I am the creator, not the seller.”

However, she does plan on continuing to create art throughout the rest of her life.

“The process of making [art] is wonderful,” Elliot said. ”There is a sense of accomplishment, [and] there is a sense of pride.”

PICTURE THIS: In the photos room, photography teacher Amie Elliot assists senior Brian Tristano in putting the final touches on a photo. Elliot has worked at South as the Photography teacher for 19 years. Photo by Rebecca Wittenstein

a&eApril 19, 201320

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Chilean exchange student embraces American cultureEmily Mitchellstaff reporter

When a person walks into South’s V-Show, they never know what to expect. From comedy to dancing, there is always something new and exciting for the audience to watch. This year, there were several different acts, such as junior Alison Tye’s silk act, the drum line act featuring De La Cru and a song from sophomore Florencia Cuadros, a foreign exchange student from Chile.

Much like an audience experiencing the V-Show for the first time, Cuadros experienced everything for the first time: V-Show, Glenbrook South and even America. While Cuadros knew it would be a totally unique adventure, she never knew it would be as good as this.

“Basically [I came] to learn English and study in an American high school for a year so that is the whole goal,” Cuadros said.

Cuadros came at the beginning of the 2012 school year and is going back after the year is over. According to Cuadros, she is focused on taking fun classes such as photography and Titan Tots, and she believes South has been a great experience so far.

“I really like it and everybody asks me if it’s how I expected it, and I didn’t really expect anything, so it’s been pretty good,” Cuadros said.

Sophomore Janie Kahan said she met Cuadros soon after she transferred and has gotten close with her. Kahan and Cuadros became

friends through their love of theater and performing.

“We instantly clicked,” Kahan said. “We went to football games, she’s taking a bunch of interesting electives, and we go downtown.”

V-Show director Mark Ferguson said he was lucky enough to get the chance to work with Cuadros during the show.

“I was just taken by not only her beautiful singing voice […] but also by the way she introduced herself,” Ferguson said.

Cuadros sang, “Corre”, in the V-Show while playing her guitar. She said she was definitely nervous at first, but she loves singing and was excited to perform.

“I’m really glad I did it,” Cuadros said. “I saw all these talented people before, and I was really scared, but [...] everybody was really nice. It was a really good experience.”

For the rest of the year, Cuadros said she has no set goal on what she wants to accomplish; she just wants to continue to learn about and explore America. Ferguson agreed and said anyone with this type of experience should seize every opportunity they can.

“Travel is the best way of getting an education,” Ferguson said. “Going to places that are outside your comfort zone is really the best

education you could possibly have.”Cuadros concurred and said she

could not have asked for a better experience. Cuadros also said that despite the new world she is in, she will never lose sight of who she is.

“I’m from Chile,” Cuadros said. “I don’t want to change. I’m different, but I don’t care.”

Ferguson and Kahan both agree that Cuadros’s personality is just one of the things that attribute to her successful year in America.

“She speaks very openly, very heartfelt and very honestly,” Ferguson said.

Kahan recalls a conversation with Cuadros on travelling alone.

“I was telling her how brave she is for just getting on a plane and arriving in a strange country and she said, ‘With an experience like this, you just need to go with the ‘Flo’’,” Kahan said.

According to Kahan, that is exactly what Cuadros did.

“I’m just here to have fun [...] and to have a good story to tell,” Cuadros said. “It’s amazing to have the chance when you’re 16 to go somewhere else and have to be by your own.”

Plane ride from Chile to Chicago:13 hours

Favorite Chilean Food:Empanadas

Favorite American Food:Rice Krispie Treats

How She’s Changed: More open-minded and willing to meet new people

What She’ll Miss the Most: Living in a small town because she is from the city in Chile

V-Show Hip Hop ShowDowntown Chicago Halloween

Photo by Wyatt Richter

Photos courtesy of Florencia Cuadros

sports opinion April, 19 2013 21

Rachel Chmielinski asst. sports editor

Long gone are the days when women were exclusively relegated to the sidelines or stands to cheer. Since Congress passed Title IX in 1972, women and girls’ youth sports programs have grown at an impressive rate. From the University of Connecticut Huskies to the Williams sisters, women are here to play and here to stay.

While there are many more opportunities for female athletes, men’s programs often have more support and funding, mostly because men’s programs are generally more popular. And that’s okay.

What’s not okay is when athletes are treated differently because of their gender. Girls are not more fragile than boys just because they are girls.

What I’m talking about are the uncomfortable, thick hunks of plastic more commonly known as softball face masks. Yes, you’ve seen them. For those of us who have had to wear them, they are as difficult to wear as they are to look at.

Touted as necessary for safety, face masks are required headgear in many girls’ softball leagues at the pitcher’s position as well as other infield positions. Some coaches

even require it for all players, regardless of position.Last time I checked, boys’ little league teams do not

have the same requirement. Instead, boys are allowed to learn how to field a ball with confidence, even if that means they get hit in the face with it.

Okay, getting hit in the face with a ball is not the best way to learn, but the point is that boys are allowed to learn while girls are protected.

It’s extremely difficult to argue against a safety measure, especially when there are significant anecdotal stories of severe, even life-threatening, injuries. But what’s overlooked is that those same injuries exist in baseball, yet nothing even exists to protect a baseball fielder’s face.

Just this past season, both Tigers pitcher Doug Fister and Diamondbacks pitcher Brandon McCarthy were hit by line drives on the mound. As a result of that, what changes were made? So far, absolutely none.

While injuries in baseball are common, they’re accepted as part of the game. At the same time, however, softball players are wearing masks just to play in the

infield.It boils down to

the issue of safety versus sexism. If face masks really are just a safety precaution, then there should be a male equivalent for a similar sport that poses the same risks.

Proponents of face masks in softball argue that the smaller field poses a greater risk for injury.

Wearing a mask while pitching is totally justified. A pitcher tends to be off balance and their reaction time is slower after the release. But it is unlikely to be true for the infielders and even less likely to be true for the outfielders.

Instead, the face mask requirement for infielders, and

in some leagues, all fielders, seems to be less about safety concerns and more about whether women are capable of defending themselves.

At first or third base, the fielder is standing 60 feet away from the plate completely ready to receive a batted ball.

The only reason you would need a face mask in that situation would be if you were incapable of protecting yourself with your glove. Boys learn to field without face masks and girls should have the same opportunity. Equal opportunity means taking on equal risks.

Of course something unexpected could easily happen, but that isn’t enough of a reason to even consider requiring safety gear. There are unexpected risks in every sport. Girls, like boys, should learn to play their sport confidently.

If a face mask makes a player feel more confident on the field, then by all means they should have the opportunity to wear one, whether they are a boy or girl. But fielding with a face mask should not be a requirement based on the sex of the player.

Gender inequality displayed through safety measures

Photo by Wyatt Richter

Graphic by Evan Richter

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From 1983-2008, deaths in high school softball occured at a rate 1/10 that of high school baseball.

From 1996-2006, there was an average of 2 deaths per year in result of impact to the head in youth baseball.

sportsApril 19, 201322

Titan track succeeds early with depth in sprinters, youthHannah Masonstaff reporter

After a successful indoor season that saw the varsity men’s track and field team winning the Fenton Invite for the seventh straight year and finishing second in Conference, head coach Kurt Hasenstein says the team is now focused and prepared for the now underway outdoor season.

During the Fenton Invite Feb. 23, the energy was intense. With the team wanting to keep its winning streak alive, the Titans gave it all they had, especially because of the poor conditions of the track, according to senior Austin Dickholtz.

“The track is our least favorite,” Dick-holtz said. “It is very tight, slippery and bad to run on, but we wanted to keep our track meet standing for most track meets won in a row, so we ran our best.”

Success at the Fenton Invite led the Titans to the Conference meet March 15, where they placed second. This is an improvement from last year, when they placed third. Hasenstein feels that the meet showed the team’s potential as it was making prepara-

tions for the outdoor season.“We made it a lot closer to the front end against Evan-

ston than in the past, so things went well for us,” Hasen-stein said.

Before conference, junior Luke Pilliod had predicted the team to place in second or third. According to Pil-

liod, with indoor conference being one of the big-gest meets they have had, it gives him a lot of mo-

tivation to do better.“We had to really prepare more mentally, as

well as physically,” Pilliod said. “Conference in-door is the first big meet that leads into the out-

door [season].”According to Pilliod, the biggest advantage the

team has is its strong depth of sprinters.“It’s nice because injuries hurt us but they don’t com-

pletely destroy us,” Pilliod said.Pilliod says that when he wasn’t able to compete, his

backup runner was still able to help break one of the teams’ relay records by 2.5 seconds.

“Myself and [junior] Sean Alexander were injured re-cently [and couldn’t compete] in the same meet that we were trying to break the four by four record,” Pilliod said. “Luckily for us the sprinters that replaced us were still able to break the indoor field house record.”

According to senior Malcom Engel, he thinks the team has improved from last year and hopes that it sends a couple more people to State.

“Some of these kids are growing, getting stronger, and getting faster,” Engel said. “The freshmen and sopho-

mores are pretty fast. That surprised me.”The outdoor season started after Spring break, so the

runners are starting to adapt to the new setting, says sophomore Peter Wassmann.

“It’s adjustment from indoor to outdoor,” Wassmann said. “But it is getting better now that the weather is get-ting nicer, and you can get into outdoor shape.”

According to Engel, he prefers the outdoor season to the indoor because of the way the track is set up.

“Indoor the track is smaller, and the turns are tighter,” Engel said. “Outdoor it is one big loop instead of running multiple laps.”

According to Dickholtz, the team’s goals are to do well in the tough invites coming up.

“The team will keep improving as it has been for the last couple of months,” Dickholtz said. “I’m very excited to see how well we do at the end.”

Men’s track and field competes in the State meet May 16-17. The team also has invites against Maine South and Rolling Meadows on April 30, and on May 3 they hold the John Davis Titan Invite. With many meets to come, Hasenstein says that he is primarily focused on the safety of the runners and getting them used to the new environ-ment.

“We have to be smart that we aren’t overdoing it in cold weather and be really patient,” Hasenstein said. “The first few invitationals outside we aren’t as con-cerned with the team’s scores but instead getting guys into the meets and making sure they get an opportunity to compete.”

Bob continues Meyer legacy in South water poloBen Wittensteinstaff reporter

From bench warmer as a fresh-man to starting at hole set this year, senior Bob Meyer has come a long way in his water polo ca-reer at South.

The Meyer name is no strang-er to water polo. Tom Meyer, Bob’s older brother, started at goalie for four years for the Ti-tans and excelled at his position, earning second-team All-State honors. As the younger brother, Bob saw first hand what it took to succeed by watching his older brother, and according to David Lieberman, head men’s water polo coach, this could have cre-ated some healthy competition.

“There’s probably a little bit of a sibling rivalry, a little bit of competition,” Lieberman said. “They try to one-up each other.”

As much as the two brothers tried to be better than the other, the fact is not lost on Lieberman that Tom led his younger brother into the sport.

“I think [Tom] introduced him to the game [and] was a huge in-spiration,” Lieberman said.

Meyer spent most of his fresh-man year on the bench, but over time, he slowly began to de-velop his game in practice and during the offseason. For example, he has participated in the Olympic development program, which has given him the oppor-tunity to play against top tier competi-tion. Additionally, he swam for the Titans for four years.

“You notice a big difference in the wa-ter: stronger movements, better balance and it’s easier to play the game [after go-ing through the Olympic development program],” Meyer said.

Just this past summer, Meyer took part in an adult water polo league called the Masters. In it, he once again was given the chance to compete against players much bigger than him. Not surprisingly, Meyer has seen a big improvement in his game as a result of participating in the adult league.

Now that his older brother has gradu-

ated, Meyer knows that this season won’t be without its difficulties.

“I felt [I was] missing him right away,” Meyer explained. “But you’ve got to move on.”

Meyer’s transition is expected to be a quick one, as Lieberman has expectations from him now that he is a senior and team captain.

“Being a senior, I expect him to be one of the team leaders in and out of the wa-ter, and I think he has embraced that role,” Lieberman said.

Throughout his journey through the ranks of men’s water polo, Meyer believes he has gained a great deal of knowledge and skill.

“I’ve learned a whole new meaning for hard work and determination,” Meyer said. “I learned a lot about myself, like if

I have the determination I can work hard and get to where I want to be.”

While personal reflection is one thing, Meyer also has the praises of his coach who has seen his growth from day one.

“Both swimming-and-water-polo wise [he has taken] just huge strides,” Lieber-man said. “He really has just embraced the game.”

While he received little playing time freshman year, Meyer got a rare great op-portunity to show his potential early in his career.

It was the first game of his freshman year, and Meyer found himself sitting on the bench for the start of the game. To his surprise, his name was called and he was put in. He knew that he had little time to show off his talents, so he had to make the most out of the little opportunities he got.

His moment came on a fastbreak play. After a stop on defense, Meyer found himself and his teammate who had the ball, J.J Connor, on a fastbreak play down the pool. As Connor swam down one end of the pool, Meyer swam down the oth-er, matching his teammate’s speed. As they got towards the net, Connor swung the ball to Meyer who completed the fast break with a goal. Later, Meyer found out that his goal was the first scored by a freshman all year.

In a sort of foreshadowing to the rest of his high school career, Meyer’s ability was starting to poke its head out, even then. If anything, Meyer’s story shows how much a person can accomplish by just putting in the extra hours.

“I worked really hard and that’s how I got where I am today,” Meyer said.

BOBBING: Taking aim at the net, senior Bob Meyer winds up to take a shot. Meyer was a member of the varsity swim team in the winter season, receiving a 22.82 in the 50-free, and is now a captain of the varsity water polo team. Photo by JP O’Rourke IV

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Ethan Spaldingco-sports editor

After weather has slowed the start of the South men’s lacrosse season, the team is off to a 2-1 start. The team has so far defeated both Deerfield and Evanston but fallen to Glenbrook North, the number one team in Illinois ac-cording to laxpower.com.

Despite the somewhat mixed early season results, the team has high expectations for the season; according head coach Matthew Jones, the team has aspirations of a state championship.

“To win state […] is the expectation,” Jones said. “That is the expectation the kids have put on themselves, and any less of an expectation would be a disservice to them.”

Senior midfielder Spencer Ford shares this goal, saying that the team will be good enough if they can work as a cohesive unit.

“We want to win state,” Ford said. “I think that our team is good enough to do it, and if we can put togeth-er the pieces before the season ends we’re gonna have a great chance.”

To win state, the team needs to be firing on all cylin-ders. According to Jones, the team will need to work as a unit to achieve peak performance this season.

“I don’t think we have one individual who will be the most important,” Jones said. “As in any sport, you have to rely on everyone that you have. We need everyone to produce.”

According to Jones, chemis-try is a strength which should play a major role this season.

“This group of guys has re-ally bonded very early in the season,” Jones said. “There seems to be a real sense of family and community with these guys, and they look out for each other and push each other to strive to do better.”

Much of the team’s ex-pectations rely on their goal-prevention and defense, a unit which is anchored by Ryan Hauldren, senior co-captain and goalie. According to Jones, Hauldren is one of the top goal-ies in the state, which makes goal-prevention a strength of the team.

The team is not without its flaws, however. According to Jones, the Titans sometimes struggle with turnovers, and they need to use more discre-tion in taking shots.

“We tend to force the ball into areas where there are a lot of people,” Jones said. “We need to be more selective with our shooting. We always look for the first shot when we should be looking for the best shot.”

Ford believes that some of the Titans’ struggles have been a result of miscommunication, something that he believes will be fixed as the season continues.

“I feel like communication is a bit of a problem,” Ford said. “We have to communicate more [and] get everyone on the same page and we’ll start clicking.”

Jones also believes the Titans conditioning is lackluster and that it has cost them one victory already.

“We need to improve our conditioning,” Jones said. “We’ve seen a decline in performance as the games have gone on. In the Glenbrook North game, we were up 6-2 at the half and wound up losing 13-9. We didn’t have the

conditioning to play a team like that for four quarters.”Conditioning is not something cannot be fixed, ac-

cording to Jones, which is partially why the Titans have such high expectations for the end of the season. Jones says that conditioning is a particular focus dur-ing practice right now.

“We try to make all of our drills really high-tem-po,” Jones said. “We do a lot of drills that involve transitions, and then we focus on contditioning at the end [of practice].”

The Titans’ season continues Monday, when the team will play Libertyville at home in a makeup for this last Monday’s game. The regu-lar season will conclude later in May, at which point the Titans will compete for the state cham-pionship in the playoffs.

Connie Hoekstra & Georgia Arvanitisstaff reporters

Going into his freshman year, Cam Ir-win was an aspiring hockey goalie who failed to make the GBS team. Now, as a senior, Irwin is a captain of the lacrosse team and is committed to play collegiate-ly at Tufts University.

Though Irwin has played lacrosse since age 11, he only truly committed to the game his freshman year of high school, according to Irwin. In his four years play-ing at South, Irwin has become an amaz-

ing lacrosse player, according to his coach Matthew Jones.

“From the moment I met him as a fresh-man, I knew right away that he was going to be special,” Jones said.

Cam’s success didn’t go unnoticed by younger brother, Jackson Irwin, either. According to Jackson, Cam inspired him to play lacrosse.

“I started [playing lacrosse] because he started,” Jackson said. “It really looked like fun. Over time, we grew into it more, and then it became brother and brother competition.”

Jackson now accompanies his brother on the field as a member of the varsity team.

“It’s pretty cool [playing together] be-cause we kind of have a mental connec-tion,” Jackson said. “He always looks out for me. He always tries to help me out [and] make me better.”

As well as helping out his brother on the field, Cam also helps out the team.

“He knows how to create opportunities for other people, which is very important to our team,” Jackson said.

Jones also agrees that Cam’s skills help

the team as a whole.“He definitely works harder than every-

one in practice,” Jones said. “He doesn’t rely upon his given abilities and talents; he’s always working, always trying to im-prove, which, in turn, improves everyone around him.”

According to Jones, Cam’s greatest as-set is his understanding of the game.

“[Freshman] year he was moving up between the junior varsity and fresh-man [team],” Jones said. “He was prac-ticing for the junior varsity team a lot of the time, but when he would come play with the freshmen, he just knew what we were doing, very early on he had an un-derstanding of the game.”

Varsity goalie Ryan Hauldren, who has played with Cam since freshman year, said he feels that Cam’s abilities during a game help the team succeed.

“Last year we were playing Palatine, and it was our first game of the year so we were kind of sloppy, and [Cam] came in and scored four goals and it really put us over the edge and got us that first win,” Hauldren said.

Cam said he hopes his team does well this season, and he especially hopes for victories against New Trier and Glen-brook North.

“Beating them would be awesome this year [because] I haven’t beaten those teams my four years here [at South],” Cam said.

As well as goals for the team, Cam aims high for his personal goals this season as well. Cam says he hopes to be All-Ameri-can in lacrosse this year.

Tufts University, located in Boston, is a Division III school for lacrosse. Cam’s coaches and teammates, including Haul-dren, are very excited about Cam’s future there.

“[The team] is proud of him,” Hauldren said. “We know he deserves it.”

Jones has high hopes for Cam at the col-lege level.

“With his commitment to doing the very best, he’s going to get to college and he’s going to shine, and I’m looking for-ward to watching that,” Jones said.

sports April 19, 2013 23

Lacrosse looks to parlay leadership, talent into championship

Irwin turns hard work into future at Tufts University

YES HE CAM: Surveying the field, senior captain Cam Irwin looks for an open shot or pass. Irwin, who will play lacrosse at Tufts University in Massachusetts this fall, is currently part of a Titan team that has eyes on a state title. Photo courtesy of Cam Irwin

PRIVATE RYAN, SAVING: Raising his stick, senior goalie Ryan Hauldren prepares to turn away a hope-ful goal-scorer. Hauldren, a captain, is a major part of the champioinship-hopeful Titan squad. Photo courtesy of McLain Murphy

sportsApril 19, 201324

Breck Murphystaff reporter

Despite having multiple games postponed due to in-clement weather, the South men’s baseball team has got-ten off to a good start, according to senior Sam Selby. The team is currently 10-1 as it heads into conference play.

“The first time that we stepped on the field, we actu-ally beat a team who had played four or five games already,” Selby said.

However, the team’s most memo-rable victory thus far came against Oak Park River Forest, according to Selby.

“They were defending state cham-pions last year, and we beat them by 11,” Selby said.

Selby and junior Tommy O’Hara hit back-to-back homeruns in the game, Selby said.

Though head coach David Lindley agrees with Selby that the boys have started strong, he still believes they have some work to do.

“It’s not surprising, as we have a collection of talented players,” Lindley said. “We still have a long way to go

though.”According to Lindley, the players’ success this season

will be determined by their team effort rather than con-cern for individual success.

“We’ve been doing a really nice job of working on not just the baseball skills but also becoming a team,” Lind-ley said. “It’s nice to add that element.”

Despite losing 2012 graduates Sully Stadler and Zack Jones, who went on to play Division I at Indiana University and Northwest-ern University, respectively, Lindley re-mains positive about the present.

“[The players] move on, but to me, they are always a part of GBS baseball,” Lindley said. “It’s always fun to see the new team come together.”

The conference season began the week of April 8, and the men have their goal set on winning conference, accord-ing to Selby. Although the team’s big-gest rival is typically New Trier, their team to beat this season is Maine South.

“Last year, we lost in the first round [of the playoffs],” Selby said. “If it’s possible, we would love to go to State and do something there.”

According to Selby, the team looks to use their

strengths in pitching as an advantage. Seniors Sam Ko-loms and Kyle Pauly both contribute to this force, accord-ing to Lindley.

As far as weaknesses go, the team plans to work more on their hitting, Selby said.

“We’ve started out strong, but we aren’t expected to do as much in our hitting,” Selby said. “There will be some flaws that we’ll find over the games, but [I would like to see us] with stronger fielding and more consistency out there.”

According to Lindley, despite the squad’s strengths and weaknesses, the team has a deep dugout that will al-ways be able to compete with its opponents.

“The new guys are coming together as a team and car-rying it on,” Lindley said. “They’ve done a great job so far, and I’m happy to be a part of the group.”

To start off their season, the Titans beat Barrington 5-2 and Oak Park River Forest 14-3. Since then, the squad has conquered Schaumburg 7-4 and Rolling Meadows 7-5, while dropping a game to Wheaton Warrenville North 3-9.

In more recent games, the team beat both St. Patrick and Zion Benton 11-1.

The boys take the field next April 27 at Maine West High School. The playoffs are currently scheduled to start May 20.

Baseball succeeds early with several returning seniors

SNOWCOHEN: Laying out for the ball, senior Max Cohen dives in an attempt to make a put-out. Cohen starts as an outfielder for the Titans this season and is one of eight returning seniors on the team, according to senior Paul McMahon. Photo by Rob Hart ~ Sun Times Media

John Adkissonco-sports editor

Early into the 2013 season, the wom-en’s varsity soccer team has amassed a record of 6-4. After a year that saw the Titans place fourth in State, head coach Seong Ha expects things to pick up from here on out.

“I’m not surprised with where we are right now,” Ha said. “It’s not that I don’t have high expectations, it has just been tough with the weather we have been having to get good train-ing sessions in […] but the girls have handled it very well; they’ve made the best of the time that has been given.”

Ha acknowledges that a repeat of last year is certainly no easy task, but he feels that the ripeness of the team this year will prove to lend itself to future success.

“The girls don’t want to settle on, ‘We’ve been there and done that for the past two, three years, it’s going to happen again,’” Ha said. “I’m very pleased with the maturation and how they’ve handled them-selves, understanding

that they’re not going to be complacent in reaching their goals.”According to Ha, his Titans are traditional-

ly slow starters, which makes their uncanny

5-4 record okay, espe-cially because the two

losses have come to New Trier and Loyola, who he feels are

two of the best teams in the state.

Despite the loss to New Trier April 2, a late surge

from South at the end of the game is exactly the

potential the squad can show, according to Ha.

“Yeah, we didn’t get the result that we wanted, but they really competed; they real-ly stepped it up to a whole other level,” Ha said.

Senior goalie Emma Sailer agrees that the home stretch of the New Trier game was very positive and showed a side of the team

she expects to see moving forward.“Getting a goal back is something we

really wanted when we were down for seven-eighths of the game,” Sailer said. “That says a lot about our team – to show that we’re working that hard in the 70th min-

ute.”According to Sailer, sopho-

more Kaily Bruch has been an extraordinarily valuable asset to the team this year despite being a young player.

“I think [Bruch] is such a solid player,” Sailer said. “We don’t look at her as a sophomore by any means. She is definitely one of the hardest-working players on the team.”

Additionally, Ha feels that se-nior April Cronin is the main at-tacking target this year. A Divi-sion I committee at Valporaiso University, Ha sees her as not

only a goal-scoring threat, but a valuable teammate.“[Cronin] is a very unselfish player, and she’s very

cognizant of the fact that she is going to be the showcase piece of our team,” Ha said. “[However], she doesn’t come off cocky, she doesn’t come off in a way where she is like, ‘You know what, I’m the show.’”

Despite their intermediate success, the Titans fell to York High School in the third round of the Pepsi Cup 1-3 April 11. South is also currently 1-1 in Conference, with games vs. Maine South April 23 and Waukegan April 25.

Soccer bounces back after predictably shaky start, tough losses

The Titans’ TumultHaving gone downstate for the past two years, head coach Seong Ha and his Titans have proven that they are a perennial pow-erhouse program. However, early losses to other top-notch pro-grams have proven that there is work to be done to remain the program they are. The following is a look at the Titans’ losses this season.

March 12Score: 0-2W-L: 0-1

April 2Score:1-2W-L: 2-2

April 11Score:1-3W-L: 5-3

April 13Score:1-3W-L: 5-4

HEADSTRONG: Bracing for impact,

senior captain Ally Wojick heads the ball.

Wojick is going on to play Division I soccer at North-

ern Arizona University.Photo by Kevin Mathein

“Last year we lost in the first round [of the playoffs]. If it’s pos-sible, we would love to go to State and do something there.”-Senior Sam Selby