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Year II, Issue III December 2012 Washington Latin

First ever alumni reunion

The class of 2012 at the first alumni reunion on wednesday, December 19 (photo credit Mr. Matthew Boyd).

By aLiSTair anDruLiS ‘14MANAGING EDITOR

winter break brings joy, hopeand time off from school to students.For the washington Latin class of 2012alumni, the holiday season also sym-bolizes the end of their first semesterof their college education, and so theypacked their bags and came backhome, for Latin’s first alumni reunionon wednesday, December 19.

The first ever graduating classhas racked up enough experience ofcollege life, spending hours studying,managing life and making newfriends. They now reflect on how they

got to where they are now. More im-portantly, they’ve had time to judgehow the help from Ms. Crys Latham’scollege consoling helped them achievetheir goal of attending the college oftheir choice.

a large portion of the alumniwere interviewed about their experi-ences at college, what helped them getthere and how Latin prepared them.

Salim riley, attending ohiouniversity, says: “Latin taught meabout the relationship between educa-tion and social interaction. when youknow more about a specific topic orhave very practiced talents, like musi-

Varsity basketballlose 35-77

INSIDELATIN NEWS pagES 1-5 SPORTS pagE 6STYLE pagES 7-9 COLLEGE ADVICE CORNER pagE 10

By Ewing MouSSa ‘13SPORTS WRITER

The washington Latin VarsityBasketball team (0-6) was upset by theperry Street prep Lions on Monday, De-cember 20.

The game started out reallyclose. Latin had a 6 point lead, 6 min-utes into the game, when senior guardEwing Moussa picked up his secondfoul and was forced to sit the rest of thehalf. Sophomore forward Tarik abra-ham was also in foul trouble.

after half time, it was all badnews for Latin. Senior guard JamesFoote who had a scintillating first halfperformance, could not find his range inthe second half.

The game mirrored every gameso far this year for the winless LatinLions: they start every game really well,and then fall victim to the second quar-ter curse that has haunted the team forthe past three years.

For various reasons, Latin onlyhas a Varsity team this year.

when asked about the team,senior captain Ewing Moussa said,“we’re a young team, we’ve got a lot ofwork to do. we have guys that havenever even played on a team before andthey’re forced to play at the varsity

SEE VARSITY BASKETBALL on pagE 5 SEE CLASS OF 2012 on pagE 5

2nd annual holiday arts dinnerSTYLE, page 7

Former teacher writes novelabout Latin STYLE, page 8

Sentence diagramming: the hipnew grammar aid? Page 4

The importance of Early Deci-sion COLLEGE ADVICE CORNER

Last issueof 2012

The RundownSumus Leones December 2012

Email any errors, typos or ques-tions found in this issue directlyto sumusleones@gmail.com

Don’t throw me away! read this and pass it to someone else, orreturn it to our Decatur campus board.

8 Number of juniors that havefinished their junior portfolios As of Thursday morning. (Due midnight Fri)

Junior Portfolios

Second semester class offerings Class TeacherHEALTH TBADC HISTORY MR. FINDLERDANCE MS. LAMBROMAN HISTORY MS. RATAJCAKART MS. STEPHENSMEDIA AND CITIZENSHIP MR. FINDLERGOVERNMENT MR. STATEN

Holiday cheer: Christmas most celebrated

Q. Are you travellingthis winter break?

Ms. Charlotte abney Teacher sponser

Management

Cuneyt Dil ‘14 Editor-in-chiefalistair andrulis ‘14 Managing editor, Head of media

Sumus Leones was founded in February 2012 by Cuneyt Dil and alistair andrulis

Q. What do you celebrateover winter break?

83% No17% Yes

FAMILY TRADITIONS:“its always a huge family dinner and we open the presents at midnight, so you haveto stay up if you want to open your presents” - Eliana Duran

“The most famous holiday in pakistan is just like Christmas, it’s like the birth of ourholy prophet pBuH, we deocrate our houses more than [american’s] do... you can’teven see the sky because of all the lights” - warisha atiq

Statistics and quotesgathered by KarrinThompson ‘14.

Like our facebook page atfacebook.com/sumusleones.Scan the QR code above.

28 outof 42

The number of alumnifrom the class of 2012that came to the halfyear reunion.

on wednesday, December 19, washington Latinwelcomed back its first alumni class, of 2012. Thegroup that visited spoke with current juniors andseniors about their experiences in college duringtheir first semester, and later joined with facultyin a banquet at Decatur. Front page & page 5

Girls basketball goes 4-3 The washington Latin girls varsity team beat perry Street

prep 46-30 on Monday, December 17 to get back on winning recordterms, improving their record to 4 wins and 3 loses over the season.

The Lions are on a three game winning streak after beatingMadeira and Don Bosco in there last three games.

Senior Jerbria Smith leads the points per game averagecharts with 19.3 ppg.

Sumus Leones Page 3December 2012

The value of Merits, student’s outlook, decision processBy Karrin THoMpSon ‘14

STAFF WRITER

a washington Latin traditionis to go to assemblies once a monthand talk about unity, hard work andcommunity. Students have a chance tobe congratulated and recognized fortheir work that they put forth in thecommunity by receiving a merit, andsometimes accompanied with a gift. inreceiving this merit, this student hasthe opportunity to make known ontheir college resumes that they havereceived such a prize.

one boy and one girl fromeach grade gets honored for their “sin-gle achievement and consistency,” butit’s so much more than that. in receiv-ing this honor, the students are con-gratulated not only for their “singleachievement and consistency” buteven for their “personality and aca-demic effort,” says Mr. peter Findler.

interested in how this processworks? Every week, all grade teammembers meet to nominate students

for a merit and discuss progress andchanges that can be made for theirgrade that following week.

“it’s an extremely hardprocess,” Head of upper School Ms.Laurel Seid said.

it really is, because only twostudents can be given a merit, butthere are so many students out therethat also deserve a merit. when yourteachers nominate you, they obviouslyhave their reasons, but they have tonarrow down all the student possibili-ties in order to get down to only twostudents.

Some students in the wash-ington Latin community got thechance to voice their opinion on thisprocess, with one student saying thatat times it’s “not fair, because a lot ofpeople get merits more than once” and“it leaves out a lot of people that areworthy of it.”

Merits, at times, can be a bigdeal. when hearing the names of stu-dents receiving the merits, sometimesa student might be at the edge of their

seat, wondering if their name is goingto be called. Sometimes it isn’t.

a student may feel that theydeserved that merit, and found out-that they receive one, but there is stillhope. Students shouldn’t give up andget discouraged if their name isn’tcalled, they should work even harder.

“Everyone can get a merit,”said Ms. amandine nelaton. “There’sno such thing as not being able to get amerit. you just have to do the rightthing consistently.”

The teachers care and wantyou to get congratulated for your hardwork, the last thing they want you todo is give up when you haven’t re-ceived a merit.

So students shouldn’t give upand not stop working hard, becauseeventually you will get recognized.

“Make it aware to your advi-sor and continue to do what you aredoing,” says Mr. Findler.  

and of course, “Be your bestself always and someone will realize,”encourages Ms. Seid.

Former journalist, public affairs worker visits studentsTalks to newspaper, Model un about life as a journalist, working in public affairs

By KELLy riVEra ‘14 STAFF WRITER

on Monday December 14,2012, Jeanne Saddler visited washing-ton Latin. Sumus Leones and theModel un club had the opportunity tohave lunch in the Library at Decatur,meet Mrs. Jeanne Saddler and learnabout her life as a journalist.

Saddler is from Detroit, Michi-gan; she went to Michigan State uni-versity and later went to Columbiauniversity for graduate school in jour-nalism. She is now the Director of theoffice of public affairs at the Metro-politan washington Council of gov-ernments.

Saddler wasn’t always inter-ested in working in public affairs: shestarted out being very much interestedin journalism. She said that she firstgot interested in journalism in highschool when one of her teachers talkedabout it, and once she joined theschool newspaper she liked it.

“i enjoyed [journalism] be-cause i liked knowing what was goingon, and i realized it’s good because itemphasizes writing skills. i alwayshad this wanderlust.”

Saddler worked for the schoolnewspaper throughout her highschool life, and she was bumped up toeditor of her high school newspaper.However, she decided she needed a

break from journalism in college. “it was hard to be the editor

because people quit last minute, and ihad to figure out what to do” she said“it was very stressful and i decided ineeded to find out what my strengthswere in college.”

However, she picked up jour-nalism again soon after her arrival atcollege.

Saddler went to college dur-ing the time of the Vietnam war, andshe had very conservative parents.Being involved in the protests duringthe 1960s wasn’t something her par-ents approved of, but being a journal-ist, she had the opportunity to witness

SEE JOURNALIST VISITS on pagE 4

Sumus Leones Page 4December 2012

these important events of the Vietnamwar era.

Saddler talked about whyshe enjoyed her career so much andthe advantages of being a journalist.

“Because you do so much re-search in journalism, it is a very excit-ing profession, you learn so much andit’s very engaging,” she said.

according to Saddler “[jour-nalism] opens opportunities. all yourexperiences can really help you.” as aresult of being a journalist, Saddlerhas been able to travel abroad.

“you have to know what isnews, and know how to report it in aneffective manner, but that is also whatmakes the job so exciting,” she said.“not one day is ever the same as theprevious one.”

The meeting was a learningexperience for all of those present,whether it was getting an inside lookinto what journalism really is, and theopportunities it can bring to you, orlearning to pursue a career you arepassionate about.

“Find a job you love and youwill never work a day in our life,”said Saddler, quoting Confucius. “idon’t think i would have enjoyed anyother profession as much as this one.”

Jeanne Saddler visits Latin

JOURNALIST VISITS FroM pagE 3

Sentence diagramming, whats the point? Learning grammar has never been more of a “puzzle”

By CunEyT DiL ‘14 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

awkward lines, dashes, acuteangles, hooks and jumbled up wordsare what seem to make up a sentencediagram from afar.

To the unsuspecting eye, asentence diagram may seem like silly

scribble, a grammar assignment gonehorribly wrong. it may seem like a stu-dent decided to doodle words on topof scaffolding rather than finding theparts of speech of a sentence.

However, it isn’t silly, and itisn’t a doodle. Sentence diagrammingis washington Latin’s new way ofteaching students grammar -- a

change from the traditional black andwhite instructional method of learningthe mechanics of our language.

Sentence diagramming is sup-posed to help students understandgrammar visually, and see how thedifferent parts of a sentence logicallyrelate to each other. Diagramminghelps to clarify the meaning of a sen-

tence, and can show why a particularsentence makes sense or doesn’t makesense.

“it has a visual componentthat other grammar instruction does-n’t,” says Mr. nathan Day, an Englishteacher. “you’re learning [grammar] intwo different ways.”

Traditional grammar instruc-tion is based off memorization, withlittle creative freedom for teachers andpupils. naturally, students aren’t ac-customed to learning grammar by dia-gramming sentences, which is wheremuch of the “resistance” to learningthis new method stems from, accord-ing to Mr. Day.

“i think some of the resistancecomes from the thinking that its notnecessary,” said Mr. Day. “grammarcan be taught in a very traditional way,but that doesn’t mean [sentence dia-gramming] isn’t helpful.”

Students in grades 5-12 havebeen learning the reed-Kellogg

method of sentence diagramming sincethe beginning of the school year, withvarying degrees of success.

“it varies from class to classand from person to person, as withanything,” said Mr. Day, who teachesdiagramming in his 9th, 10th and apLanguage and Composition classes.“There are some people who are pick-ing it up and enjoying it, there aresome people that don’t like it regard-less of whether they think its easy ordifficult.”

The top to bottom introductionof sentence diagramming into Latin’sEnglish curriculum was decided uponlast spring by Ms. Diana Smith, assis-tant head of academics, according toMr. Day. Teachers unfamiliar with dia-gramming have had to learn from Ms.Smith before teaching students.

“it will enable people to ex-plain how the words they use in theirsentences are related to each other,”said Mr. Day.

Sumus Leones Page 5December 2012

where the class of 2012 is attending college, across the united States. Salam abdul aliattends college in paris, France, the only alum to be learning abroad currently (wLpCSnaviance family connection).

cal skill, athletic skill, or intellectualskill, it buys you into certain groups.These groups can improve you, butthey can also close your mind to out-side skills. Latin also taught me aboutinteracting with people through wordsand conveying my sentiments accu-rately.”

Vivian Campanella, attendinguniversity of Vermont, highlighted thedifferences between life in high

schoolto college. “in a way, Latin did not pre-

pare me for college,” she said. “uVMhas a very challenging curriculum andmy average class size is anywherefrom 200 to 450 people. at Latin, wewere babied and teachers held ourhands all the time. in college, no onetells you when your assignments aredue and teachers don't know who youare or care if you show up to class. idon't regret graduating from Latin atall, but its definitely something to be

aware of.”Mustafaa nuraldin, who cur-

rently attends Bennington College, ex-pands on Campanella’s point. “i'm notso sure if you guys realize how muchyou have to do on your own, howmuch you have to reach out profes-sors, how much you have to meetdeadlines, and how much responsibil-ity you have to take on,” he said.

a reoccurring theme acrossthe responses given by the students in-terviewed was the desire to have done

CLASS OF 2012 FroM FronT pagE

Welcome back, class of 2012

better in high school, and earlier thansenior year. regarding academics,alex Mitchell, who attends universityof Massachusetts amherst, said “[i]could have done better. [i] didn't real-ize the need to until Senior year -- nota good year to start.”

The majority of the the alumnithat were interviewed said that learn-ing Latin, has been beneficial to theircollege career. ingrid Medina, whocurrently attends Saint Leo universityand is studying communications, said:“The courses at Latin helped me pre-pared for a few courses i took this se-mester. For example English class andLatin.”

SportsSumus Leones Page 6December 2012

Mens basketball winless going into winter tournament

level, we just have to stay positive andcontinue to get better every singleday”.

Coach Bob Eleby-El puts itlike this, “a chain is only as strong asit’s weakest link, we’re expecting ourseniors to step up and help theyounger guys.”

There are bright hopes for thefuture, amid the current bad run ofform. The team is led in scoring byfreshman guard Falu Seck.

Latin’s next game comes in theBo Kimble invitational tournament atBell Multicultural High school.

Looking forward to the winterbreak tournament, Senior guard

Ka’ron yates said, “we’re getting bet-ter, we should do well. a couple of theteams are really good but hopefullywe step out there and do our best.”

regardless of what happens,the student body should continue tostand behind it’s boys. The team needthe support of the student body toplay well.

Winter conditioning 2012By BriTTnEy DinKinS ‘16

STAFF WRITER

winter conditioning is a no-cut sport that isoffered for six weeks during the winter and "helpskids bring fitness into their daily life," according toMr. Mark reed, the coach. it gives kids a chance tostart over and to think about the choices they makewhen it comes to fitness and health.

"i really enjoy winter conditioning," saidCamille rasamoely, a freshman. "it does have somechallenges in it, but overall, it's fun." Currently, thereare 75 students in winter conditioning, and 10th and11th graders are the majority.

Last week, winter conditioning had an eventwhere its participants practiced self-defense, whichtaught the students how to fight and defend them-selves when in dangerous situations.

next week, starting on the 17th, the studentswill "learn how to read maps and will eventually gointo the woods and try to find their way out," accord-ing to Mr. reed. Those practices will last from 4pmuntil 6pm, which is longer than last year.

winter conditioning athlethes participate in cardio, strength andother forms of general fitness (photo credit Francesca Montero).

VARSITY BASKETBALL FroM FronT pagE

Average Points per game

Results & schedule

StyleSumus Leones

Holiday Benefit Concert

Page 7December 2012

Honors choir and Ms. Melissa nevola performing during the 2nd annual winter holiday benefit concert (photo creditEmily Hall for Sumus Leones).

By CunEyT DiL ‘14EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

washington Latin’s arts De-partment held its second annual holi-day arts dinner on Tuesday, December18th. The event, which featured per-formances from jazz band, dance andchoir, raised $2,011 for the arts depart-ment.

The concert performances,mainly of Christmas and holidaymusic, put the audience in the festivemood heading into winter break nextweek.

The dinner, held at the middleschool upshur campus, was the sec-ond arts concert of the year. parents,faculty and students from the high

school attended the event. The night began with dinner

served first, with background musicbeing played, before the ensemble per-formances began.

performances of holidaysongs, and a Bhangra performance bythe dance group, lasted for the major-ity of the concert.

after the end of the perform-ances, select performers gave thankyou speeches to those that have had amajor influence on them. Many choseto thank parents, teachers or siblings.

washington Latin also paid itsrespects to the tradgedy that occuredat Sandy Hook elementary school onthe night. Brandi Clarke and SavannahMiller sang Angel together in dedica-

tion, which was an emotional momentfor the singers and the audience.

washington Latin mailedcards to Sandy Hook, with each per-son in attendance given a chance towrite a note to the victims’ families.

at the end of the perform-ances, Senior Ken Vallis gave thanks toMs. Melissa nevola for putting to-gether the concert. Ms. nevola in re-turn thanked the performers, parentsand the administrators for their role inmaking the event a possibility.

See more photos of the artsconcert on page 9 and on ourfacebook page.

Style Page 8December 2012

By Kira THoMpSon ‘14STAFF WRITER

Finally, after all of the moviesthat have come out in the past fouryears, an outstanding end has comefor the Twilight Saga.

Breaking Dawn Part 2, the fifthinstallment, shows the audience theend of Edward and Bella who havegotten married, and recently givenbirth to a vampire/human baby.

Bella learns the ropes of beinga newborn vampire and taking care ofher daughter renesmee. The Volturiare coming to Forks to kill the Cullensbecause a friend of the Cullens sawrenesmee and thought they had bro-ken the law by making a vampirebaby.

The Cullens recruit manyvampires from different clans to provethat they are innocent and, if needed, to fight with them.

This movie will make the au-

dience feel different emotions, fromlove, happiness and shock from thedifferent twists in the movie that wereeither in the book or not. it deserves4.5 stars, go see it while it's playing intheaters.

By aLiSTair anDruLiS ‘14MANAGING EDITOR

Metro-goldwyn-Mayer stu-dios (MgM) are responsible for someof the greatest movies -- the JamesBond, pink panther and the Hobbit se-ries to name a few. However, in recentyears MgM has faced several financialproblems, racking up over 3.7 billiondollars of debt to their name.

This seemed like an impossi-ble hole to climb out of and get back tothe top of their business, even forMgM, the source of over 4,000 movietitles since the 1920s.

However, through diligentspending cuts and generous partner-

ships with other companies, MgMwas officially able to climb out ofbankruptcy on December, 20th 2010.By climbing out of bankruptcy MgMrepaid a 1 billion dollar loan to theu.S. government in 2011, and have re-paid the other 2.7 billion dollars oftheir debt back in 2012.

when MgM finally out of thehole that they had dug, it was theirtime to get back to the top of the filmindustry. The charge to the frontstarted with the release of the 23rdJames Bond movie, Skyfall. Skyfallwas released in the united States onnovember and has grossed over950,000,000 dollars as of December.

This has currently netted Sky-fall as the 17th top grossing movie inthe world. when you put Skyfall to-gether with the new Hobbit moviewhich premiered in new zealand onnovember 8th, MgM has restoredtheir hopes of getting back to the topof the film industry.

The Moviegoers: The final twilight saga, Skyfall lifts MgM studios

Former teacher writes tell-all novelBased on his time at washington Latin, full of striking parallels

By CunEyT DiL ‘14EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

“Sarah Merkin...was short as astudent, appeared to be in her early30s, and had red hair pulled backtightly enough as to wring some of thepassion from it, and her very blinksseemed ordered.” Sound familiar?

Sarah Merkin, Ms. raskin, isone of the many fictional characters inA Significant Contribution a novel byformer washington Latin sixth gradeEnglish teacher alden Bird.

Talk of the book, only avali-able on amazon kindle right now, hasspread around the school the day after

its release. Those lucky enough to beat the school during its first 2 yearswill immediatly recognize the story-line, characters and similarities.

The first page of the novelpromises “all characters appearing inthis work are fictitous. any resem-blance to real persons, living or dead,is purely coincidental.” written tonguein cheek, we assume.

A Significant Contribution givesthe phrase “based on real events” anew meaning.”The Latin School,” iswashington Latin. The church onMassachuests ave. that used to beLatin’s campus is the same church (al-beit on a different street in the novel)

and it even mentions the infamous“thunderdome”.

Everything to the Head Mas-ter’s old license plate is the same (hislicense plate was “Harvard”).

For many at washingtonLatin, the book is a source of humorand reminisance: recalling the ficklebeginning years of the school.

at the least, it serves as a ref-erence to how very different washing-ton Latin was, and for that alone itsworthy reading.

A SIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTION iS aVaLi-aBLE on aMazon.CoM For $2.99

Chris

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Arts benefit concertPhoto credit Emily Hall

Style Page 9December 2012

College Advice CornerSumus Leones Page 10December 2012

Acceptance updatewe’ve had a very successful few weeks inthe College Counseling world, andthough it is very early in the admissionsseason, we already have some great num-bers to report. we’ve had 14 seniors ac-cepted at the following 21 schools:

alfred university Barry universityuniversity of BridgeportBrown universityCapital universityDepaul universityFayetteville State universityFlorida institute of Technologyguilford CollegeHofstra universityLynchburg Collegeuniversity of Maineuniversity of north alabamanortheastern universityohio universityold Dominion universityrandolph Collegeroanoke Collegeuniversity of rochesterVaughn College of aeronautics

and Tech.university of Vermont

Financial aid awardswashington Latin students have

already been awarded more than $200,000in merit-based financial aid (with muchmore to come). our 47 seniors are in theprocess of submitting more than 450 ap-plications, so we will have much morenews to report in the coming months!

The importance of Early Decision one of the options for applying to colleges is to do so Early

Decision. under this program, students choose one college as their topchoice and send in an application in early november. if accepted, thestudent agrees that they will attend – a great deal if you’re willing totell a school that you definitely want to enroll! This fall, we have hadtwo seniors accepted via Early Decision programs – their stories arebelow:

Mat Quirong – The Universityof Rochester – Rochester,NYQ. why rochester?A. i chose rochester because of theiruniqueness. unlike other colleges whereyou have a core curriculum you haveto fulfill, rochester has their "rochestercurriculum.” in the rochester Curricu-lum you have no core classes you have totake. you only have one required classwhich is freshman writing in which youcan choose any of their 70 different writ-ing classes. you then have the classes re-quired for your majors and then twoclusters in the Humanities, Social Sci-ences or natural Sciences but it all de-pends on your major. For me, since i plan

to take engineering, i am only required totake one cluster. in rochester you are notrestricted in taking classes only in theschool you are in. when you apply youdo not apply to any particular school.you have the ultimate freedom to takeany class the college has to offer. Since ihave various interests other than Engi-neering, i felt like this was a perfect fit forme. another program i have interest in isthe “take 5 program” where you can takea 5th year tuition free to take more classesoutside of your major. one other pro-gram i just learned about is that sincethey have the Eastman School of Musicstudents can take music classes there forfree. other than the programs, i like thesize of the school: about 5,000 studentswhich is not too small and not too big,just right for Q. and the campus is prettybig for the 5,000 students that they have.

Claire Detrick-Jules – BrownUniversity – Providence, RIQ. why did you decide to apply ED?A. Many people don't like the idea of re-ceiving a binding admissions letter, andthey prefer to wait until april to lay outall their options and decide. i've knownthat i've wanted to go to Brown since iwas a Freshman, and my heart was al-ready committed years before i appliedthis november. Brown has always beenmy top choice, and so i knew there wasnothing i'd be missing out on by apply-ing early decision. i visited campus andtalked to several people who go/went toBrown, and they all say that it's an amaz-

ing school and they spent the best yearsof their life there. They were also all in-credibly nice and happy. i also did a lot ofresearch on my own and visited campusthis past summer just to make sure thecampus feel was right for me. it felt likehome from the second i stepped on themain quad. ED is also really helpful be-cause it lets you focus on school work therest of your Senior year since you don'thave to worry about any college applica-tions. plus, it saves you a lot of money be-cause instead of paying ten collegeapplication fees, you just pay one. Even ifyou get deferred or rejected, it can stillhelp you understand where you standand it gives you the opportunity to re-evaluate your options. 

This issue’s College advice Corner waswritten by Mr. Matthew Boyd.