VOLUME 110, ISSUE 3

The Folly of Co-Ed Visitation

See DELL, Page 6

HILL TH

E NEWSVERBA VOLANT, SCRIPTA MANENT.WHATSOEVER THINGS ARE TRUE.

OCTOBER 31, 2012

For the last few months, the pos-sibility of co-ed visitation rights in the dormitories has been one

of the hottest topics around campus. Sixth Form President Ted Poatsy has been promising it, Headmaster Zack Lehman has been dancing around it, and students have been buzzing about it with both hope and apprehension. We at The Hill News are not hopeful and we’re something more than ap-prehensive. We think allowing co-ed visitation in the dormitories would be a mistake. The proposal drawn up by the Student Government Association provides five tenets supporting co-ed visitation, all of which amount to little more than adolescent reasoning with

more holes than the track soccer field. Let’s take them one by one.

“Appropriate use of this policy will improve a mutual trust between teachers and students.” The key word in this argument is appropriate. What happens when there’s an inappropriate use of this policy? If certain students already abuse the available spaces on campus for illicit activities, who is to say that they won’t do the same thing once given the privacy and convenience of their own bedrooms? We agree that in a perfect world this system would facilitate trust between students and faculty. Unfortunately, this is not a perfect world and we, as teenagers, are not perfect. Allowing members of the

opposite sex in our rooms and then tell-ing them to behave is like putting the opposite ends of magnets together and telling them not to stick. It’s a surefire way to at least create uncomfortable situations and at most necessitate seri-ous disciplinary action.

“It would be an incentive to keep rooms clean and organized.” There are already incentives and punishments in place to keep rooms clean and orga-nized. Page 12 of the Handbook states, in addition to a list of standards for a clean room, that “room checks [are] to take place every Tuesday and Friday night and informally on a daily basis.” Wouldn’t it make more sense to enforce this rule than to instate a radical new

policy based on the argument that it would help keep rooms clean? If dorm parents and prefects are that concerned with cleanliness, they reserve the right to issue demerits as punishment for poorly-kept rooms or, now, merits as rewards for well-kept ones. There’s also the issue of how co-ed visitation might affect roommate relationships. Picture the inevitable scenario of the student who constantly has his or her significant other around. Is it fair for their room-mate to be forced to leave or become a third-wheel in their own room? Dorm rooms should be a place of refuge, not yet another arena for social combat

See BORELLY, Page 4

Cassie Borelly

This is the first installment of the series “From Dell to Dell,” a first-person account of the experiences of one Hill student through all four years at the school. The entire series will be pub-lished on our Web site, www.thehillews.net, at the end of the student’s sixth form year, in the spring of 2016.

The title of the series is meant to evoke the beginning and end of a student’s Hill experience -- from living in Dell Village to jumping in the Dell at commencement.

The student will remain anony-mous so they can write about life at Hill as they see it. We hope you enjoy it.

So far my freshman year at Hill has been what you would ex-pect; some great things, some

good things, and some things that are simply ridiculous. Though living in the dorm has presented some difficulties, we all have a blast. Sometimes it seems

DRUMLine Live performed its vast array of musical styles on the CFTA stage. See article on Page 6.

Hill School students, faculty, and staff vote in a mock election conducted by David Wolter’s AP US Government class. Results of the voting are on Pages 2 and 3.

Going to the Polls

And the Beat Goes On Record Breaker

Deanna Mayza ‘13, shown after a goal against Germantown, set the Hill girls’ soccer scoring record Saturday at Mercersburg with her 61st career goal.

PHOTO BY NICOLE BOARDMAN ‘13

PHOTO BY JENNIFER BECHTEL

From Dell to Dell

PAGE 2 THE HILL NEWS VOLUME 110, ISSUE 3

Conversative (Alvey) vs. Liberal (Swartz) With an upcoming presidential election, Republican 6th Former Eugene Alvey and Democratic 6th Former Alec Swartz explained where exactly they stand on the issues of today and who they support in the presidential election. Known to the student body as the most conservative and liberal students on campus, these two colorful figures battle it out on the issues. After each student’s answer a grade is given based on whether the response is Very Conservative, Moderately Conservative, Moderate, Moderately Liberal, or Very Liberal.

Q: Would you consider abortion a wom-an’s right?

No! I have a firm belief that life starts at the time of conception and so I consider abortion to be murder. No one has the right to commit murder under any circumstances.

Grade: Very Conservative

Yes, yes I do. Now, my stance on abortion may be different than people of the same kind of political background. I believe that abortion is a woman’s right in cases of rape and incest, however, I am a bit iffy on the whole case of using it as contraception. However if it really came down to it, yes, I would say that abortion is a woman’s right . . . I think it’s fair to say that you can abort in the first trimester.

Grade: Moderate Liberal

Q: Should Social Security continue to be under federal control?

To an extent. I think it’s good that the government requires people to put a little bit of their money away through-out their life so that they have some-thing when they get older. At the same time though, I think people should be able to realize for themselves that they need to save money.

Grade: Moderately Liberal

Yes.

Grade: Very Liberal

Q: Should sexual orientation be protect-ed by Civil Rights Laws?

It really is choice . . . It has to do with the culture of it I think. There are so many people that are so against it that you really need a culture change in order for that line to be changed by the government.

Grade: Very Liberal

I think yes because they are a mi-nority and in all cases you need to pro-tect the pursuit of happiness for minorities.

Grade: Very Liberal

Q: Should some religion and prayer be allowed in public schools?

Yes. I remember a big deal a cou-ple of years ago was the “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. Our country was founded on Christian values. You can say what you want about that, but there were Christian values which the country was founded on and I think it is important to remember where we come from as far as that’s concerned. And for the most part I think it is 75% of Americans that are Christian* and the rest of them do believe in some form of a god -- whether they be Jewish, Hindu, or Islam, they have a god that they be-lieve in and this is not specifying a spe-cific god at that either.

*75.99% of Americans are Christian ac-cording to a report by the Census Bureau in 2008

Grade: Very Conservative

No. Public schools are meant for education and are meant for secular ed-ucation. If you want religious education, go to a church. Also, there isn’t one reli-gion that a school has. You’re going to have Muslims in a school, you’re going to have Jews in a school, and you’re going to have Hindus in a school. So, to say that there is one person that you need to pray to in a school is just completely and utterly offensive to all of the other peo-ple of different religions and cultures that are in that school.

Grade: Very Liberal

Q: Do you believe the death penalty is moral?

Moral? No. Necessary? Sometimes. While it is not right for us to take some-one’s life, a lot of times it is the safest thing for the population. Prisons fill up, it’s a fact, and the amount of security and money that needs to be put in to take care of terrible people sometimes isn’t worth it in the long run. In the end it just costs the tax payer more.

Grade: Moderately Conservative

The government should have a higher moral authority when it comes to stuff like this. The government shouldn’t be acting on the natural response.

Grade: Very Liberal

Q: What is your stance on a mandatory three strike sentencing law?

I think it should have one. Other than being a case by case basis through the court, it should also depend on the felonies. For instance, with felonies that involve harming others I understand why they should be out after three strikes on that one. But things that they have problems with, for instance a drug addict who sells drugs to get money to buy their own drugs, that is a physical problem they have and they should be in rehab, not in jail for life.

Grade: Moderate

I would say that defiantly sounds better than the death penalty. I think

there [are] better avenues of trying to stop crime than just throwing people in jail for life.

Grade: Very Liberal

Q: To what extent should gun sales be regulated?

I think in order for someone to purchase a gun they should have to prove that they are a competent user of a weapon. They should have to go through a gun safety course and be issued a per-mit. If they have a bunch of felonies that involve violence, they should not get a gun. That seems pretty obvious to me. We have a right to bear arms in this country and it’s a right that we should be allowed to keep as well if we can prove that we are competent with our weapons.

Grade: Moderate

Certainly I don’t think people should be walking around with assault rifles -- that’s kind of ridiculous. I think that if it comes down to it and people have the right to bear arms,then they should have the ability to have some kind of weapon, but not an assault rifle. I think that’s ridiculous. Defiantly re-new the Assault Riles Ban. That’s just common sense thinking. Why would you want your citizens walking around with assault rifles?

Grade: Moderate

Student Vote n Virgil Goode 0.01%

n Gary Johnson 3%

n Barack Obama 42%

n Mitt Romney 51%

n Jill Stein 2%

n Other 2%

EXCusEs EXCusEsKATE WhiTnEy

BY SPENCER ISEN ‘13

VOLUME 110, ISSUE 3 THE HILL NEWS PAGE 3

Q: What type of tax bracket should the United States use?

We should use a Progressive tax bracket that taxes everyone. In our country right now, If you make less than $50,000 a year you essentially do not pay taxes. Now I’m not saying that someone who doesn’t make much money should have to give a lot of it up. They should have a very low percent tax but they should still have taxes that they have to pay. Understandably, people with more money, who are wealthier in the higher tax brackets, should pay a higher per-cent [of income] and pay more taxes but it doesn’t need to be quite as high as it is at the moment. Europe has their top tax bracket at 70% tax on their wealthiest individuals and it is killing the European economy right now. Are we at 70% right now? No, not at all. I think the highest tax bracket pays 45%-ish at most, but

that is a lot of money you are taking out of the economy and giving to the gov-ernment to put on things that, well, aren’t always necessary.

Grade: Moderate

Not a flat tax, the flat tax drives me insane, but I think a tax relative to their income. If you make more you spend more in taxes, if you make less you spend less in taxes. A flat tax dispropor-tionately affects the lower classes. So, that’s the problem with that because they are going to be paying the same percentage as the wealthy and that dis-proportionately affects the lower classes because they are going to have the same tax rate as the wealthy. They’re not pay-ing the same but they’re still dispropor-tionately taxed.

Grade: Moderately Liberal

Q: Should illegal immigrants ever be granted United States citizenship?

Illegal immigrants should be de-ported back to their home countries. Even if they come in and are deported back they should be allowed the oppor-tunity to apply for a green card or some form of visa to enter the United States. And that should be allowed. If they work hard in the United States, then they should be allowed to earn their citizen-ship as well. I believe that allowing mas-sive amounts of illegal immigrants to come across the Mexican border specifi-cally costs the American tax payer way too much money in the long run be-cause of the amount of money that is placed on welfare for people who claim to be legal who are illegal immigrants.

Grade: Very Conservative

I was reading an article by the Harvard Law Review that said that

illegal immigration threw production $88,000 more back into the economy than what they take in food stamps and government education and stuff like that. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know . . . Should they be given legal citi-zenship? Yes. When? If they come to this country and they seek citizenship then yes they should be able to get citizenship.

Grade: Moderately Liberal

Q: What is your stance on universal health care?

There are some jobs that it is nec-essary that the United States govern-ment take on. Health care is not one of them. By allowing private health cares to compete with each other by offering the best health care for the best prices,

you are going to get the American peo-ple the best possible health care they can get. When the government subsi-dizes it and tries to take control of health care, that causes serious problems for the American people because they will not get the same quality health care that they could get from private firms. As you can tell I am not a big fan of Universal Health care.

Grade: Very Conservative

I support universal health care ful-ly. I believe healthcare is a universal right and therefore, everybody should have the right to health care. On the in-stance that people who are older, people who are younger, people who are wom-en, or even people with illnesses, it’s re-ally hard for them to get health care and so it would be best to put in a universal health care system so that everybody at least would have access to health care. Now if you’re trying to go on my idea of the Affordable Care Act [Obamacare] I don’t think it’s enough. It’s a good start though. It’s a good start in the right di-rection…It’s going to be really difficult to implement in America because we have that long history of private medical in-surance. Right now, I don’t think it’s the time to implement it due to slow eco-nomic growth. I’m not making a case to repeal the Affordable Care Act because I’m a supporter of it. It’s in the right di-rection as I said. I’m not advocating for its repeal. I think that it could have been done at a better time because right now we have slow economic growth... It would have been better for something after the recession and we’re slowly get-ting out of the recession.

Grade: Moderately Liberal

Q: Who will you be supporting in the up-coming presidential election?

Mitt Romney

Grade: Virgil Goode*

I almost want to say Jill Stein but I feel like that would get a lot of head turns. I mean I have an Obama sticker in my room so I guess Obama. Jill Stein is a close second.

Grade: Jill Stein*

*Results from OnTheIssues.org

Faculty and Staff Voten Virgil Goode 0%

n Gary Johnson 0%

n Barack Obama 71%

n Mitt Romney 26%

n Jill Stein 1%

n Other 1%

Question 5Would you support a Federal Marriage Amend-ment to the Constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman?

STUDENTS

n Yes 37%

n No 62%

FACULTY AND STAFF

n Yes 19%

n No 81%

Question 3What is the best way for the United States to prevent the development of nuclear weapons in Iran and North Korea?

Economic sanctions 21% 43%

UN diplomacy 31% 32%

US led military action 23% 1%

Positive incentives 26% 23%

StudentsFaculty and Staff

Question 2The controversial Keystone pipeline would bring fossil fuels extracted from sand and shale resources in western Canada across the mid-section of the US to refineries in Texas, creating numerous economic benefits while also potentially having serious environmental consequences. Do you agree or disagree that the construction of the Keystone pipeline should go forward?

Question 4In your opinion, what is the best way to reduce the federal budget deficit?

STUDENTS

FACULTY AND STAFF

Question 1The Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission allows corpora-tions, unions and “Super PACs” to spend as much money as they want to support or oppose political candidates. Do you support or oppose this ruling?

0

20

40

60

80

100

Teach

& Facu

lty

Oppose

Teach

er & Fa

culty

Support

Student O

ppose

Student S

upport

SUPP

ORT

SUPP

ORT

OPPO

SE

OPPO

SE

Student Teachers/Faculty

47%53% 16%

84%

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Teach

and Facu

lty D

isagree

Teach

er & Fa

culty

Agree

Student D

isagree

Student A

gree

AGRE

E 56

%

DISA

GREE

44%

AGRE

E 41

%

DISA

GREE

59%

Student Teachers/Faculty

Question 6Do you think it is the responsibility of the fed-eral government to make sure all Americans have health care coverage, or is that not the responsibility of the federal government?

STUDENTS FACULTY AND STAFF

PAGE 4 THE HILL NEWS VOLUME 110, ISSUE 3

between and among the sexes. “Studying between opposite

genders will become easier.” The Ryan Library, located in the center of cam-pus, is open almost every night during study hall and welcomes group study on the first floor and at the tables in the Writing Center. In addition, sixth formers are allowed to study in the Student Center and Map Room. There is no shortage of group study space that would justify opening up dorm rooms during study hall. Furthermore, prefects are already struggling to keep halls academically focused during study hall. The introduction of the opposite sex on halls would only provide more of a distraction and lead to an even less productive evening for all.

“Relationships between males and females will become more significant and healthier.” In what way does SGA think that co-ed bedrooms would make relationships “more significant”? Students alone in a dorm room have two options: either they platonically hang out or they become physically involved. The relationships of those interested in honest, friendly interac-tion gain no significance from being in a dorm room as opposed to being in the student center or one of the other co-ed places on campus. This leaves the boys and girls who are looking to become “more significant” in ways that directly violate Hill’s sexual intimacy policy. Let’s face the facts here: there’s nothing wholesome or healthy about teenagers alone in a bedroom. It’s a situation most parents would not allow in their own houses, so why would the school permit it in the dormitories?

“It will prepare students for college, careers, and life.” Taken directly from The Hill School mission statement, these nine words accurately sum up what Hill is all about. Hill is a prepa-ratory school whose goal is to instill in students the knowledge and skills needed to succeed in life after Hill, whatever those may be. By the time graduation rolls around, students can pride themselves on their repertoire of good life habits—study skills, time management, social competence with people of all ages, and more. What skill could co-ed visitation add to that list other than the ability to sit in

the same room with members of the opposite sex? There is no “prepara-tion” needed to learn how to behave civilly when unsupervised in a private space—it will come just as naturally to current and future Hill kids as it has to the thousands that have already gradu-ated. Complaints have made it back from alumni to the eager ears at Hill, but none claim that social ineptitude was in issue in college. In fact, most Hill alumni would probably agree that boarding at Hill, sans co-ed dormito-ries, prepared them for college life.

We understand that boys and girls want to be able to play together for their various reasons—some have aca-demic obligations, some have mixed-gender cliques, and some want to revel in the mystics of adolescent romance. Whatever the reason, it’s understand-able. What we don’t understand is how the SGA and the deans can logically ap-prove opening up dorm rooms for this purpose when common rooms would suffice. Common rooms in Wendell, Foster, Rolfe, Scheerer, U.S. East, U.S. West, and Ferenbach are already co-ed during designated times throughout the week. Even these open common room times, however, are limited be-cause faculty cannot feasibly supervise the space for more than a few hours a week. Some common rooms, includ-ing all of those in Dutch Village and three of the those found in Dell Village, cannot be co-ed at any point during the week because they are in the basements of the dorms and therefore too difficult to supervise. If it is difficult for faculty to adequately oversee one space in each dorm, how could they possibly monitor every room in the building?

Dean of Students David Allain said co-ed visitation is “too big of a step at this point.” He’s right. Hill ought to start a little less dramatically, maybe by opening all common rooms on campus during the SGA’s proposed co-ed hours. The common rooms in dormitories have the potential to be practical and safe recreational areas for students. Opening them to boys and girls could make it possible for Hill to modernize its co-ed visitation policy enough to be competitive with the policies of the other Ten Schools without sacrificing the integrity of our traditional, single-sex living spaces.

BORELLY, From Page 1

GOFUSby HuNTEr GofuS, aS ToLD To Zak HuDak

MERiT sysTEMhADLEy KnAPP

Gooooood boy, here’s your treat!

He says what his fellow students won’t. He welcomes criticism. No issue is too big or too small for him. He is known as Gofus.

My usual half-day tradi-tion is to go to my favor-ite breakfast place, The

Sunflower Café in Pottstown. I’ve been going there since I was five years old. I know the waitresses there. They’re like aunts to me. I went to one of their weddings. Basically, we have really close rela-tionships. Since I was five, I’ve got-ten the same meal every time: three eggs over-easy with home fries, bacon, and three pieces of white toast – a pretty balanced meal. It’s healthy and delicious. Last time I was there, I was feeling a little spicy, if you will. I decided that I wanted to order something with a little kick to it. So, I went with a club sand-wich. I thought about going with the chili, but I thought “No, not hot enough.” I asked them to put hot peppers on it, thinking, “This can’t be as bad as a Wawa sandwich with their hot banana peppers on it.” Boy was I wrong. I ordered my sand-wich with habanero peppers. Now, this was my first interaction with the habanero pepper. Let’s just say it’s not something to be dealt with lightly. After I order the sandwich, Jen, the waitress whose wedding I went to, asks me if I’m sure I “want to do this.” I was just like, “Please, please.” So, she brings me a glass of milk and of ice and I’m like, “Take it back. I don’t need this.” Then, I take my first bite and, trying to be a big man, I’m like, “This isn’t that bad.” So, I plow through the rest of the sandwich and I’m sitting there with a big smile on my face. Then, it finally hits me and I feel my throat start to swell. Beads of sweat start dripping from every gland on my body. My eyes get a bloodshot red and tears start flowing out. I excuse myself and go to the bathroom, where I proceed to throw up into the toilette. Then, I come back and finish my milk – forgetting that I’m lactose intolerant. I feel my stom-ach churn with a spicy, sickening feel. It took a good thirty minutes for that feeling to cease. The lesson to be learned is to stick to what you know, because when you take a habanero pepper, you’re going to get your butt kicked.

I don’t understand why we make such a big deal out of de-merits when they’re really not that bad -- you can get four demerits a list [as a 6th former]. If you read the handbook, there are a lot of stupid rules – a lot going against dress code, a lot of silly things. But to be honest, have you ever gotten a demerit for having rivets on your pants? I know I haven’t and I love to bend the dress code. I look like a goon every day of my life and that’s just a part of being Gofus. I really

don’t think demerits are that bad. The main thing you’re going to get demerits for is skipping chapel, a required meeting, or lunch. I think the Deans’ Office does a good job at understanding that sometimes you have to skip those things, whether it be to eat if you missed breakfast or to finish typing a paper if you couldn’t get it done the night before. If you have to do that more than four times in a week, then you are just not planning your time cor-rectly. That’s just a fact. So, all in all, the Deans’ Office is understanding. They respect the fact that we’re kids and sometimes we can’t live up to the ideal Hill School student’s ways. So, I appreciate that from them.

I worked tech for DRUMline Live and it was the most physically tasking eighteen hours of my life. You can interpret that as, “Wow, he’s terribly un-athletic and has an awful work drive,” and that may be true, but at the same time, it was extremely taxing work. I have come out of that with a newfound respect for the people that work tech. I think that what you see from the stage is about an eight of what actu-ally goes on. The actors, they do de-serve credit – those drummers were phenomenal, the best of the best. You can’t take away their credit, but you also can’t forget that that’s the end product. You’re missing the en-tire beginning. I’ll give you what we went through. So, the day started off at 8:00 AM. We met Keith, who was the head coordinating guy of the show. Keith introduced us to the sound guy, the lighting guy, and the workhorse, as I like to call him, James. We unloaded an eighteen wheeler, packed with about a 100 yards of extremely heavy equip-ment. I calculated it to weigh about 15,000 pounds of equipment. It was probably more. It was just ridicu-lous. We unloaded all that onto the stage and that was done by about 11:00. We started rigging, which involves climbing up ladders to a thing called “the grid,” which I nev-er knew existed. It’s about 100 feet in the air we had to stand on metal beams and haul chains into the air. The entire process wasn’t finished until around 6:30, ten and a half hours later. Hopefully after read-ing this, when we watch a show, we will give the tech people the credit they deserve. I think it’s easy to not realize what they do. I’ll be an actor in Anything Goes and I know that by the end, I will definitely support the tech crew full on. At the end of Anything Goes, we should take a moment and really appreciate the people who really make the show, the tech crew.

VOLUME 110, ISSUE 3 THE HILL NEWS PAGE 5

Boys Soccer Head Coach Chris Drowne

To win we need to... “Play a solid opening five minutes and not get ourselves in a hole.”

Hill player to watch: 6th former William Worrilow whose assigned mark has scored just one goal in

nearly 1000 minutes

L’Ville player to watch: PG goalkeeper Dylan Key who is capable of posting a shutout in any match

Team stat: Scored the opening goal in 12 of the 14 matches going back through pre-season

Last Year’s Result: 2-0 win

Boys Water Polo Head Coach Doug Jones

To win we need to... ”Generate shots in the strike zone and demonstrate

poise against their spectacular goalie.”

Hill player to watch: Brendan Metcalf, whose defen-sive play can change the course of the game. He has

been able to utilize the center of every opponent

L’Ville player to watch: Junior goalkeeper Flynn Walker -- we only scored 11 of 45 shots on him last

time we played L’Ville

Team stat: In their last 4 games, they have converted 16 of 27 man advantage opportunities.

Last year’s result: 11-12 loss

Girls Water Polo Head Coach Thomas Johnson

To win we need to... “Play smart, limit turnovers, and be aggressive on offence.”

Hill player to watch: Liz Cossel, who has had 13 Goals, 17 Assists, and 41 Steals this year.

L’Ville player to watch: Sophia Monaghan, who has been named to the 2012 USA Women’s Water Polo

Junior Team.

Team stat: They are the first team in Hill history with 8 girls to score double-digit goals.

Last year’s result: 6-12 loss

Girl Soccer Head Coach Ryck Walbridge

To win we need to... “Play as cohesive team and be aggressive. Last year’s team was good, and this

year’s team is good too. We have come a long way.”

Hill player to watch: Deana Mayza

L’Ville player to watch: captain Kristen Gatti (forward)

Team stat: Currently 9-4-1. Goalie Julia Hernan has an 84% save average.

Last Year’s Result: 1 -1 Tie

Field Hockey Head Coach Julie deLaurentis

To beat L’Ville we need to... “Want it more than them.”

Hill player to watch: Laura Donald ‘14. She is a midfielder who has a scoring touch, notching eight

goals so far this season.

Lawrenceville player to watch: Julia Minnetian. She is the captain and leading goal scorer for the Big Red team. Look for her to be a strong offensive presence.

Last year’s result: 2-3 loss

Girls Cross CountryHead Coach Dan McMains

To win we need to... “Break up the L’ville pack by dispersing the strong group of runners and we need

to use our home course to our advantage and be ready to compete on game day.”

Hill player to watch: Monica Redfern has been the top runner for every meet that she has run in.”

L’Ville players to watch: L’ville has a group of six run-ners that all run about the same time, and are very

difficult to break up. They do have one runner that is usually out in front, but the runners that are really

important to watch are in the pack.

Last year’s result: 21-40 loss

Football Assistant Coach Stuart Lindberg

Hill Player to watch: Brandt Beck 14'. He is on the field for almost the entire game, as a linebacker on defense, running back on offense, and many differ-

ent positions for special teams. He's leading the team in sacks this year.

L’Ville player to watch: Randall West '14. He is the quarterback for Lawrenceville, who's had a fairly

successful season. He was recently named the Trenton Times "Offensive Player of the Week"

Last year’s result: 15-42 loss

Boys Cross Country Head Coach Chris DeLucia

To beat L’Ville we need to... “Run harder than we’ve ran before.”

Hill Runner to watch: Luke Andersen '14. Luke was named one of three captains at the beginning of the season, and posted a great time of 17:47 helping the

Hill team to a third place finish at MAPLs.

L’ville players to watch- Robert Daniels

Daniels is a co-captain of the Lawrenceville team, and posted an outstanding time of 16:39 against

Peddie earlier this month.

Last year’s result: 15-42 Loss

BY ZAK HUDAK, ‘13

This year’s Lawrenceville pep ral-ly is “not exactly a pep rally,” said Ari Baum, first-year economics teacher and impresario of the Quest for the Crest, who headed the organization of the event. Baum, along with 12 students, has planned a “new type of pep rally” for the night of Friday, November 2.

The biggest changes are the loca-tion and the performers. The event took place in Gillison Gym in recent years, but this year it’s scheduled to be

outside, as it was before the 1990s. This is now subject to the path of Hurricane Sandy, which, as of Friday, was being forecast to hit somewhere in the north-east on Sunday. Holding the rally out-side “will allow us to have a lot more space to do some pretty sick stuff,” Baum said. Also, athletes competing against Lawrenceville will not be re-quired to perform skits, as in the past, but students not suiting up on Saturday will be allowed to join the program. “It just drained a lot of their energy and didn’t allow them to perform at their

highest level,” Athletic Director Seth Eilberg said.

Baum refused to reveal any details in hopes of a surprise, but said, “I can guarantee lots of cool images and a lot of pageantry.” He urged students to give the new event a chance, saying, “I’m not trying to step on anyone’s traditions, but I think we can get people really excited. It’s become too much about beating Lawrenceville and not enough about being proud to be Hill.”

Girls Tennis Head Coach Kerriann Herdelin

To beat L’Ville we need to... “Have a positive attitude and mental toughness.”

Hill player to watch: Courtney Mauk. She is undefeated in MAPL matches.

L’VIlle player to watch: Maria Martinovic.

Last year’s result: 3-4 loss.

For L’Ville, a ‘New’ Pep Rally

PAGE 6 THE HILL NEWS VOLUME 110, ISSUE 3

like I am the only one not fighting with someone else. Most of my classes are the same as ever; too slow. I miss my family, though I worry more that they miss me, and my friends from home haven’t changed a bit. Every single second of my time since day one has been sectioned off for me. I barely have time to take a deep breath between one thing and the next.

Before I left, everyone from home told me that it would probably be very different here than what I’m used to. The opposite is true. In and out of classes, I see the same work ethics, the same cliques and social divisions that I saw in my public middle school. Many people are obviously glad that they are here, while others show blatant disre-gard for the expectations you would expect to find at a private boarding school.

The funny thing about being sepa-rated from the friends you’ve known for years is that the good ones keep in touch, and the flighty, kind-of friends simply fade away. However, even to the few people I consider my closest friends, life at Hill is hard to describe to an outsider. It’s like trying to explain sunlight to a blind man. They just have no context for understanding all of the absurdities the come with living with hundreds of other people all the time.

So far, the friends that I have made are mostly genuine, dynamic people, and everyone here has an interest-ing background. Many people come from highly privileged families, this is glaringly obvious, and many are not ac-customed to living with others and hav-ing to compromise daily. I have always made friends easily, simply because I easily endure annoyance and am quick to compromise and instinctively per-ceive other people’s tolerance towards me. Some people here are not so lucky.

Having a roommate is kind of a privileged relationship for me; we share things, talk about things, and are some-times forced to spend time with one another, which in my case has been re-ally fun. After a few weeks, the people you live with begin to truly emerge, along with their respective annoying habits and pet peeves. Some people are simply bad at dorm life and don’t know how to live with people other than their families, while many of us thrive on the group psyche and almost constantly fun and friendly atmosphere.

Unlike a lot of people, my fam-ily has no history at this school, nor a strong belief in private schooling. I had always imagined myself doing very well in an ordinary school, not going to some fancy, private school--especially not a boarding school. I never aspired to leave my ordinary schooling experi-ence, and was content with being an overachiever in public school. The idea of coming to Hill arose from a family friend, and before I knew it, I was inter-viewing and applying. Though I never would have predicted it, my parents and I actually agreed on this. I had al-ways hated the slow pace of my classes at home, and my easily-earned grades, and wanted a different experience for high school. They did not want to force me into anything, as some of my friends from home suspected, but were content with where I was.

I still am uncertain whether this is necessary for me and if it was the right thing. I was far above average in public school academically, and had a reputation that preceded me. I was also in classes just as advanced, some more so, than here. So far, other than the reputation and name brand of The Hill School, I have seen little that is different academically than your average public high school, rather a disappointment for someone who came looking specifically for a challenging learning environment.

Not everything has been a disap-pointment however. English, Spanish and math have been my favorite classes so far, mostly because they are dy-namic, fast-paced, and challenging, and because the teachers are great.

HAM, biology, and PDS make me want to rip my hair out. All of the biol-ogy curriculum is a review from what I learned last year, which of course is no one’s fault but is very frustrating, and we do exactly the same thing every day in class. In HAM, the subject matter is simply uninteresting to me, though the classes are usually fun and interactive. Personal Development Studies. PDS. I honestly do not understand the point of this class. There is no specific aim for each class period, there are no spe-cific skills or information that we have learned, and my free time is limited. Some people say that they enjoy it, simply because there is no homework or classwork, and they can relax, but I would much rather have a free period in which to get something done, or choose to relax in my own way.

Time passes in a blur here; weeks go by in the blink of an eye. Most of my time so far has consisted of suffer-ing through the laborious schoolwork and obligations to get the few patches of free time that I have been granted. Having seven classes and a JV sport, the only time that I have to my own is two free periods all week, the short hour before dinner, about half an hour after study hall, and from Saturday afternoon until Sunday evening.

My schoolwork eats away at some of this time, as study hall is simply not long enough. My freshman 10:30 curfew has made time an issue, too. Though I don’t usually want to stay up doing work past this time, it would be nice if I were allowed to quietly study on my bed, or read a book before I drift off. Along with everything else, required events like speakers and “mandatory

fun” activities like Blue vs. Grey dis-rupt things and detract from the time I could use to have my own fun, in a way that I want. From the upper formers I have learned that it only gets harder from here. Though the content may not get more challenging in every class, the amount of work certainly will, and the amount of free time available will only decrease.

The week before I came to Hill, my mum told me over and over that if I didn’t like it my first year, or if things went really badly, I could just come home and continue normal life as if none of this had happened. So far, I like Hill. When people ask, I say, “I’m fine.” I like the people, I like the campus, and I like the faculty. But the reason I came to Hill was for classes that would chal-lenge me beyond public school, and prepare me above and beyond for col-lege, and that I have not found. School morals and old buildings are nice, but if I can get the same quality education at home as here, I would rather live at home, sleep in my home bed, see my home friends, eat my home food, and pay my home tuition. I certainly like Hill, but I don’t love Hill. Not yet.

ThE hiLL nEWsEditor-in-Chief: Zak Hudak ’13

Managing Editor: Cassie Borelly ’13

Associate Editors: Alex Bianchi ’14, Steph Barron ’14,

My Linh Luu ’14, Alexzandria Robbins ’14, Erin Lee ’14

Photo Editor: Nicole Boardman ’13

Cartoonists: Hadley Knapp ’13, Kate Whitney ’13

Advisers: Tony Reid ’75, Diane Richards

A Beat You Could Dance To

DELL, from Page 1

OnE-ThOusAnD hAnDshAKEsChAu LE

by Hadley Knapp ‘13

Several Hill students from the Ellis Theatre Guild were missing from their classes on Monday, October 22. For al-most nineteen hours they had been set-ting up the CFTA theater for DRUMLine Live – a show created by the music team of the movie Drumline and based on the Historically Black College and University marching band tradition. However, the tech crew wasn’t irritated by their hard work. “It was definitely worth the setup,” explained Annie Keeler, 6th former. She wasn’t even bothered by the event being mandatory, saying, “I don’t think that it really mattered that much…a lot of peo-ple would’ve come anyway.”

Annie was right; at 7:10 the CFTA lobby was flooded with eager students, some of whom had seen DRUMLine be-fore, some who had heard good things about it from previous Hill students, and others who were simply curious. Even the students who weren’t excited for a mandatory event were pleasantly surprised. 6th former Eszter Veto admit-ted that, “It was better than I thought it would be.”

The show started off slow, obscurely explaining the drum’s origin in Africa, but it quickly drew enthusiasm as the drum major danced in front of flash-ing lightning before receiving his baton from the CFTA heavens. DRUMLine gave a brief history of the music genres they performed, including Motown and Swing, consequently educating as well as entertaining the community. The au-dience was engaged even further when

The Hill’s very own 5th former Nana Owusu was invited onstage to take part in a rendition of The Temptation’s hit classic, “My Girl.” Just when it seemed the crowd couldn’t be more keyed up, there was a stunning glow-in-the-dark adaptation of the current pop-culture phenomenon, “Gangnam Style.” By the end of the night DRUMLine had every-one out of their seats and moving to the music, “There wasn’t one dull mo-ment,” said 6th former Grace Wood. Rachel Sovia, a 5th form member of the tech crew, summed up the performance well: “Technically, it was a well-prepared and well-performed show. Aesthetically, it was great, the lights and music were outstanding. And personally, the crew were great teachers and great to work with.”

Craz-EDZak Hudak

I wholeheartedly support the reserva-tion of a special place in hell for the inventor of the early decision college

application. The horror of choosing one school to put all my chips on has far outweighed the hope of having a better chance of getting into that school. The only thing that helped me through the last two stressful months was the knowledge that I was not alone, that half of my 6th form classmates, many of whom have better grades than I do and therefore much more to lose, were going through similar stress.

The start of my 6th form year could have easily been a beautiful glimpse of the end; I could have found total happi-ness in just the knowledge that I would graduate nine months later. Instead, my daily routine became something like this:

I wake up with a headache and spend 10 minutes trying to force my contacts through sleep sand. I’d been laying in bed awake until 2:30 a.m. wondering if I’d picked the right place to apply ED. “Yes, yes,” I’d finally told myself. “You got it right. Stop worrying.”

I groggily navigate my way to my first class and talk with someone who heard something from someone else who said something that completely destroys my well-thought-out plan. I open my laptop and pull up collegecon-fidential.com to read blogs on early decision at specific schools. As always, they all contradict each other. I decide which one I trust most and come up with a new ED strategy.

Next, I stop by the office of

Mr. Allen, a man who has grounds to file a restraining order against me, for the tenth time this week in hopes that he’ll tell me that I’ve finally picked the right school. He offers me facts. I stub-bornly and illogically refuse to listen. A friend tells me that Nabil Shaikh or Mike Wang or Jake Eckhart or some other certifiable genius is applying to the same school ED that I am planning to apply to. That ends that. I can’t apply there now. I have no chance.

I go see Mr. Reid in the Writing Center. He manages to find fault in every one of my choices, whether it be location, student population, teaching quality, or some other problem. I talk to my father on the phone. After yet another day of analyzing statistics and articles, he has a new plan for me to scale the Ivy wall into Harvard. Luckily, I am used to his college rants and I give it little weight.

So I change my plan yet again -- this time to apply to a school that was miraculously okayed by both Mr. Allen and Mr. Reid -- and I’m content. Until I get into bed that night. About 1:30 a.m., I come to understand, finally, that I needed to revise my strategy. Again.

Nonetheless, my troubles turned to relief the second I clicked “send” on the common app. If I had it to do over, I might have skipped early decision and spent my time trying to get straight A’s, preparing for SAT subject tests, and working on an important project. But hey, at least my 6th form year got off to a fun start.