Commentary
Dependent Origination
By Elizabeth Oppong
You can feel that eerie sensation all across campus. We are all closing our books and pulling out the term’s notes in preparation for four days of assessments. From a strictly personal perspective, this sensation is all too real.
A blinking black cursor explodes into splashes of blue, purple and red. Once steaming hot, a cold cup of coffee to the forehead calms my throbbing headache. A pink pillow eases the pain swirling in my lower back. The digital clock shines 2:50 A.M., and at this point only the sound of keys hitting the aluminum one by one keeps me sane. A tear burns in my eye, lingering but refusing to fall onto my cheek. My brown eyes, rimmed with red, focus and refocus on the bold line at the top of my page screeching, “Paper.” I contemplate shutting the MacBook and curling up in my bed. The...
Varsity Andover
By Jackie Lender Athlete
Student Council should run like a well-seasoned varsity team. No matter how great the team, without its loyal fans, it may just as well stay in the locker room. The fans decide whom they follow, and their choice is based on the success of the team.
You, the Andover student body, are the fans.
As your President, I would make Student Council accessible. At every Student Council meeting, which I hope to stream live with web cams, a different member from each class and each Quad would voice their concerns for that week. It may be a member of the hockey team explaining that upon returning from games, he is still hungry. He would ask us to have faculty reconsider continuous dining by providing sandwiches in the evening. Whatever the concern, unless the fan base is drawn into the game, the Presidency is useless.
However, the team must also be...
Making Progress Practical
By Mike Mackay
Part of my stance as a candidate throughout this election has been to work pragmatically and set realistic goals. As both a Lower and Upper Representative, I gained perspective on policies that had been pursued without success, such as attempts to extend gym hours under Malin Adams ’09. In my presidency, I would first like to address the things I know can be accomplished. With regards to administrative decisions, it is imperative to keep in mind that Student Council does not dictate school policy. The administration does. I believe that the use of a breathalyzer is an affront to the notion of mutual trust between students and faculty, and that actions of this nature only further the rift between these two parties. However, we must acknowledge that the our form of student government is subservient to a certain degree, and that we must obey the policies set...
Proactive Presidency
By Chris Batchelder Adaptive
I believe that when addressing the issue of Student Council’s powerlessness, one needs to keep in mind the responsibilities of both the President and Student Council. In my opinion, proactiveness and adaptability are just as important as the age-old standby of student-administration communication in terms of ensuring our student government’s effectiveness. I do not agree with the perception that Student Council is powerless, and I plan on working with Student Council in a way that strays from standardized procedure. Instead, I will attempt to establish a system that pursues the most effective means of seeing ideas through. Student Council needs to adapt to the needs of the very people it works to benefit: the students. If the students set a reasonable goal that can be reached without overstepping the budget or crossing any boundaries, then Student Council should do everything in its power to see that we...
Savor the Risk
By Allegra Asplundh-Smith ’04
This article is a follow-up piece on last week’s feature concerning female leadership at Phillips Academy.
Reflecting on the opportunities of young women at Andover seems surreal from my current vantage point as a Peace Corps Volunteer. In many corners of the world (including the green island that I currently inhabit), teenage girls balance schoolwork with carrying water and helping their parents with farming. In their lives, leadership opportunities are more likely to surface as they resolve a family conflict or raise babies than in school. Every now and then, it’s good to wake up to the simple fact that by winding up at Andover, we already won a leadership lottery. A substantial number of people in our lives expect us to tether our futures to our own ambitions. No small gift.
I decided to campaign for School President on a clear winter night, while in my prefect room...
Happiness Is Key
By Jack Sykes
I recently began thinking about what it means to be successful here at Andover. Whether it be coaches, teachers, advisors or even ourselves, people constantly remind us of our obligation to strive for “success.” Over time, however, this word has taken on a sort of mysterious allure. Success is often our aim. However, its indeterminacy seems to put it beyond our grasp. We strive to be “successful” but can rarely say what it is that we actually desire. We set it as our goal and embark in its pursuit yet often continue without direction. In short, it exists as an idyllic goal to which we head blindly yet passionately. In my short time here, however, I have realized that success comes in many forms. What meaning it takes on depends upon the person. It is unique to the individual. This is a fundamental truth that stems from...
Choose Your Own Adventure
By Thea Raymond-Sidel
When I was six, my family moved to India. My sister, who was ten at the time, liked scouring secondhand bookstores from the British colonial era with my dad. I believe it was there that she found her reason for attending boarding school: a series of books about a boarding school for English girls in Austria before World War II. Though there was a total of 62 books in the series, my sister and I made it through about 30 before we declared ourselves both too old and too broke to handle any more.
These stories were an extremely important part of my childhood. The characters weren’t the sort of let’s-learn-sewing-and-French-and-marry-at-sixteen schoolgirls either, mind you. They learned four languages, went to Oxford and the Sorbonne and became scientists and historians. They hiked up mountains, fell off cliffs and got stuck in blizzards. They escaped the Tyrol region after...
Control the Obsession
By Amanda Zhu
A celebrity is simply a well-known person. A celebrity is not necessarily a philanthropist, a role model or, unfortunately, even a good person. Boo hoo. It’s a sad reality, but it’s life. To assign such duties to celebrities merely exemplifies the rising public obsession with celebrities.
Why is that we even expect people like Taylor Momsen to be role models? She’s an actress, best known for playing Jenny Humphrey on “Gossip Girl.” This is the show “Gossip Girl” that we’re talking about, not “Sesame Street,” “Hannah Montana” or “Barney.” I personally find it implausible that teenage girls see the stars of “Gossip Girl” as role models. We’re talking about a show full of catty girls who stab each other in the back, have sex with their friends’ boyfriends and use drugs. Taylor Momsen could be a role model, but she’s not, and it’s not her responsibility to be...
My Metamorphosis
By Margaret Curtis
We can all agree that winter is the bleakest of all seasons. The cold and short days get to all of us, and everyone starts to become drained and unexcited. It is easy to become unhappy with your life and lose the drive to work hard. Students start to become tired of everything: school, friends and even themselves.
I am not implying that anyone should change themselves entirely, especially if the reason is to fit in with a different group of people. I do feel, however, that every person can make the small changes in their outlook on life that will make them happier. This winter, I have deliberately changed some of the things about myself that were weighing me down. My outlook on life, for example. Now, I live from each small victory to the next instead of waiting for huge, monumental differences in my life. I...
Don’t Shy Away
By Chris Meyer
The ephemeral excitement I felt five hours ago has drifted away. My eyelids feel like stone, but succumbing to the fatigue that permeates every corner of my body is not even a remote possibility. The objects around me have melted into one another, and the room steadily becomes a blurry mess, intensified by the harsh fluorescent light that pounds relentlessly against my forehead. Weariness has invaded my brain to the point where I can barely read, let alone compose a sentence to busy the cursor that blinks on my computer screen, no doubt taunting the feeble products of my beleaguered brain. My digital clock reads 5:00 a.m. And I begin to doubt whether it is worth finishing.
And then it’s over. At 6:00 a.m. that same morning, I completed and submitted my application for a position on Associate Board CXXXIII of The Phillipian.
If Andover stereotypes mean anything at...