A Different School

By Margaret Curtis

The girls at my old school were, in a word, crazy. On free periods, we would join lower schoolers’ PE classes, play Red Rover with second-graders, and, due largely to our size, we usually won. On days when our morale was low, our class would gather in the hallways, hold hands and sing “Kumbaya, My Lord” in a circle. In high school, we would ask our history teacher, Dr. Bord, to take us to the playground on the roof and spin us around on a giant turntable. I went to the Nightingale-Bamford School in New York, an all-girls school in a seven-story, carpeted apartment building on 92nd street. Clad in pleated skirts (exactly the same as the Blue Key Head uniform kilts, but much shorter) and ill-fitting polos, all 500 of us kindergarteners through Seniors crowded 92nd street each morning and afternoon. Starting in middle school...

Brushing Up on Tibetan Freedom

By Arnold Wong

When I learned that Andover alum Michael Liss ’91 was coming to our campus to discuss his experiences as a free-Tibet activist last fall, I was irritated that my term-long absence from Andover hindered me from attending his presentation. Liss is a political activist who was detained in China during the Beijing 2008 Olympics for protesting the government’s rule in Tibet.

My opinion is that you must either be deluded or deficient in world history if you fully support a “free” Tibet. The same statement applies if you are an avid follower of the Dalai Lama. Allow me to justify my stance. Like it or not, Tibet has been a part of China for a long time. Not that this is a necessary or even valid argument against the independence of Tibet, but it seems that anyone who fights for a free Tibet foolishly attempts to argue with...

Live in the Trees

By Ben Talarico

There comes a time in life when a book deeply affects you. That time came for me during Lower year. It was winter, and the snow was still on the ground. Everytxhing seemed frozen, old, stuck in time. There was a certain lifelessness that seemed so natural. In a few short weeks, the snow would melt and my mind would not be occupied by the imagination, but by passing the Frisbee on the Great Lawn. However, that time had not yet come. I was reading Italo Calvino’s Baron in the Trees in Mr. Tortorella’s English 200 class. The book is a fictitious account of a boy named Cosimo who decides to reject society and goes to live up in the trees. While living in the trees, he learns to become self-sufficient, creating everything he needs to survive. He develops a love of reading, and much of what...

Poets and Andover

By Max Block

What matters? Why does it matter? Last week my English homework included reading various Walt Whitman poems. At the beginning of class my English teacher launched into an explanation of why Whitman matters. Typical of most famous poets, he changed some aspect of poetry. I his particular case, he introduced what we now think of as free verse. Whitman is important within the world of poetry because he changed it. Why is this justification for his stature?

Another famous poet, Homer, is important for very different reasons. He wrote “The Odyssey”, an epic poem that stands as one of the towering works of western literature. Why is he so important? Because “The Odyssey” is not just an epic poem, it is the epic poem. Along with “The Iliad”, “The Aeneid”, “La Divina Commedia” and “Paradise Lost” it defines and entire genre of poetry. Does its archetypal nature justify...

Just Do It

By Micere Johnson Shoveler

After reading the article, “Our Right to Bake,” written by fellow dorm members Lucy Arnold and Kerry Lanzo in last week’s Phillipian, I felt that as a proctor of the dorm and Co-Head of Women’s Forum I ought to provide an opposing viewpoint from at least one girl in Day Hall.

Snow duty for Day Hall consists of shoveling two meager pathways and a circumference around two fire hydrants. That’s it. Paul Revere requires girls to shovel the circumference of their dormitory as I understand, and they do it without hired help. So maybe our task seems too trivial for some people to take seriously, but “Non Sibi” was one of the reasons I chose to come to this school. I am not comfortable with the idea of having someone else do my work. Manual labor is ‘“unpleasant,” but we are not here to neatly navigate around the...

Our Pre-Post-Racial Society

By Jake Romanow

Slavery ended 145 years ago—and white people in the United States are still unable to face our complicity in the political, economi and social oppression that black Americans have faced since the first Africans were brought to Jamestown. Certainly, we admit, our ancestors perpetrated heinous crimes against the blacks of their day, but we cannot be held personally responsible for deeds we did not ourselves commit. Yet every day, we as a society hold black Americans responsible for acts committed and uncommitted, while allowing them to bear the burden of our fathers’ atrocities which, of course, it would be wrong to ask us to do anything to rectify.

We live in an America where schools are more segregated than they were at the time of Dr. King, where identical crimes will earn minorities a harsher sentence than their white counterparts, and where the country’s number one nationally syndicated...

The Dictionary Definition

By English 542Aa

In the January 22, 2010 edition of The Phillipian, Mr. Hoyt, the Associate Dean of Students, wrote an open letter to Spike Lee requesting that Mr. Lee “accept a correction to a misconception [he] presented at the All-School Meeting.” In response to a question about whether or not black people can be racist, Mr. Lee stated that his definition of racism required the use of institutionalized power by one controlling race over another. He continued that because blacks have not had access to this power, they inherently could not be racist. Mr. Lee did, however, clarify that everyone can be prejudiced, and that the use of power distinguishes those two terms. Mr. Hoyt argued in his letter that defining racism as requiring power was “specious” or deceptively appealing. As he put it: “[a]sserting vociferously that that is how you choose to define the term and adding that...

For Legacies

By Andrew Mitchell

Spike Lee’s visit has promoted discourse on race and especially in relation to affirmative action. Mr. Jones wrote, in a Letter to the Editor last spring, the most persuasive defense for affirmative action yet printed in The Phillipian. In his Letter to the Editor, he points out the issue of legacy. He derides the “nepotistic old-boy connections” that he claims make affirmative action necessary, referencing George W. Bush ’68. Others besides Mr. Jones have pointed out to me that legacies counter the equality and meritocracy that I support. Legatees undoubtedly have a leg up when applying to prep schools and colleges. According to Lynn O’Shaughnessy, author of “The College Solution,” the latest Princeton legacy admission rate was 40 percent compared to 13.1 percent of all applicants, and the Middlebury College legacy rate was 48 percent versus 18 percent for all applicants as of 2008. However, studies show...

Define Your Terms

By Carlos Hoyt

We are all entitled to our own opinions. None of us are entitled to our own facts. - Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Dear Mr. Lee,

Thanks so much for coming to Andover and engaging with our kids and community. Your genuineness, humor and candor were great gifts.

In addition to sharing some of your personal history, emphasizing the necessity of having supportive people in one’s life and explaining how one can have confidence in the face of doubt, I was very appreciative of your effort to inspire our kids to not settle for surface level understandings of crucial things (e.g. the deep significance of MLK Day and the value of sports as a window into important social dynamics). In keeping with your admonition to dig deep into important matters in order to gain true understanding, I am hopeful that you will accept a correction to a misconception you...

Our Right to Bake

By Lucy Arnold and Kerry Lanzo

The day that the women’s rights movement bars a girls’ dorm from baking cookies for a boys’ dorm is the day that it ceases to advocate for gender equality. Women fought hard for the rights to choose their own occupations and pastimes. Thus, we choose to bake. It’s our right.

Temperature: 15 degrees Fahrenheit. Time: too early. Manual Labor: unpleasant. Snow shoveling duty? We Day Hall girls wished to evade it with a price. That price is cookies. With our newly elected Snow Czar, the Day Hall dorm community made the democratic decision to strike a deal with the nearby men of Newman House. The Snow Czar and proctors of both dorms came to the agreement that for the charge of weekly baked goods, the sweet-toothed men of Newman House would shovel our stoops and fire hydrants. Both dorms embraced this compromise – for Bio folks, it was...