News
Thank God there’s one reputable news source on campus. Unfortunately, it’s the giant white-board in the OWHL. I don’t need to read a half-page recap of the last All School Meeting (ASM) because I was there. So was everyone else; it’s in the name for Christ’s sake. And if you’re so lazy that you do end up publishing a recap, don’t just quote from the speaker’s talk: we didn’t care enough to pay attention the first time, so why would we suddenly want to hear them now? Also, interviewing students on what they thought of an ASM doesn’t make your article “news” either. For our thoughts on reading the opinions of other students, please refer to the Commentary roast.
The only thing that legitimizes this section is the fact that if they screw up and someone happens to read it they can get sued.
Commentary
As if people had a problem sharing their opinions with everyone face to face. We’ve never seen a single person sitting with The Phillipian and say, “Yeah, sure, you can read it, but leave me the Commentary section.”
Commentary has more high-school angst than the poetry in the Winter Issue of “The Courant.” No one has read a Commentary article and thought, “Wow, what a nuanced, thoughtful piece.” At this point, it’s just a feeder section for “The Huffington Post.”
If you write for Commentary as a Liberal, congratulations, you just furthered the political divide you aimed to close. Any Republican who reads your article will only feel more validated in calling you a “special snowflake,” any Democrat will just agree with you, and anyone in between won’t care enough to change. You just played yourself harder than Palfrey played with Head of School Day.
If you write for Commentary as a Conservative, congratulations, you just got yourself ostracized by a large portion of the school. No, you didn’t just defeat the “unjustified,” Liberal belief. You just came across as not caring about human decency. I hope the feeling of heroism feels good while it lasts.
The one thing smart Republicans have in common with smart Democrats is that neither write for Commentary.
Arts & Leisure
Requirements to write for this section: wearing black Converse low tops, sitting in upper-left, and hissing at people on the path. The best part about Arts & Leisure is reading about a Greenwich kid’s “street wear inspired style.” Other common fashion trends frequently featured: annoying West Coast girl who swears she’s “quirky” and “and a little scatterbrained” with a “DIY sensibility”; “creative,” “carefree” type who says he or she just wears whatever’s on the floor but then always looks better than everyone else; and Manhattan kid desperate to be from Brooklyn. And look, we’re not artists, but we aren’t sure if you can just classify some kid’s drawing as “art” when the “motivation for exciting piece was the required class to graduate.” But thanks anyway, now we know where to go in Elson Art Center if we want to sit pensively and loudly say, “interesting.”
“street wear inspired style.” Other common fashion trends frequently featured: annoying West Coast girl who swears she’s “quirky” and “and a little scatterbrained” with a “DIY sensibility”; “creative,” “carefree” type who says he or she just wears whatever’s on the floor but then always looks better than everyone else; and Manhattan kid desperate to be from Brooklyn. And look, we’re not artists, but we aren’t sure if you can just classify some kid’s drawing as “art” when the “motivation for exciting piece was the required class to graduate.” But thanks anyway, now we know where to go in Elson if we want to sit pensively and loudly say, “interesting.”
Lightning Round Photo
At Andover, you don’t have to be a good photographer to take good photos. The Phillipian’s Photography department is comprised of amateurs who just happen to have really expensive equipment and software. In Features, we take all our pictures on iPhones and they’re pretty much as good as anything they do. The only difference is that we vary the content of our shots — not just take photos of people at podiums all the time.
Video
In the past four months, there have been four uploads to The Phillipian’s YouTube channel, 525 seconds of footage in total. That’s 4.23 seconds of video per day. At this rate, it will take 1,702 days, or four years and seven months, to reach a standard movie’s length of two hours.The channel only has 239 subscribers, though, so I don’t think anyone’s really waiting with bated breath to see a bunch of “highlights” from the Hockey game stitched together on iMovie.
Digital
Hey, our website kind of looks like the one the “New York Times” has! That’s cool, we guess, but it’s been like that for a long time now… Have you done anything original, new, or exciting in the past year? What’s that? You run The Phillipian’s Twitter? Okay, we’ll take that as a no. How about we check back in before the State of the Academy. That seems to be your one thing.
Copy
There are five Copy Editors on the new Masthead — more than there have ever been — which means we can expect another year of embarrassingly obvious typos, misspelled names, and inaccurate graduation years. Hey, Nick Schoeller, why don’t you stop correcting people’s grammar in conversation until you can actually do it in the paper, huh?
