Newspapers / North Carolina School of … / June 1, 1996, edition 1 / Page 2
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Page 2 JUNE 1,1996 Ju EDITORIAL Semifinalist day sunbath ing inappropriate student behavior OPINION Fourth quarter seniors experience transition "vertigo" Tody Smith Editorials Editor Many of our fourth quarter seniors are experiencing a vertigo bom of not being able to compre hend the transition from secondary school to their chosen halls of higher knowledge. Big transitions in life are always the most stressful. The best way to keep from getting sick on a merry-go-round is to follow a fixed point with your eyes until it recedes from view, and then find another point. For many of us, the fixed point at this school has been books and friends and check and grades and college appli cations. We will have to look for another fixed point, something else to anchor our queasy sensibilities. It seems that the greatest thinkers and doers of the world may be great because their fixed points give them range to handle what life throws out, and to respond the way they dictate. To have the most com fortable leash to act, any sensible person has to answer one question. “What is the meaning of lifeT’ Cer tainly a bold question to tackle in this limited space, but I’ll try to make the answer as brief as possible. It is a question everyone deals with in a different way, and if your ver sion and mine don’t match. I’m not disappointed. I’m not even sur prised. We are here to survive. Humanity has risen from the evolu tionary tides of matter that randomly coalesced into structures that el egantly reproduce themselves. Structured to admit and even wel come minor variations in form and function, life has clung to existence long enough to produce the eyes that read these words and the mind that comprehends it. From such a viewpoint it follows that there are no set guide lines on how people should behave or act. The hard fact is there is no natural law. There are no inalien able rights and nothing provides a universal upholding of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We have simply evolved to survive. Dark is the shadow cast by such agnostic sterility of thought. It is uncomfortable to face a lack of structure in the universe. It is un comfortable to suspect that we are just shipwrecked in a maelstrom of forces and have no drive but to re produce to reproduce to reproduce... But the complexity of our evolution becomes reassuring. We have evolved to survive, but we have also evolved to a point where the forces of nature no longer solely dictate our behavior. While the laws of man do not follow a natural uni versal law, they follow a general consensus of how we choose to or der our universe. These laws fol low the lines of conscious amelio ration of entropy; of life ordering the universe to insure future life. Thus we dictate that a person shall not kill another, and that a person shall not steal or destroy the things of another, and that numerous other laws will structure our behavior. These rules are formed by a general consensus forged from both the innate will to survive and the reasoning capacity reinforcing that will. All our laws and rules derive from this capacity and this will. The clearest minds will be those that realize humanity is re sponsible for charting its on coarse; a reality that binds us and sets us free. That’s where you need to fix your mind as you go off to college and to life. Remember the mean ing of life and those college classes may be a little sharper; those fiat parties might be a little more Janunin’. The Stentorian Editors-in-Chief: Monica Dev, Anne Fawcett Editorials and Opinions Editor: Jody Smith Entertainment Editor: Jennifer Powell Features Editors: Katie Miltich, Manali Patel News Editors: Monica Dev, Anne Fawcett, Rajesh Swaminathan Sports Editof': Rajeev Pandarinalh Layout Editors: David Bcdiz, Theo Luebke, Smita Trivedi Photography Editors: Carolyn Chu, Frances Wall Advertising Manager: Donald Gaye Adviser: Elizabeth Moose Sponsor; Dr. Joan Barber Staff Writers: Maryellen Corbett, Cammie Hawley, Mike Hess, Karen Master, Alton Patrick, Amy Oliver, John Smith, Adam Tarleton, Sara Vance, Amy White, Debbie Won Photographers: Fang Cai, Manoj Viswanathan, Steven Stewart, Leonard Tran, Ted Basladynski, Kimberly Boyd-Bowman Orchestra finshes with ch “Sunbathing is not permitted on special occasions such as (but not limited to) semifinalist visits,'’ states the 1995-96 Student Handbook. On the first semifinalist weekend, this little rule was apparently overlooked. Lying on the ground between Beall and Reynolds there were sometimes four girls in bikinis sunbathing on their towels, reading books or talking. From the breezeway, they were not right in plain sight. On the other hand semifmalists, parents, students, and whomever decided to walk around campus or get into his/her car had a direct and up close view of the sunbathers. The boys were not too modest about their bodies, either. They set up the kiddy pool in front of Hill, filled it with water, stripped off their shirts, and played in the pool. This would not have been so bad if it was not done all day, including during campus tours and lunch when everyone was inspecting the campus. Though many of the people on this campus enjoy basking in the sun on a lovely Saturday afternoon, other people may not want to see them doing it, especially on semifinalist day. The second semifinalist weekend did not have as much blatant breaking of the no-sunbathing-on-semi finalist-day rule, but that's not to say that no one was in a bathing suit or shirtless. Since the beginning of the year, there seems to have been a decrease in respect for the rules which some feel to be of lesser importance. Still, it is important to respect the rules of the school, especially on a day when prospective students, and their parents, are visiting the school. Senior Gate Cade concentrates on his cello at the final concert Leonard Tran Debbie Won Staff'Writer Squeezing over a hundred people in the school’s assembly hall to watch an additional forty musicians per form an orchestral program is no small affair. On the sunny Sunday afternoon of April 21st, parents, faculty members, and peers gathered to hear NCSSM’s or chestra play their final concert of the year. the program consisted of all four movements of Serge Prokofiev’s Qassical Symphony, opus 25, the first movement of Max Bruch’s Violin Con certo in G minor, opus 26, and Johannes Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture, opus 80. Sounds of timpani, percussion, tuba, trumpet, French horn, bass clarinet, clarinet, oboe, piccolo, flute, contrabass, cello, viola, and violin meshed together to create invigorating music. “I thought [the concert] went very well considering it was a very dif ficult program. In the ten years I’ve taught at this school, it was the most difficult program an orchestra of mine has ever played,” said Ray Church, the orchestra’s conductor. There seemed to be a general consensus that while the selections were all difficult, the best piece in the con cert was the Bruch, which featured so loist Jonathan Menachem, a violinist in the orchestra. “Jon’s piece was really good. The other pieces were hard, but I thought we did well on them,” said co- concertmistress Fang Cai. With the constant key changes, complex rhythms, switches from one in strument group to another, the Prokofiev especially posed a challenge to the or chestra. However, Church said he does not expect perfection from the group. “My goal is to give students the had w nior K Jenny were ’ progn music intenti riety ii done ] This I Russi: ■tury ! Churc the cc music year, the w toha\ ented case Everything you wanted to know Phillip Stewart Staff Writer Probably the most well known per son here at NCSSM is Jacqueline Dusenbury. Having taught history here since the school’s opening, Dusenbury has gathered a reputation. “It has always interested me how the students say that I grade on how much I like people. I just say, I always take care of people I like. That is how the world is,” she says, responding to the most widespread rumor about her. She dislikes that students judge her before they meet her personally. “I am different on a personal level than on a teaching level,” she says. Even students that do not have her have listened to end less stories about what she does in class. Students identify her by her language, using words and phrases such as peruse [to read in detail], part the first, kindly, block of time, imps of misery [anyone between the ages of 13 and 19 that give her problems], and cutesy. She also speaks in first person plural. Her pet peeves include students writing in pencil and students neglecting to put their name and period on their pa pers. If a student should happen to do one of these things, she automatically gives the paper a U; unless she likes that student. There is no shortage of bad grades in Dusenbury’s class and perhaps that is why so many students brown nose. “One of my classes even bought me a Pepsi every day of the year and had it ready for me on my desk,” she says laughing. Along with brown-nos ing, however, comes prank playing- Dusenbury recalls when two of her fa vorite students in the first class of NCSSM went to her tutorial and she had forgotten to come. ‘They put over one hundred little slijjs of paper under my door that said things like ‘Missed you at tutorial’ and ‘We came last night.’ I found it quite amusing,” she explains. Dusenbury loves to travel. Her favorite cities are Paris and New York, and if she could quit teaching she would move to one of those cities with a lot of money and work in the fashion indus try. Teaching history is what she loves to do know to stu the St We ar riods the struct II only Physi youn BAi and 1 joys as “Bio talkt they Come She secot even Was offic cusse her.
North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics Student Newspaper
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June 1, 1996, edition 1
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