June 1,1996
challenging concert
PAGE 3
Year in Review
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the
opportunity to play very challeng
ing music. When they go to college
or pursue a career in music, they will
have the music background they
need. I was very pleased overall. I
think the students felt real satisfac
tion from [playing such challenging
music],” he said.
A week before the concert,
the orchestra even contemplated
leaving out the last and most diffi
cult movement of the Prokofiev, but
after the members practiced indi
vidually and worked hard on their
parts, they felt confident enough to
perform it. People in the audience
recognized the effort they put into
the concert.
“You could tell everyone
had worked hard,” commented se
nior Michelle Cyr.
Another spectator, senior
Jenny Hester, agreed that the pieces
were very difficult and thought the
program contained a good variety of
music, which is just what Church’s
intentions were for the concert.
“I wanted to get some va
riety in the program. We’ve already
done Mozart, Bach, Mendelsohnn.
This time we had a 20th century
Russian composer and a 19th cen
tury Romantic composer,” said
Church.
In selecting the pieces for
the conceit. Church tried to choose
music that fit the orchestra. This
year, he noticed talent throughout
the whole violin section as opposed
to having one or two extremely tal
ented individuals, as has been the
case in previous years. This year’s
orchestra was able to play the selected
pieces because, according to Church, it
was a well-balanced orchestra that in
cluded many windplayers, who volun
teered time outside of band class. When
the orchestra sight-read pieces at the be
ginning of the semester. Church sensed
that they embraced the challenging
Prokofiev symphony although he origi
nally had no intentions of them perform
ing it.
“We’ve enjoyed playing these
pieces. All the parts were interesting.
The lower strings didn’t have boring
parts like they usually do,” said co-
concertmistress Juliette Gilmore
Despite co-concertmistress
Margot Paulick’s worries that the
“tempo went too fast and got a little out
of hand” in the Prokofiev and Brahms,
the orchestra received a warm applause
from the audience after each selection,
and a particularly long one after
Menachem’s solo.
Church credits the success of
the orchestra, and the school in general,
to the strengths of the individual stu
dents.
According to Church, the four
co-concertmasters helped him through
out the semester by being “great lead
ers.” Normally only one member of the
orchestra fulfills the role of concertmas-
ter. However, this year Fang Cai, Jason
Lee, Margot Paulick, and Juliette
Gilmore all intended to audition for the
position until they decided on their own
that they wanted to share the role.
Church thought “[the arrange
ment] worked out for the best. They
were very cooperative and they all took
responsibility.”
LOW about Ms. Dusenbury
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to do because, “If the truth were
known, history would be all we need
to study. It is a story, and I enjoy
the story of why we are and where
We are.” Her favorite historical pe
riods are the civil rights movement,
the Constitution, and post-recon
struction.
History is not Dusenbury’s
only interest, though. She loved
physics and biology when she was
young, and is now working for her
BA in music. She plays the organ
^d loves to sing. At night, she en
joys watching television shows such
as “Jeopardy”, “60 Minutes”, and
“Biography”.
When a student comes to
talk to her, “I always listen to what
they have to say, and sometimes be
come best friends with the student.”
She remembers a student from the
second class of NCSSM who did not
even have her as a teacher when he
Was a junior. He walked into her
office randomly one day and dis
cussed Roosevelt’s New Deal with
her.
“He is now a Jag officer work
ing with the State Department and went
to UNC-CH law school,” she says.
“Over spring break this year, I spent the
day with him in Seattle on Easter. He is
still one of my best friends, and he sent
me cards from all over the world.” Stu
dents can relate to her because she has
many of the same feelings they do about
the world.
“If I were czar for the day, I
would not allow anyone to wake up un
til after 10:00 am,” she says, putting her
thumbs up and smiling. This attitude is
one of the things that students like about
her. She is not like an administrator, she
is more like a colleague. She forms this
attitude from the people she admires:
Jackie O. Kennedy, Barbara Jordan,
Elizabeth Taylor, Bette Davis, Carol
Mosley Braun, and Queen Elizabeth.
Is it true that the most famous
teacher at NCSSM is leaving? Not nec
essarily.
“I may or may not leave,” she
says ambiguously with a big smile, “I
will probably be here next year, but 1 will
most likely leave the next.”
doubt on the effectiveness of the discipline system at
NCSSM and raised tensions between administrators
and students. A student committee is currently work
ing on a new format for hearings. Right now, plans
for the revamped hearing process are to include stu
dents on the hearing board, hold hearings for all level
two’s as well as level three’s, and make handbook regu
lations more tightly defined. ' t
Another discipline problem was an outbreak
of vandalism in first semester. The biology floor was
off limits during most of first quarter after someone
tampered with an ecology experiment. Abuse of com
puters in the fishtanks led to restrictions on their use
until winter break. In Hunt, the elevator was shut down
repeatedly due to vandalism.
The winter weather early in the second se
mester made some students despair of ever seeing
spring again as a series of storms dumped inch upon
inch of snow and ice in the Triangle. Schools across
North Carolina were out over a week in all due to the
weather — except for NCSSM, where classes contin
ued almost as usual. Students were forced to change
weekend plans as snow stranded them on campus. Still,
most made the best of the snow by doing things like
sliding down the walls of the pit on makeshift sleds.
The beginning of construction on the Edu
cational Technology Complex (ETC) in April also
changed the look and feel of the campus. The ETC is
slated for completion in May of 1997 and will include
extra lab space, improved Distance Learning facili
ties, and a Student Center. Students are already hav
ing to learn how to put up with the noise and inconve
nience associated with the construction, but they ex
pect to benefit from it in the end.
The NCSSM drama program expects to take
full advantage of the ETC’s new 696-seat auditorium
and stage. Even without a stage, though, the Drama
Club was very active this year. First semester, a series
of one-act plays provided a night of entertainment,
and early in May the club’s tour-de-force, A Midsum
mer Night’s Dream, by William Shakespeare, was
presented.
Other entertainment came from the Coffee
Houses. Coffee Houses were a new way for students
to avoid boredom on the weekends. The club gave
students and faculty the chance to showcase their tal
ents and be entertained by their peers over a cup of
coffee.
Of course, a big part of the memories of any
school year are the dances. This year’s dances included
the annual tee-shirt signing dance which allowed stu
dents to get to know each other at the beginning of the
year, and the Halloween dance in the fall where many
students came in their costume finery and competed
in a costume contest. Other dances were the winter
semi-formal with its annual reading of How the
Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Miller, the spring
dance with its hall themes, and of course the Prom,
held again this year at the Durham Armory. The only
glitch in the dances was with the Valentine’s Day
dance which was moved to the cafeteria after heavy
winter snows. Later on, the dance was rescheduled
and held in the PEC as originally planned.
Like the dances, Alt Days and Special
Projects Week (SPW) have become a traditional part
of each year, but they may have seen their last hurrah.
Both events are meant to be opportunities for students
to expand their academic experience. However, fac
ulty and staff have become concerned that many stu
dents have lost sight of the philosophy behind them.
Misuse of Alt Days and SPW led to a review this year
of how students use these times. Doubts remain about
the futures of both.
For students involved in academic competi
tions, ’95-’96 will be remembered as a successful year.
At the French Declamation contest at UNC-Chapel
Hill, NCSSM students took both first and second place
in the poetry recitation division at the French four
level. Knowledge Masters was ranked first in the
state, and came in thirty-fourth out of 2000 schools
nationwide. The Quiz Bowl team performed well at
regional competition in Halifax county. Members of
both Knowledge Masters and Quiz Bowl have been
invited to represent the state of North Carolina at a
national competition this summer in Disney World.
Science Olympiad competed extremely well, and
made it to nationals. Last, but certainly not least.
Model United Nations also represented NCSSM
well, and went to national competition in New York
City.
Despite all the high points of the past year,
the biggest story was also the biggest tragedy. The
First Beall fire on April 24, 1996 at around 10:45
p.m. was the worst in NCSSM’s history. Fortunately
no students were seriously injured, although the hall,
along with many of the belongings of its residents,
was heavily damaged. The entire NCSSM commu
nity came to the aid of the women who were without
a home for the rest of the school year.
Confusion and emotions ran high for the first
few days after the fire, culminating in a speech given
by Dr. John Friedrick during an all-school assem
bly.’Friedrick felt that he should have been stricter in
telling students to take safety measures after an ear
lier fire on Second Bryan. He therefore took a hard
line on fire safety in ordering the removal of exten
sion cords without surge protectors and other fire haz
ards from dorm rooms. Students felt that the assem
bly condemned them, and was in bad taste consider
ing the recentness of the fire. On May 6, a hastily-
planned Celebration of Life gave students a break
from classes and a chance to recover from the fire.
The past year has given students at NCSSM a
lot to remember. There have been triumphs over
weather and in academic competitions, and misfor
tune. There have been foreshadowings of the next year
— changes in Alt Day and SPW and the anticipated
completion of the ETC — which promise to make it
just as memorable as this one.
UNC-bound Morehead Scholar Patrick
Gray relaxes at senior class pictures
Leonard Tran