Varsity baseball coach Joe Stetka threw his hands up in triumph as the dust settled after junior KJ Hockaday slid into home plate.

“I have a passion for the game,” Stetka said. “I love working with kids.”

Stetka came to JC after six years coaching at C. Milton Wright. Athletic Director Lar-ry Dukes offered the position to Stetka at the end of last year after the previous coach, Brian Farrell, left the team to expand his business.

“Once I met [Coach Stetka], I knew this was the type of per-son that embodied our mission and was passionate about keep-

ing our boys competitive in the A Conference of the MIAA,” Dukes said.

Stetka started the changes to the baseball season before the official season had even begun. For any interested players, Stet-ka held fall and winter workouts to get the players in shape and to get to know the players.

He changed a few “little things,” such as new helmets and dressing up the field.

Stetka has experience coach-ing baseball. He started 17 years ago as a coach for Hick-ory Fountain Green Baseball. Stetka is still involved with the program in addition to coaching the JC team. Previously he has coached summer teams, a travel team, and the Aberdeen Arse-nal for 11 to 12 year olds.

In addition to coaching, Stetka is employed in the base-ball business as a scout for the Baltimore Orioles. He follows certain high school and college baseball players and reports how they play to the Orioles.

Besides running, batting, and

throwing statistics, “I look at how they [potential players] car-ry themselves and how they re-spond to pressure,” Stetka said.

On the fields, Stetka empha-sizes the fundamentals to his players. “Practice is serious,” ju-nior Brendan Butler said. “He

Spring break trip to Greece and Italy leads to a lesson in ancient culture.

Students rock the Students rock the cradle of civilizationcradle of civilization

FEATURES 5

Homeroom fades from student life

Index News...2 Features...5 In-Depth...10 Entertainment....12 Editorials...15 Sports...18

Collin HoofnagleNews Editor

Rachel KokoskaSports Editor

Joe Stetka joins baseball program

Senior returnsSenior returnsto fi eld healedto fi eld healedInjury-free Dave Pons bolsters lacrosse team

SPORTS 20

JCPATRIOT.COM RECEIVE THE LATEST NEWS UPDATES, SPORTS, WEATHER, VIDEO, AND MOREthepatriot

April 10

Allison WalczykManaging Editor

Students vanish from homerooms to join their advisory groups. Next year, students will be placed in advisory groups instead of homerooms, and these groups will consist of eight to ten students from all four grades under the direction of a faculty advisor.

Recent Roberts hiring expands admissions dept

Joe Stetka directs his players in the April 21 game against Mount Saint Joseph. This is his fi rst season as the varsity head coach.

Photo by Katie Doherty

The John Carroll School The John Carroll School

703 E. Churchville Rd. 703 E. Churchville Rd.

Bel Air, MD 21014Bel Air, MD 21014

Roberts visits JC to acclimate to school life. He will assume his position in July.

Photo by Katie Doherty

Jesse Roberts, now Admissions Director at West Nottingham Academy, will head the JC Admissions Department starting July 1st.

Roberts’ role will encompass a greater variety of tasks than is now undertaken by current Admissions Director Kim Bruegge-mann. Roberts is unsure of his title, but ac-cording to President Richard O’Hara, it will “be something like Director of Enrollment and Marketing.”

Roberts has a history in recruiting. Af-ter playing professional soccer in the CISL league and for the Baltimore Bays, and coaching at Clemson University, Roberts “got into the recruiting side” of college soc-cer.

College recruiting, “brought me closer to what I wanted to do, which was working with kids in education,” Roberts said.

Roberts has been Admissions Director at West Nottingham Academy, located in Cecil County, for three years. He calls the school, which has 120 students in grades nine to twelve, “definitely different.”

“My role there was very much to lead the enrollment efforts, but also the market-ing efforts and help shape our message and programming,” Roberts said.

“I’ve really enjoyed my time there. Things at West Nottingham have definitely been eye opening as far as the world of recruit-ing and admissions. It’s definitely given me insight into what I think Catholic schools and independent schools can be doing to,” Roberts said.

According to O’Hara, the school sought an addition to the Admissions Department because, “given the changed nature of the whole admissions world, we wanted a great-er variety of skills applied to the effort.”

The school “had been thinking about it [adding the position], [but] it took on a

As the 2009-10 JC school year comes to a close, so does the existence of homeroom.

Homerooms will be replaced by the ad-visory program. The advisory program will give students an adult mentor who will ide-ally stay with them for the entirety of their high school careers. “This program is above all, for the students,” chair of the advisory program’s committee Danica Zavodny said. “We want it to personalize each student’s experience at John Carroll.”

“The mission statement of the advisory program says that its main goal is to help

the students grow spiritually, intellectually, and socially by reinforcing core values at the personal level,” Zavodny said.

The goal of the program is to help strengthen both student-teacher and stu-dent-student relationships, promote char-acter development, help students to utilize school resources, provide each student with an adult advocate, monitor students’ aca-demic progress, and foster communication between home and school.

“This way, each advisor, either a faculty member or administrator, will have about ten students each, so it’s a smaller group. This way, they get to know you on a per-sonal level,” she said. “Students will be

[selected] from each grade, as randomly as possible, but with the smaller size of the in-coming freshman class and the much larger size of the rising seniors, that could be dif-ficult.”

Students will meet daily with their advi-sors and the other members of their advi-sor groups. In order to accommodate every student, all members of both faculty and staff will have a group, and all rooms will be used, “because right now not all class-rooms are being used, not every teacher has a homeroom. We will make sure that every classroom is used, and if need be, we may use the cafeteria and gym,” Zavodny said.

Twice a month the groups will meet for a

see SPORTS 20 see NEWS 4

see NEWS 2

Photo by Kristin Marzullo

2 newsnewsVolume 45 Issue 6 April 2010

the patriot

The PatriotThe John Carroll

School703 Churchville Road

Bel Air, MD 21014Volume 45, Issue 6,

April 2010

Editor in Chief:Daniel Gallen

Executive Board:Kate FroehlichJoey HoffJenny HottleAllison SiegelAllison Walczyk

Editorials:Kaitlin BobbinKatelynn Colgain

Entertainment:Nico CvachHilary Weidner

Features:Katie ClarkeTaylor Schafer

In-Depth:Julia EarnshawElizabeth Tauber

News:Alex DunnCollin Hoofnagle

Sports: Erin HanrattyRachel Kokoska

Copy Editors:Alex BahrKirby BrowningCharlotte HagermanGabbrielle Joseph

Design Editor:Ryan Selvy

Photo Editors:Haley LynchKristin MarzulloMollyann Pais

General Staff:Nicky HatzidimitriouRyan LinaCaitie Beth Shauck

Contributers:Katie DohertyMorgan Seiler

Moderator:Mark Ionescu

The Patriot is a publication of The John

Carroll School. The views and opinions

expressed in The Patriot

are not necessarily the views of the Board or Administration of The John Carroll School.

The editorial staff invites and greatly appreciates comments from readers

on any issue.

Please email us ateditor@jcpatriot.com or visit our website: www.jcpatriot.com

Advisory groups breaks class division ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲▲

Megan Tobias

T’Keyah Lisbon Luke Hinder

Katy Sheward

20132010

20112012

“It’s a good idea. You get to be with

kids from other classes.”

“It’s going to be

stupid. You’ll [either] be with people that

you won’t like or you will like.”

“It sounds like a good idea, but I’m

happy I won’t be the guinea pig class.”

half an hour. “We will incorpo-rate a special bell so that this will work, and all classes will be short-ened that day,” Zavodny said. The groups will cover “something dif-ferent every week.” At the begin-ning of the year, for example, the students will discuss the summer reading book. Zavodny feels the small group setting is ideal for cov-ering the novel.

During the 30 minute sessions, the groups might also discuss ser-vice projects ideas, the honor code, or current events. Zavodny added that activities such as ultimate Fris-bee competitions against other ad-visory groups are in consideration.

Zavodny started the program as her final project while work-ing toward her master’s degree. “I approached the administration and asked what they needed to be done, and they showed a lot of in-terest in an advisory program, so I made it happen,” Zavodny said.

The advisory committee is made up of faculty members from each department: science teacher Lyle Brennen, English teacher Celeste Smith, math teacher Susan Grad-ishar, psychology teacher Dr. Paul Lazor, religion teacher Dr. Joseph Gallen, and Director of Alumni Relations Sue Greig.

All of the members of the com-mittee have different opinions about the program.

“The most challenging issues in this is to gain faculty and student support for the program, to de-termine the splitting up of the stu-dents, and to determine the ‘nuts and bolts’ issues present, such as how to take attendance, where the many groups can meet, etc,” Bren-nen said.

Lazor is enthusiastic about the idea. “If it is done correctly, it should make students at John Car-roll’s experiences more proactive. There are a lot of people that fall through the cracks and now they would have a relationship with someone to encourage them,” Lazor said.

Zavodny’s fellow committee members all share her enthusiasm

and even admire her drive. Lazor said, “[Zavodny] was the driving force. She’s the best committee leader, and very proactive.”

One of the biggest concerns that students have is the loss of home-room. “The idea wasn’t to punish students by getting rid of home-room, but rather we needed a place for advisory, and homeroom seemed to be the best place for it,” Zavodny said.

Special homerooms, like cho-rus, have to make changes to adapt to the changing schedule. Music teacher Mark Bolden said, “We are starting chorus at 7:25 in the morning so that we still have the full 30 minutes to practice.”

The mod schedule for next year will also change. Students will ar-rive at school at 8:00 and report to their first class. After their first classes, students will meet with their advisors for ten minutes and then go right into their mod four classes.

Despite efforts from the faculty, the reviews from students are still mixed. “I think it will be a good program if we get a teacher whom we like,” junior Kelly Vaughn said. “If we get a teacher whom we don’t like, it could be a problem. I do like, however, how the members are from different grades.”

Other students aren’t informed about the program. “I’m okay with it, I guess, I just really don’t know much about it,” freshman Nathan Barringer said.

The program was made known to the incoming freshman class during its admissions process. “The advisory program has abso-lutely been positively received by potential families,” Director of Ad-missions Kim Brueggeman said.

The administration is positive about the new program. “I think that it will bring many benefits to our students and develop a real mechanism for developing con-nectedness to the school. It will serve as a great way to monitor academic progress and it will open better communication between home and school,” Vice Principal

of Academics Gary Scholl said.“I feel like it will bring a level

of personal contact with an adult mentor to the students,” Dean of Students Thomas Vierheller said. “Teachers, since we shortened homeroom, have not gotten the personal connection with their stu-dents. It is very college-prep like in that when you go to college you have an advisor, and not just an academic advisor, but someone to help you with career decisions. It is a way to not necessarily give you the answer, but the resources that you need to find the answers.”

Principal Paul Barker echoes Vierheller’s sentiments about the college preparatory factor in this decision. “I mingle with a lot of folks that have advisory systems through my coursework at Penn and they’re like ‘You don’t have that?’” he said. “It’s pretty estab-lished in independent schools, but not so much in Catholic schools.”

Teachers like English teacher Christine Zurkowski are eager but apprehensive about the program. “After we get through the bumps of scheduling meeting times it can have the ability to form strong bonds between students of mixed grade levels, which could lead to students becoming more success-ful both academically and socially,” Zurkowski said.

“It could also help to have teach-ers as a student’s advisor whom they never would have had as an actual teacher. It can benefit the quieter students who may want an adult or teacher as a mentor, but may be too afraid to approach them,” Zurkowski said.

Barker, who will have his own advisory group, is looking forward to the program and the effect it may have on the school. “Schools today need to be about under-standing the individual needs of students and help people make connections,” he said. “I’m sure they’ll be some bumps in the road, but they’ll be worth it.”

from FRONT PAGE

“I don’t like it. I like being with my home-room now, with my

friends.”

Course list amended for 2010-11 yearCharlotte Hagerman

Copy Editor

Sophomore Elaine Jansing-Kaestner leafed through the course booklet and discovered that Dance for Fitness is now available for next year. After a year when the class was nonexistent, Jansing-Kaestner was thrilled and immediately signed up.

The Course Description Book 2010-11 has been released, with a few minor changes to class sched-ules for next year.

All English, religion, science, history, and health-related classes remain the same, but slight altera-tions are being made to social stud-ies, fine arts, and foreign language courses offered.

Introduction to Law is no lon-ger being offered as a senior elec-tive. This is because there will be “fewer seniors by about 20 [next year]. There will be less demand for senior social studies electives,”

Vice Principal of Academics Gary Scholl said.

In addition, Dance for Fitness will be brought back next year, a class that was a part of the 2008-09 school year. “It seems really interesting and fun to learn dance moves for the school productions,” Jansing-Kaestner said.

Fine arts will also be offering Acting I and Acting II as separate classes next year, whereas this year, they were combined into one. “Acting I will be a prerequisite for Acting II,” Scholl said. “When the classes were combined, there were both inexperienced and experi-enced students, and it was tough to meet the demands of both.”

As for languages, “Based on course requests from incoming freshmen, first year Latin, Chinese, and Russian courses won’t be of-fered at the first year level next year,” Scholl said.

“It’s common knowledge that

the numbers for Chinese I, Latin I, and Russian I are simply just not there to justify a freshman class,” Russian teacher Ed Miller said. “I would love to have a Russian I class next year because I have no plans at this time to retire from JC, and so obviously I would like anything

that can be done to have that class.” However, he assured that “we

are not eliminating those courses.” The first year classes will not be offered for 2010-11, but incoming freshmen will be able to “go back and pick up the course in their sophomore year” if they please.

Chinese teacher Fen Whey Koh educates her students about Chinese characters. Chinese I is a course no longer offered for next year.

Photo by Collin Hoofnagle

Additional reporting by Kirby Browning and Jenny Hottle.

newsnews3Volume 45 Issue 6 April 2010the patriot

Plans will increase involvement in Annual FundThe advancement team began

an effort to increase alumni par-ticipation in the Annual Fund from six to 10 percent through a new campaign entitled, “I am a Patriot.”

The Dresher Foundation will match dollar for dollar up to $25,000 in donations.

Director of Development Laura Lang expects “that our alums are going to come through loud and clear.”

She added, “We’re not asking them for a thousand dollars each. We’re asking them to consider a gift of any amount, whatever you feel that you can give. We’ve spent the last several years improving our communication with alumni. They hear from us monthly instead of just once a year to ask for money. We are reconnecting them with the school so that they have a rea-son to give back.”

The campaign itself “didn’t orig-inate with the Dreshers, but they said if you have an emergency need for funds, please contact us,” Vice President of Institutional Advance-ment Kurt Sudbrink said. “John Carroll proposed the challenge idea to help us with unrestricted funds, which fill the gap that tuition

does not cover.”That “emergency need” was de-

fined by the school. Sudbrink said, “We said we know we have some operating budget challenges and that is our highest priority and big-gest area of need.”

To promote the campaign, the Development Office is focusing on the use of direct mail, email, phone calls, and videos.

“There will be a letter to alums that have given a gift at any time in the past. They’ll get a letter explain-ing the challenge with an envelope included. Anyone with an email address will get an email. [Direc-tor of Alumni Relations Sue] Greig and [Director of Communications] Sue Cathell will include it on their pages of the website,” Lang said. Those who have never donated will get a postcard with an explanation of the campaign as well as direc-tions about how to donate on the website.

Although “gone are the days of the old traditional phone-a-thons,” the Alumni Association is “going to help make phone calls if they have a connection with certain people,” Lang said.

In addition, Fine Arts teacher Bob Schick is creating a video with “very quick vignettes of people say-ing ‘I am a Patriot’ and in sentences

or less explaining why they are. He filmed Jen McIntyre [class of ‘87], [Vice Principal of Academics Gary] Scholl, [and] the kids that are going to Disney [World, among others]. Through our bulk email, we’re go-ing to email the videos to our al-ums with a link to the online giving page.”

The campaign will end June 25. According to Lang, “When the Dresher Foundation let us know about the challenge, it started im-mediately. Any new donations will be added to the campaign.”

“We’ve made great strides in bringing in new donors. This is a great opportunity to reach out to that group that hasn’t responded yet,” Sudbrink said.

To those not sure about donat-ing, Sudbrink offers key reasons of why to do so: “The number one reason why people don’t give is that they don’t realize how needed they are and how important their giving is. They are filling the gap that tu-ition does not cover. Secondly, by their participating, that’s helping us as we go out to foundations or corporations. If we’re able to say we have 10, 20, 30 percent partici-pation, it gives that foundation or corporation confidence in us as a school.”

To celebrate the conclusion of

the campaign at the end of the fis-cal year, the development office will “piggyback” on an Alumni As-sociation summer activity. “The Alumni Association officers are looking at doing something, wheth-er it be a crab feast or something with the golf festival. [However], I hope a simple thank you will be enough for folks,” Lang said.

For next year, “We haven’t set our strategic objectives yet for next year but we have a very aggressive mail campaign, aggressive email campaign, we also do a great deal of work doing individual one-on-one meetings with key constitu-ents,” Sudbrink said.

The school’s relationship with the Dresher Foundation “has been a wonderful partnership,” Sud-brink said. “Many of the members of the family are alumni. They’ve always had a strong love and pas-sion for the school. The Dresher foundation gives in the area of education and Harford County,” Sudbrink said.

According to the Dresher Foun-dation’s mission statement, the or-ganization is “especially interested in providing educational opportu-nities and serving pre-selected fam-ily and human needs in Harford County, Baltimore County, and Baltimore City.”

Kate FroehlichExecutive Editor

$3,953participation in campaign

as of 4/16/10

involvement goal for alumni in

“I am a Patriot”

10%

Reasons to Donate:

Fill in the gapthat tuition does not cover

Businesses gain confi dencein the school2

Roberts will bring new goals to admissions

greater sense of urgency with the recession and the competition lo-cally,” O’Hara said.

Roberts sees the new position as an “opportunity to be able to work in the admissions world closer to where I live, but also to be back into a school that was religious in nature [West Nottingham was sec-ular]. I certainly miss having the re-ligious component as part of daily life,” Roberts said.

According to Roberts, he and Brueggemann are currently work-ing on how duties will be divided up. “Obviously, we want to play to each other’s strengths,” Roberts said.

“Since Mr. Roberts’ position is

newly designed, we are heading into this with a broad range of ideas with regard to job responsibilities. We will both be doing Open House, School Visits, Shadows, Admis-sions Committee, [and] meeting on committees. However, giving you exact job descriptions is quite un-fair at this point. Mr. Roberts will be concerned with overall market-ing and enrollment,” Brueggemann said.

Roberts is “excited about work-ing with Brueggemann. She has so many great tools; it will be a tremendous opportunity working alongside with her to help further the goals of the school,” said Rob-erts.

“I’m really looking forward to being here. From my career, this is a school that I’ve always looked up to, and I feel fortunate to join the family here. I’m excited about that,” Roberts said.

Set to take over the Admissions Department this summer, new hire Roberts has specific goals about in-creasing enrollment.

Roberts expresses that the stu-dents are involved in an admissions “funnel,” which divides students into three categories.

The top of the funnel, and there-fore the largest group, Roberts said, is comprised of “students who could be interested.”

The middle is made up of stu-dents who “are interested,” and the bottom is made up of students who “show interest [by attending an event or sending an inquiry].”

According to Roberts, the num-

ber of students in each category drops “as you move down the funnel.” The ultimate goal is to in-crease the bottom end of the fun-nel, or to increase the number of students who “show interest.”

Roberts feels that making sure the brand rollout gets appropriate awareness is a way to increase the top end of the funnel. However, “using students and what kind of success they have to really tell the compelling stories about JC every day” is “how it will start.”

Also on Roberts’ agenda for in-creasing enrollment is to have more personal communication with fu-ture students and families.

It is “a two way communication between family and office to know what their interests are, to know what they bring to the table here, and see how they will best fit the JC community and how the JC com-munity will fit them,” Roberts said.

All of these things combined, be-

lieves Roberts, will lead to a larger number of students at the bottom of the funnel.

“When you tie having more people at the top of the funnel with a more personalized experience as they move along the funnel, that will give you a larger number [of students who show interest] at the bottom of the funnel,” Roberts said.

Roberts has no specific goals of increasing advertising in order to drive up interest. “Advertising’s part of it, but it’s really only part of the marketing mix,” Roberts said.

At the same time, “we’re going to find every avenue we can to tell the good news about JC and get our information into the hands of those people who are looking for a good high school experience,” he said.

These “avenues,” according to Roberts, may include “evangelists for the JC brand. Whether that’s current students or current parents,

from FRONT PAGE

[evangelists] are a fantastic way to make sure the school continues to grow in message and continues to grow in the type of quality of kids who are here,” Roberts said.

In wake of the recent Cardi-nal Gibbons closing, Roberts said there “are students [from Gibbons] who would fit in here.”

However, “an hour and half to an hour commute in the morning may not necessarily set someone up for success in their high school career,” Roberts said.

Roberts has “spoken to some folks there [about JC].”

O’Hara added, “In a different economy, we could let [prospective students] come to us. We can’t do that anymore. We must go out there.”

O’Hara is confident that what Roberts brings to the table will help enrollment, especially in Robert’s ability to bring an “added strategic” view.

Photo by Kristin Marzullo

An incoming freshman looks over papers with her parents and Spanish teacher Danica Zavodny while at Class of 2014’s Freshman Orientation. With Roberts’ new plans, more freshmen should be attending John Carroll in the upcoming years.

464out of the needed 670 alumni donors as of

4/16/10

Roberts’ goals

admissionSTATS

160

The number of students enrolled for the Class of 2014

439

Students regis-tered in another school in a six to ten mile radius

745Total number of students the ad-ministration wants for next year

4 newsnewsVolume 45 Issue 6 April 2010

the patriot

Icelandic Volcano erupts,grounds planes

A volcano in Iceland erupted on April 9 and again on April 19, causing the airports in Europe to shut down due to the volcanic ash present in the air.

In England, the airspace was closed to all but emergencies until 7:00 p.m. that night. The airspaces in France, Germany, Ireland, Swe-den, Norway, Belgium, Denmark, Poland, and the Netherlands were also closed.

Because volcanic ash causes jet engine failure, many airports de-cided to close. Delta Airlines can-celled 65 international flights for Thursday night and Friday morn-ing, and Air China cancelled some of their flights as well.

The airports in Europe have lost close to $184 million, while more than 6.8 million passengers have been affected by the closures as of April 18.

Countries in Europe and Asia plan to reopen their airspaces. Around 21,000 flights are expected to take off with some 40,000 pas-sengers arriving in Brussels.

Obama plans to explorefinal frontier

President Barack Obama has given full commitment to the space program by outlining a new plan for deep space exploration.

He proposed to give NASA an extra $6 billion over the next five years while at the same time cutting NASA’s project for the continua-tion of lunar missions.

The addition to the budget would be used for research as a way to propel the U.S. deeper into space, while developing new tech-nologies that will enhance the living and working conditions in space.

However, the Constellation Pro-gram, a program created to send as-tronauts back to the moon by 2020, will be cancelled as a result.

Obama’s reasoning for this is that the program is behind sched-ule, over budget, and less impor-tant than projects like the Explorer program and CINDI, a satellite designed to study the influence of space’s weather near the equator.

While many astronauts support the increased funding, they find the cancellation of the Constellation Program to be devastaing.

Carnival rides to be replaced with music at fair

This year, the JC Country Fair will shift towards the more family-oriented Country Fair and Music Festival to be held April 30 – May 2. The new design of the fair re-moves the traditional carnival rides and adds more live music.

“We’re changing the whole look of the fair. While we are not bring-ing back the traditional rides, we are now going to have some new games [such as] laser tag, a rock climbing wall, an obstacle course, and a moon bounce. In addition, there will be the traditional food, crafts, vendors, etc,” Director of Development Laura Lang said.

Other attractions include a cross-campus hay ride and fishing at the pond. The main focus of the fair this year will be the music.

“We’re shifting gears. We are having a Battle of the Bands on Fri-day night that [religion teacher Bri-an] Bourne is coordinating in the hopes of attracting our students. Outside we will be using Harford County’s Showmobile for all of the bands,” Lang said.

There will be an opening per-formance by Cryin’ Out Loud, a student band featuring sophomore Emily Oursler followed by a Battle of the Bands on Friday night.

Saturday from 4 p.m. until 6

p.m., Walk-Ins Welcome will play and at 7 p.m., a WXCY radio sup-ported artist, Chuck Wicks, will perform live.

An admission fee of $10 is re-quired to get in. The change in the atmosphere of the fair is partially due to the safety and security issues at recent fairs.

“Anyone who has attended the fair in the last few years on a Fri-day night knows and understands the safety and security issues that we have had to deal with. It’s just not worth it anymore to open our families and the schools up to that environment again,” Lang said.

Katie ClarkeFeatures Editor

Fate of seniors’ emails remains undecided

ed discussion, but “no big decision has been made,” according to Di-rector of Technology Greg Russell.

Originally, “we intended that the account would be cut off when students graduated because of a Microsoft licensing agreement,” Russell said. “However, in this new day and age of connectivity, maybe students want their email addresses to keep in touch [with peers].”

Russell “has some feelings about keeping” the address because it “allows students to keep in contact and the school to keep in touch with alumni. The question is how much people will use it with things like Facebook to keep in contact with friends.”

Another possible solution, ac-cording to Russell, would be to al-low students to keep a JC Patriot address, but “not in the same ac-count as the rest of current stu-dents.”

He added, “Maybe [for exam-ple] create an alum.jcpatiot.org, with the same password and ac-count, but the address changes.”

If the accounts are deleted, stu-dents will be given warning and time to change the address on sub-scriptions made with the school email.

The earliest accounts would be deleted is in mid-August, when the school is “pretty sure of the new student population,” Russell said. “That’s when I import the new stu-dents and delete the old students.”

At the same time, current se-niors’ Sharepoint access will be removed. As for now, it is “still up in the air,” Russell said. The final decision will be made within “the next few weeks.”

Russell plans to “elicit the brain trust of some other tech savvy folks and the principal or president” to reach a final decision.

Kate FroehlichExecutive Editor

JC wins top award

The decision about whether to discontinue the email addresses of seniors upon graduation has merit-

“Harford Magazine” has named JC the best private school in the county, with St. Margaret’s School and the Harford Day School as runners up.

“It’s so unscientific, [but] it’s nice. I agree with the judgment that says so,” Principal Paul Barker said.

According the editor of “Harf-ord Magazine,” Jennifer Dansicker, the magazine has a distribution of 28,000.

Ballots were included in the previous issue, with 300 returned, approximately “a .01 percent re-sponse, which is a pretty good re-sponse,” Dansicker said.

Kate FroehlichExecutive Editor

Photo from sxc.hu

Photo from sxc.hu

featuresfeatures5Volume 45 Issue 6 April 2010the patriot

(Far left) Students visited the ruins of the Colosseum in Rome. (Above) Freshman Claire Zurkowski and senior Chelsea Nori teach Vice Principal Gary Scholl some of their dance moves in Pompei. (Left) On the streets of Plaka, fresh lambs are roasted alongside their innards.

HISTORYoutside the bookOver spring break, 26 students, teachers, and family members

spent 10 days observing ancient ruins, renaissance art galleries, and the modern beauty of Greece and Italy.

Sleeping comfortably on a hard blue row of airport chairs in the Frankfurt airport, Vice Principal of Academics Gary Scholl lay cud-dling with his inflatable hot pink travel pillow. Scholl, not embar-rassed at all by the color of his pil-low, had finally found refuge after the uncomfortable eight-hour Luf-thansa journey.

The eight-hour flight, followed by a four-hour layover in Frank-furt, and a final two-hour flight to Athens proved to be well worth the hassle. As soon as the plane began its descent into Athens, everyone could see the rising and falling slopes of the Greek mountains, the white island houses built on terrac-es, and the aquamarine water of the Aegean Sea.

Everyone felt more than excited. Twenty-one students, three teach-ers, and two spouses were about to begin their exploration of the ancient history of Greece and Italy for the next nine days.

On our first night, we met Anna Costes, our tour guide. The perfect combination of an outgoing Greek and an individual with knowledge-

Katie ClarkeFeatures Editor

able background in behavioral psy-chology and ancient history, Anna showed us everything we could possibly imagine.

Both countries provided some of the most delicious eating ex-periences of my life. In Athens, I witnessed a lamb roasting in the middle of the street, and the in-nards were removed and cooked alongside the roasting lamb. I later found out that this type of lamb is a staple of Greek cuisine.

Visiting most of the ancient sites made me wish I could be an archeologist. Anna, as well as our other guides, could explain the sig-

nificance of the smallest find, piece together an entire civilization’s way of daily life, and make it seem in-credibly interesting.

While both Greece and Italy kept me hard at work and enter-tained with the massive intake of world history, my favorite part of the spring break experience had to be relaxing on the beach in Athens. With makeshift bathing suits and a lack of towels, we found time to soak up the sun and dive into the Aegean Sea on Easter Sunday.

People-watching became an all-time favorite hobby of mine on the beach. The ever-present street ven-

dors selling knock-off Ray Bans and older Greek men dancing around in their boxers kept us more than entertained as we tanned. And of course, Spanish teacher Jane Mi-chael found an adorable Jack Rus-sell terrier to play with.

In Italy, the customs were a little different. Even the simple task of crossing the street proved to be a complicated process.

However, after successfully crossing the street and “swarming like Japanese tourists” as Anna would say, we stood before sev-eral of the world’s most impressive historic architectural and creative

feats. In the quiet of the Sistine Chapel, the other group members and I marveled at the ceiling paint-ed nearly 550 years ago by the great Michelangelo.

The most intriguing aspect of Italy for me had to be Florence. Not only did we see the David, but we also walked by the church that holds the remains of the great phi-losopher Niccolo Machiavelli and Michelangelo himself.

I had the best time just wander-ing around, looking at the Duomo of Florence, one of the world’s greatest Renaissance architectural accomplishments, and then search-ing for decent gelato in the square.

As amazing as most of the muse-ums, archaeological sites, and mon-uments were, some of my favorite parts of the trip had to be our free time to explore, shop, and relax with other students, or in my case, teachers like Michael.

On our last night, Anna ex-pressed to the group how much she enjoyed her time with us and how we were different from any other group she had ever toured with before. Nothing could’ve ended the trip better than Anna’s heartfelt remarks as we were spending our last night in Rome, one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

Foreign service alum returns to inspire studentsRachel Kokoska

Sports Editor

Jennifer McIntyre, class of ’87, started off her first day at the Turk-ish Embassy in 1996 on the bor-ders of Turkey looking for Ameri-can refugees from Iraq.

During the height of Saddam Hussein’s power, Kurdish peo-ple and other persecuted people crossed the Iraq-Turkey border. McIntyre spent two weeks look-ing for Americans. Now, fourteen years later, McIntyre will return to the Middle East in July to become the U.S. Consulate in Pakistan for a year.

As a U.S. Consulate, she will “first and foremost protect U.S. cit-izens overseas,” said McIntyre. If an American citizen has a problem, the U.S. Consulate has an obliga-tion to help them.

The other component of her job is issuing Visas. “Right now, in my

job covering the Middle East, we have exten-sive checks [on anyone desiring a Visa],” Mc-Intyre said.

America’s safety is not the only issue. The individual needs to have enough ties to his or her origi-nal country so that he or she will return and not try to stay in the U.S.to work illegally.

She spoke about her experi-ences to the first level Russian and Chinese classes, along with other Russian students during mods one through three on March 26. Rus-sian teacher Ed Miller brought Mc-

Intyre back to show the potential JC students have.

“[McIntyre] has so much to share. She is the top Foreign Ser-vice officer in Washington. I think that she is inspirational for JC stu-dents,” Miller said.

McIntyre contributes

the opportu-nities at JC and emphasis on writing as helping her succeed in her career.

“On Fri-days, Sr. Ag-nes would give us a book or poem and tell us we had to write an essay right there. They were getting us

ready for the AP Exam, but frankly that has become my job,” McIntyre said.

She thinks JC “makes critical thinkers. If you are not a critical thinker, then I don’t think you are able to supervise or have senior

jobs because you need to be able to see problems,” said McIntyre.

After graduating JC, McIntyre at-tended the University of Virginia as a Russian major. She graduated in 1991, and her brother pushed her to take the Foreign Service exam. A year later, the State Department offered her a job.

“I thought I’ll try it for a couple of years and see if I like it. It’s just an incredible career,” McIntyre said.

McIntyre emphasized commu-nication skills for all students. “It’s not necessarily to be understood, but to make sure it cannot be mis-understood,” she said.

For any student interested in the international studies, she advises “experiencing other cultures.”

International students should be willing to “try new things and differ-ent foods. They are people con-stantly looking for something new,” McIntyre said.

Photo by Katie Clarke Photo by Allison Siegel

Photo by Rachel Kokoska

Jennifer McIntyre, class of ’87, instructs Russian teacher Ed Miller’s Rus-sian I class. In July, McIntyre will begin working in Pakistan for one year.

Photo by Kristin Marzullo

6 featuresfeaturesVolume 45 Issue 6 April 2010

the patriot

Rebecca Siegel, the youngest addition to

teacherSPOTLIGHT

Social studies teacher Dr. Paul Lazor instructs senior Nicole Bowman in his AP Psychology class. Lazor worked as a clinical psychologist before discovering the challenge of teaching.

Photo by Morgan Seiler

Kate FroehlichExecutive Editor

Q: What was your most interesting/memorable case as a psychologist?

A: In my career, I en-joyed working with the patients with schizophrenia the most. A lot of psychologists wouldn’t agree with that. I liked it be-cause I thought it was an area where you could really help somebody. There are treat-ments that can help them a lot.

Q: Why did you decide to teach?

A: I had always wanted to be a teacher. When I gradu-ated from high school, it was hard to get a job in teaching, so people were discouraged from going into it. It’s a pretty good segue because it’s practical to teach it, having prac-ticed for so many years. It gives you an advantage and allows you to il-lustrate concepts.

Social studies teacher Dr. Paul Lazor, knowledgeable in not only psychology, but sports as well, enjoys reading “The Wall Street Journal” daily. Lazor teaches sophomore government classes and senior psychology classes.

Q: What hobbies are you interested in outside of school?

A: I’m a big gardener and have a big veggie garden every year. I like to cook and I like to exercise. I like to read [more specifically] about poli-tics and history.

Q: What has been more rewarding: working as a teacher or a psychologist?

A: It depends on what you’re doing in psychology, but comparing teaching to pri-vate practice, teaching is much more rewarding. You can see the benefits of your work more readily. It’s just more fun. I al-ways thought you should have fun.

Q: Why did you pursue the job at JC?

A: I was interested and in-quired about it, but there were no positions available. My daughter, who was a junior, called me and said that the psychology teacher was leaving, so I contacted [Principal Paul] Barker and reapplied.

Dr. PaulLazorpsychology

JC Fast Facts:

12,436 total miles traveled by students

on JC trips over spring break

3.25

309Mr. Potato Head dolls adorn Math Department

Chair George Appleby’s classroom

banners supporting the

class of ‘10 in the lobby

mean grade point average

of a JC student

compiled by Collin Hoofnagle

MajorDecisions

4average salary of federal executive

governmental lawyers in 2008

$123,660

Potential Career Areas

Journalism Business Foreign Service Law

Social studies teacher Brian Powell always had a knack for poli-tics, even in high school. Powell was looking for an easy transition to law school after his undergraduate studies at Penn State. He dreamed of becoming a lawyer working for congressional representatives on Capitol Hill and arguing constitu-tional cases.

While his political science path eventually led him to the educa-tional sector, Powell has always been involved in politics, working on the campaign trail for candi-dates and teaching AP U.S. Gov-ernment.

If you’re interested in politics, social studies, current events, and debating as much as Powell was, College Board suggests that Po-litical Science might be the college major choice for you.

Director of Guidance Carol Heflin-Shupe sees proactive stu-dents as candidates for this major. “If you’re one of those people who likes to watch the news and keep up on the daily situations of the

world, political science might be the major for you,” Heflin-Shupe said.

In order to prepare for a career like this, political science majors can expect to take classes in judicial processes, foreign policy, political theory, American political cam-paigns and elections, and global issues.

Heflin-Shupe suggests major-ing in political sci-ence because of the opportunities for growth that the pro-gram provides. “Po-litical science acts as a door opener and a gateway to a lot of things like law school, history, and international rela-tions,” she said.

Majoring in political science also helps lead to a more globally aware perspective. “I see the power of government increasing and the gov-ernment having more control over more areas of our lives, so to not be informed is to not care about the one big power that has a lot of con-trol right now,” Powell said.

With more minority parties forming today, being politically active has become more popular. “There are different ideologies about how powerful the govern-ment should be, especially with the Tea Party right now, and [the Tea Party is] really starting to challenge that power that the government holds. People are starting to pay attention [to politics and the direc-

tion of the country] more now either be-cause they agree with the Tea Party or they hate it, but it’s much better that people ac-tually pay attention,” Powell said.

Students tend to share similar per-spectives on the im-

portance of being politically aware today. “Politics is more important than ever. In this globalized world, events that are occurring in Eu-rope are affecting events in Africa, and things happening in China are affecting the economy here in America. The world is so much more interconnected with the ad-vancement of technology. Because

of this, people need to be more aware of what elected officials are doing in every level of government, whether it be national, state, or local. I think a lot of youth think that politics is for old people, or it doesn’t affect them, and the most inaccurate thing I hear is ‘My vote doesn’t count.’ All of these state-ments are false,” junior Chris Bru-neau said, who is planning on ma-joring in political science.

Bruneau recently began an in-ternship with U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski. “I am learning so much while interning with Senator Mi-kulski. I have always seen politics looking from the outside in. Work-ing at her office, allows me to really know what my legislators are do-ing,” Bruneau said.

Other options include work-ing with the page program in An-napolis or participating in student government. Bruneau said, “I have been getting involved in political campaigns. Networking is really important in politics.” Good advice for students is to pay close attention in their sophomore U.S. govern-ment class and try to take AP U.S. Government during senior year.

Katie ClarkeFeatures Editor

‘‘Political science acts as a door opener.”

- Carol Heflin-Shupe

5Colleges to check out:

University of Chicago Duke University Columbia University

Harvard University

University of Virginia

69

314 AP tests ordered by

guidance this year for students

featuresfeatures7Volume 45 Issue 6 April 2010the patriot

student artistSPOTLIGHT

Senior Lexie Wohlfort practices diligently as a bird girl during a ‘Seussical’ dress rehearsal. Wohlfort has been involved in the music and theater programs since her freshman year.

Nicky HatzidimitriouGeneral Staff

Senior Lexie Wohlfort stood watching the Theater Depart-ment perform “Racing with the Clock” during a rehearsal of “The Pajama Game” on the first day she shadowed. The set was flawless, the music was strong, and the cast was filled with en-thusiasm. While the exact de-tails remain a blur for Wohlfort, the memory lives on as a signifi-cant part of her past – the mo-ment she realized she had found the right place to spend the next four years of her life.

Wohlfort has taken full ad-vantage of the art opportunities offered to her during her four years at JC, participating in cho-rus, the musicals, acting class, orchestra, ceramics, studio art, jazz band, and drumline. Al-though Wohlfort’s artistic expe-rience began with Introduction to Drawing in her freshman year, music has always been her favorite medium.

“Visual arts are fun,” Wohl-fort said, “but the expression that you can put into a voice or

instrument just amazes me.” After playing violin for two

years in her middle school’s orchestra, Wohlfort decided to join the chorus instead. There, her love for singing began to grow, and only further blos-somed during her time.

“I have directly observed her exceptional talent in the musi-cal and performing arts areas,” guidance counselor and musical choreographer Larry Hensley said. “I hope that she continues to strengthen her skills on the college level.”

Through the experience she’s gained in singing, acting, and dancing, Wohlfort has decided to major in musical theatre at Coastal Carolina this fall.

“What’s unique about [Wohl-fort] is that she is very accom-plished in all the arts. Not only is she a good actress and singer, but she’s a wonderful painter – she has a great eye – and a great little sculptor,” art teacher Michael Gaudreau said. “She is always willing to take chances and risks. And that is a very im-portant attribute that a creative artist needs to have. That’s why

I think she’s going to do good things in her future.”

Now that Wohlfort’s high school career is ending, she’s looking out in the community to pursue her passion. At the end of May, Wohlfort will be playing Gabriella in the Phoenix Festival Theatre’s performance of “High School Musical.”

With determination and con-fidence, Wohlfort works end-lessly towards her ultimate goal: Broadway. Although she knows it’s a tough business to get into successfully, Wohlfort has al-ready displayed her willingness to put forth the effort needed to realize her dreams. But perhaps most important is her family’s constant support.

“My parents have been to every musical, every play, ev-ery art show, every concert. It’s amazing that they don’t get sick of it,” Wohlfort said. “At first, my mom was a little skeptical about me majoring in musical theatre because it wasn’t practi-cal enough, but I think she saw how happy it made me, and real-ized that it was all I ever wanted to do.”

Photo by Katie Doherty

LexieWohlfortvisual & music

HAVEYOU

HEARDTHE

NEWS?jcpatriot.com

Summer class aims to alleviate stress

Katie ClarkeFeatures Editor

It’s nearing 11 p.m. on October 31, the night before senior Mi-chelle Murphy’s college applica-tions are due.

Senior year has been stressful enough already between her final Spirit Week, developing a senior project idea and the ever-increas-ing challenge of AP and honors classes. As Murphy proofreads her application on the illuminated computer screen one last time, she wishes she could have done some-thing earlier in the year to prevent this last-minute anxiety.

However, the class of 2011 has a new option for elim-inating some of that senior year stress. This summer, June 21 through July 2 from 9 a.m. until 11:30 a.m. every day, guidance counselor Carrie Siemsen and Eng-lish teacher Eric Sutton will offer a college “Head Start” program for rising seniors.

As a teacher, Sutton sees the everyday implications of college application stress on his students. “I teach seniors and so I saw how overwhelmed they can be in the fall with the reality of everyday school week, sports, homecoming, senior project and then on top of that, vis-iting colleges, preparing for inter-views and writing essays, gathering recommendation letters and apply-ing,” Sutton said.

For $200, rising seniors can have personal assistance with three col-

lege essays from start until finaliza-tion, do a more personalized col-lege search to narrow their choices to about four to eight schools, com-plete a resume, properly prepare for campus visits and admissions or scholarship interviews, and fill out at least one application, most likely the Common Application.

Sutton will be particularly in-volved in the writing aspect of the class. “[This program] gives the kids enough time to have a few writing workshops where they can

develop the es-says and edit and really come away with a couple of solid essays or at least have a pro-cess for how to go about writing one if they get a question that they already haven’t answered at the workshop,” Sut-ton said.

Seniors this year did not have such an oppor-tunity to refine their college appli-cations. “I think it’s a good idea for the juniors to have this option because as a senior, there is a lot going on in all parts of the year and to get the college applications done in the summer and be the first to apply to these colleges can only in-crease a student’s chances of being admitted to the university of their choice,” senior Austin Golya said.

Sutton said, “I know the pros-pect of coming back here a week after we get out of school isn’t too enticing [for some students] but I think that when the students have completed the program, it’ll really be a valuable experience.”

‘‘I think it’s a good idea for the juniors to have this option.”

- Austin Golya

Disney trip affords students new opportunity

Students fi nish their performance of “Happy Face” in Downtown Dis-ney. Theater students performed professionally in front of strangers.

Photo courtesy of Pam Selvy

Kristin MarzulloPhoto Editor

I could hear my heart thumping in my ears. The music to “I’ve Got Rhythm” from the show “Crazy For You,” played in the background. My hands were trembling. The words “ATTENTION TO DE-TAIL!” rang through my head. My adrenaline level was at its peak. I took in a deep breath before danc-ing out onto the stage.

After hours and hours of intense practicing, drilling dance routines into our heads, and hearing our directors guidance counselor Larry Hensley and Admissions Direc-tor Kim Brueggemann filling us with the utmost encouragement, it had all finally paid off. To be per-forming on a professional level in Downtown Disney, in front of not only loved ones who came to sup-port us, but strangers who stopped to see a show as well, was, before that moment, just a dream.

A wave of relief passed over me as we struck our final pose for “I’ve Got Rhythm,” and the crowd went wild. I took a quick glance over those watching and noticed that most of them were people who we didn’t know. It hit me then that we

were attracting a crowd who were interested in what we were doing. A huge smile fell to my face as we ran to the side of the stage to prepare for our next routine “Happy Face,” from the show “Bye Bye Birdie.”

As we waited behind the wall that separated us from our eager fans, we kept our guard up. Hens-ley, who had been patiently waiting backstage, congratulated everyone one by one. He reminded us to keep up our energy because we still had two more songs to get through.

As I yet again entered the stage

for “Happy Face,” the audience’s faces showed their appreciation of our performance. With a more jazz-like feel to the song we twirled to our final pose as we waited for the last song to start. My heart rate bumped up a notch as I realized this was it: this was the last chance we had as a group to really “wow” the audience.

Our momentum quickly shifted to a high school graduation sense for “We Go Together” from the show “Grease.” Our energy was high as we belted the words “rama

lama lama ke ding a de dinga a dong!” The audience reacted with shouts of enjoyment.

Before I knew it, we were waving goodbye as we skipped off to pre-pare for our final bow. A few sec-onds later we ran out on stage, held hands, and bowed as the crowd filled with cheers. No one could suppress their smiles as we watched everyone in the audience jump to their feet to clap for us.

The most rewarding feeling after working on the same dance rou-tines for months was the feeling of accomplishment. As we got back on the bus to head to our hotel af-ter performing, the chatter did any-thing but decease. Brueggemann and Hensley couldn’t have seemed anymore proud than they were at that moment.

We were overwhelmed with excitement as we realized that we could now say that we had pre-formed professionally in front of strangers.

It was also a great feeling know-ing that we had become a part of family memories of Disney for those who watched us. Before we took off for the hotel, Hensley reminded us that we should be proud, because we were “golden!”

8 seniors 2010seniors 2010Volume 45 Issue 2 November 2009

the patriot

2010seniorsThis year was especially interesting for the seniors of “The Patriot.” With the shift to an online

edition, “The Patriot” members of the class of ’10 went into the new, expanded their journalistic horizons, and led “The Patriot” online edition to two national awards. Just as

John Carroll was described in the 18th and early 19th centuries, the seniors proved to be compelling, considerate, and uncompromising in their reporting to the student body.

Kate FroehlichDaniel Galleneditor in chief executive editor

Daniel Gallen reigned as the Editor in Chief of this year’s Pa-triot. Gallen’s quiet yet strong au-thority brought a relaxed feeling to the sometimes crazy paper. Gallen always knew how to real-ly put his personality through his writing, often showing his love for indie rock or sports in each and every issue. Gallen was intent on keeping the new face of “The Patriot’s” print version as strong and late-breaking as the face of jcpatriot.com. Gallen’s unique twist on the world will be missed in the Patriot Room as he will be attending the University of Mary-land, majoring in Journalism.

Kate Froehlich was the driving force behind the release of the on-line paper. Her constant, intense personality and consistent dedica-tion to the progression of the online paper was unmatched. She count-lessly motivated the online staff to reach their full potential. The entire year Froehlich pushed the envelope on new stories and ideas including but not limited to the uncovering of the GOLD campaign, researching Fr. Riepe’s will and her personal greatest acomplishment, the Des-perate Housewives Blog. Froehlich will attend American University in the fall to major in Business Man-agement and Journalism.

The seniors of “The Patriot” staff celebrate at the Quill and Scroll Honor Society induction ceremony. (Top row from the left) Katie Clarke, Katie Doherty, Rachel Kokoska, Kate Froehlich, (bottom row from the left) Daniel Gallen, Katelynn Colgain, Charlotte Hagerman, Erin Hanratty, Caitie Beth Shauck, Kaitlin Bobbin, Nicky Hatzidimitriou, and Alex Dunn.

Photo by Louise Doherty

seniors 2010seniors 2010 9Volume 45 Issue 2 November 2009the patriot

Alex Bahrcopy editor

Kaitlin Bobbineditorials editor

Kaitlin Bobbin, known to the staff as Bobbin, kept everyone on their toes. With edgy opinions and a minute by minute break-down of how she would fi nish her pages was always looking to her. Bobbin’s ability to give input on any subject and fi nd a way to make the student body care is remarkable and will be missed. Bobbin will attend Harford Com-munity College.

Katelynn Colgaineditorials editorKatelynn Colgain returned to the paper as the Editorials editor for the online edition. She trail blazed the online editorials section with her loyal attitude and fi ery opinions. She wrote countless sditorials in addition to maintaining an organized section. Her diligence to assign, write, and edit made her a team player and exceptional asset to jcpatriot.com. She will at-tend Georgian Court in the fall.

Alex Bahr was always there when someone needed a smile. Alex kept things light in the copy ed-iting department. Alex was diligent in her work, mak-ing sure the the writing for “The Patriot” was the best it could possibly be. In the fall, Alex will be attending Mount St. Mary’s.

Katie Clarke returned to the Pa-triot for her third year in journal-ism. She played the role as food liason, constantly collecting money and making food runs during layout week. Katie’s abil-ity to capture the personality of JC has always shown through in her section. Clarke will be at-tending the Honors College at the University of Maryland.

Katie Clarke

features editor

Katie DohertyphotographyKatie Doherty was the go-to photographer whenever someone needed an artistic photo of a sporting event or other school function. She was quiet but dedicated to getting the perfect shot. Her photographic skills will be missed by all when she goes to the Maryland Institute College of Art next year, where she plans on majoring in photography or graphic design.

Alex Dunnnews editorIn her fi rst year working on the paper, Alex Dunn quickly took charge as the news edi-tor of the print edition. While she wasn’t busy breaking news and designing pages, she fas-cinated the rest of the staff with her extensive knowledge of Harry Potter trivia. Unfortu-nately, Dunn never received her letter of ad-mittance to Hogwarts, so she will be attending Gettysburg College instead.

Erin Hanrattysports editorErin Hanratty spent her fi rst year on the paper this year. Bringing her passion for athleticism off of the hockey fi eld and onto the Internet, she dove into the sports section of jcpatriot.com. Hanratty’s writing ability was demon-strated in her collaboation on a How-To Blog that spoke to the confused and misguided JC students. Hanratty will be attending the Uni-versity of Notre Dame this fall.

Rachel Kokoskasports editorIt may have been Rachel Kokoska’s fi rst year on the paper, but no one could tell. She is a master organizer and was always on top of her section. Kokoska had an eye for inter-esting stories. She not only covered sport-ing events but also covered human interest stories dealing with up and coming athletes and coaches. Next year, she will attend Case Western Reserve University for Engineering.

Charlotte Hagerman

copy editorCharlotte Hagerman brought a humor to the Editorials section with her How-To Blog. Hagerman often shared childhood stories, which always brought a laugh to the Patriot Staff. During stressful layout weeks, Hager-man’s voice could be heard throughout the halls as she sang and copy edited fi nal pages. Hagerman also loves giving hugs. She will at-tend Mary Washington in the fall.

Nicky Hatzidimitriou

general sta Nicky Hatzidimitriou, or Hatz for short, brought a sense of calmness to the craziness of the paper. Hatz combined her love of fi lm-making with jcpatriot.com to create Video Editorials. Her unique video editorials literally let the readers speak out on current issues and sto-ries. Hatz’s writing brought a splash of color to the features section. Hatz will attend Johns Hopkins University.

Caitie Beth Shauckpromotions manager

Caitie Beth Shauck’s outgoing personality made her the perfect fi t for the promotions manager position. She successfully promot-ed the launch of the new online paper with creative ideas, but she considers her proud-est moment this year to be when Pete Wentz linked her review about the latest Fall Out Boy album on his Twitter. Shauck will attend either Loyola University or Catholic University.

10in-depthin-depthVolume 45 Issue 6 April 2010

the patriot

Elizabeth TauberIn-Depth Editor

Cliques make students cJulia EarnshawIn-Depth Editor

“Yup because when people hear something they believe it.” - Olivia Difonso, ‘13

“Of course they do. Even though the stereotypes aren’t always true, people are still stupid enough to believe them.”- Amanda Zivkovic, ‘11

Stereotypes plague halls of JC

‘‘Everyonshould sso judgmjust try twith eve

-Oliv

“The Patriot” takes an in-depth look

media portrays stereotyping, and sWalking through the cafeteria

on any given day, a student can feel just like Cady Heron walking through the halls of North Shore High School on her first day of class. There are the jocks, preps, freshmen, band geeks, artists, and the legendary popular kids. While the environment at JC isn’t exactly ripped from “Mean Girls,” some of the stereotypes that plague the popular movie can be found close to home.

“I think there are athletic people, smart people, and band people, and then some just float around,” junior Kadie Hook said. These groups are often categorized by people who are not in the group. “I feel like sometimes people judge people, but it’s getting better as ev-eryone is starting to accept one an-other,” Hook added.

“I’ve been called every name out there, but I try not to let it get to me,” freshman Sydnie Griffin said. Griffin believes that stereotyping is common in the school setting.

Stereotyping is usually negative and inaccurate. The word stereo-type is generally used in a negative context. “I feel like at John Car-roll it’s mostly bad stereotyping because everyone is so opinionated

and judgmental before they get to know each other,” Hook said.

Stereotyping doesn’t always have to be used negatively. “If you are saying something nice about some-one, for example, if they’re known to be smart or athletic or funny, then that is all good stuff, but some things are just wrong to label oth-ers as, especially if you don’t know them,” Griffin said.

In her article “Unconsciousness Raising” in the “Regional Review” magazine, Barbara Reskin, PhD in sociology said, “Our brains are wired to reflexively categorize and stereotype people.” She goes on to say that this is especially true in high school, where students just want to fit in. It’s easy to stereotype some-one else for your own security.

“I’ve had an opinion of someone from what I heard people saying about them before I actually knew if it was the truth or not,” Hook said.

Junior Lance Waters feels that there is always stereotyping. “I’m pretty sure I have been a victim [of stereotyping] because almost every-one has been judged at one point and time in their life,” Waters said. It’s often hard not to stereotype people because of their appearance and the company they keep.

In an article on the Psych Cen-tral website, Will Meek, PhD in

psychology said “Understanding the stereotypes you hold of others is key in avoiding them getting in your way and resulting in discrimi-nation, prejudice, and unfair as-sumptions.”

“If you don’t let [stereotyping] bother you, it can make you stron-ger and then you won’t be upset if you ever hear it again,” Griffin said. “Some stuff is really sensitive to people, and some people even commit suicide. I know that ste-reotyping is horrible, but I don’t think about it and then I just don’t worry about it.”

Some people may feel better than the others around them be-cause of the groups that they are in. “I feel like the groups that make themselves appear superior to oth-ers are the ones who get made fun of most because they look and act ridiculous,” Hook said.

“I try to avoid labeling people, but if I hear something that every-one tells me, I think ‘If that really is true [then] I don’t want to hang out with them,’” Griffin said. Rumors can create preconceived notions and ruin opinions of people.

Through the high school expe-rience of rumors and other judg-ments, Waters has taken one im-portant lesson from his time.

“I’ve learned not to judge a book by its cover,” Waters said.

studentstudentANSWERSANSWERS

Do stereotypes affect the

way students

view each other?

Is where you sit in the ca

Bros, Plastics, Nerds, and Gleeks are some of the many common stereotypestereotypes are especially common among students in the John Carroll com

“Yeah, It does, because people are prejudiced because they judge you before they know you.-Ian Jansing-Kaestner, ‘10

“No doubt stereotypes affect the way students think. It makes them mad.”- Colin Brooks ‘12

Sophomore Nandin Dave under-stands what it’s like to be stereotyped. Since Dave is Indian, he receives much backlash and stereotyping just because of his ethnicity. “Yes, I’m In-dian; it’s pretty much self explanatory the stereotypes I receive,” he said.

“Some are that my family works at Dunkin Donuts or 7-11. I ignore it be-cause it’s basically people being blind to the fact that there’s more to a per-son than his or her skin,” Dave said.

Junior KJ Hockaday is also stereo-typed for his ethnicity every time he goes out on the baseball field. “Some-times they say I’m good at baseball be-cause I look Dominican,” Hockaday said.

Hockaday isn’t the only student at JC who is stereotyped based on race and sports. According to a poll taken by 120 JC students, 31 percent of stu-dents feel that sports-related stereo-typing is prominent within the school community. Another 22 percent be-lieves money-related stereotyping is also prominent within the community.

But, Dave and Hockaday aren’t the only ones. Walking into any school, a person can almost immediately dis-tinguish the difference between the social groups that teenagers organize themselves into.

Stereotyping amongst high school

students is common in any school. It’s the attachment of an over-stan-dardized image that a group of peo-ple receive. There are stereotypes because of one’s identity and stereo-types because of one’s group that they associ-ate themselves with. Either way can affect how students view each other and them-selves.

Sociologist Charles E. Hurst of the Col-lege of Wooster states in “Social Inequality: Forms, Causes, and Consequences” that “one reason for stereotypes is the lack of personal, concrete familiarity that individuals have with persons in other racial or ethnic groups. Lack of famil-iarity encourages the lumping together of unknown individuals.”

Stereotyping inevitably causes so-cial cliques to form for one major rea-son: security. They exist solely to uni-fy one individual to another, enacting as a safety net that encompasses them.

The fact that their group shares one commonality, their stereotype, helps them to feel less vulnerable to the outside. This keeps certain groups of students from branching out to other students because they are afraid of be-ing judged. Junior Olivia Beard agrees with the fact that stereotyping exists

in-depthin-depth11Volume 45 Issue 6 April 2010the patriot

Media sows society’s stereotypesAllison Siegel

Managing Editor

comfortable in own skin

High school is often times blamed as the primary breeding ground for stereotyping, but a sig-nificant amount of stereotyping comes from the media. Advertis-ing, entertainment, and news indus-tries are the most common places for stereotypes to be formed in the media world.

Stereotypes are created by adver-tising agencies in order to boost the success rates of their products, ac-cording to EduBook. If an adver-tisement projects the image of the clientele desired, it appears more attractive to the customer an ad agency is searching for. Hollister clothing ads show skinny, beach-ready, beautiful people on their posters and over the Internet be-cause the store wants people who look like that to buy its products. Because that is an image many strive for, it helps boost the sales of Hollister clothing.

Women in all types of media are portrayed as mere playthings for men. In advertisements, a couple depicted in a scene often displays the man controlling the woman. Other times, a woman alone in an advertisement will appear overly sexy because it either attracts other women wanting to look that way or men because they want someone

who looks that way. “I definitely think it’s a lie, it sets unrealistic standards, there is no such thing as a real life Barbie doll. I could look like them if they airbrushed me,” junior Ashley Snyder said.

Women often are stereotyped as the submissive wife because many television shows or movies focus around a man who merely interacts with his wife while at home. To-day’s world is changing, and wom-en are becoming more professional in society. However, television, film, and advertisement make it dif-ficult for society to view women as anything but sexy cooks doting on their husbands.

“I think [the media] shouldn’t base opinions on how celebrities act because [celebrities] just act how the media wants them to,” freshman Martha Schick said.

Minority races tend to be at a severe disadvantage in the media world. In the past year, controver-sy has arisen over the MTV reality show “Jersey Shore” due to its ste-reotype of Italian-Americans and other members of the New Jersey community. The violent actions, excessive drinking, and moral in-tegrity of the cast members on this show have put Italian-Americans and New Jersey citizens under the umbrella of their image.

Minority groups also tend to have a violent or ignorant image

in the eye of the media. Minorities often take on the supporting roles that are less significant in a TV show or movie behind white leads. According to EduBook, minority races such as African-Americans are often times shown using harsh language or physical violence more than white characters in television.

The news industry fuels many of the stereotype fires. A majority of news anchors in the Maryland area are white. It may be viewed as neg-ative stereotyping toward minori-ties if Marylanders are getting news of crime from a white news anchor. One example of this comes from New Orleans during the time of Hurricane Katrina. It was reported that a group of African-American teenagers breaking into stores in or-der to get food were looters, while a group of white teenagers doing the same thing were considered to be fighting to survive, as EduBook states. It seems obvious that the reporting on the same event was skewed due to the race of the peo-ple involved.

Society is a changing place where more and more is tolerated and ac-cepted every day. Although the views on different groups of people can be changed for the better, many times the availability to media influ-ence is proving to be a negative ef-fect on the progression of a nation headed toward tolerance.

ne at JC stop being mental and to be friends eryone. “

via Beard

at the facts on stereotyping, how the

stereotyping in halls of John Carroll.

afeteria CRUCIAL?CRUCIAL?

es that teenagers use to classify themselves and those around them. These mmunity.

studentstudentGRAPHSGRAPHS

What kinds of

stereotypes

are prominent

among students

in JC?

How often do

you feel that

students at JC

stereotype?

for security. “It makes people feel better about themselves to talk badly about others,” Beard said.

Junior KJ Hockaday doesn’t believe that stereotypes and social groups ex-

ist for security but instead because, “it’s their way of having ‘someone to hang out with’, whether the per-son is popular or not they just try to fit in.”

According to one student who wished to remain anonymous, students are so cliquey because, “they are too insecure to leave their

comfort zone and make new friends. Most people are also afraid of being judged based on who they are friends with. No one wants to be made fun of for befriending someone from the ‘nerdy’ clique, but the fact that some-one would get made fun of for that is what’s sad.”

Dave said, “People don’t really mix social groups because if people don’t have cliques, they get set out as differ-ent. We know nobody likes getting picked on which is what being dif-ferent gets done to you. It is basically because of security.” Whether out of intimidation or getting picked on, as Dave explained, students don’t really find themselves integrating within oth-er social groups.

Negative stereotypes can cause teens to lose respect and self-worth. “Being stereotyped just hurts,” Dave said.

Hockaday also thinks negative ste-reotypes can effect how teens relate to each other. “Kids always judge each other on race, and sometimes it can be taken offensively, it’s never posi-tive, it’s always some kind of joke,” Hockaday said.

Although stereotyping can some-times be positive, often it is taken the wrong way and found to be negative. “I think stereotyping can affect you positively or negatively, but probably more negatively. People are more likely to stereotype someone in a neg-ative way than in a positive way, which is sad,” Beard said.

The true danger of stereotyping comes out when used for hate crimes and discrimination. Dietary restric-tions due to religious observances have caused at least one anonymous student to be the subject of discrimi-nation.

Dave believes that stereotyping can eventually have positive side effects. “It can cause one to feel confidence in themselves because they’re comfort-able in their own skin.”

Beard offers some good advice for students: to stop the stereotyping and judging. “Everyone at JC should stop being so judgmental and just try to be friends with everyone.”

Cartoon by Ryan Selvy

These statistics are based off of 120 responses to polls distributed to all four grade levels on April 21, 2010. These graphs have a

± 3% margin of error.

12entertainmententertainmentVolume 45 Issue 6 April 2010

the patriot

PatriotPlaylistlations” is “Siberian Breaks,” a

12-minute epic that showcases the creative intensity found in VanW-yngarden and Goldwasser. Seem-ingly a meditation on commercial success, a theme reflected in lines like “Balance the books, the ledges, the loons / The disappointed looks on the faces,” the track describes how success today is determined by society and the status quo. Rebel-lious undertones are what drive this album. The general public was not expecting MGMT to make this al-bum and the general public did not want MGMT to make this album. The general public wants “Kids” to be rehashed over and over again for all the party mixes that are go-ing to come out in the next decade. But instead, MGMT did what any rock band would and should do: do what they want and not what the public wants.

The songs on “Congratulations” are MGMT in the here and now. VanWyngarden and Goldwasser know what is going on in society, in music, and in the world as whole.

They are not stuck in 2003 when they penned “Kids” or in 2008 when “Oracular Spectacular” hit the shelves. If they were, they wouldn’t have a song called “Lady Dada’s Nightmare.”

MGMT is evolving and with evolution comes change.

While “Congratulations” may cause some fair-weather fan back-

lash, MGMT diehards know that VanWyngarden and Goldwasser are making the music they want to make and love to make.

By the time the end of the album comes about, the listener has wit-nessed the complete evolution of MGMT’s music.

The listener hears everything the band wants them to hear plus more. The album title and title

‘Congratulations’ surpasses low expectations

With the concept of the album heading to the wayside with the advent of mp3 blogs and more em-phasis on catchy singles, Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Gold-wasser go against the grain with MGMT’s latest album “Congratu-lations.”

Gone are the addicting synth lines from the popular singles. In-stead, listeners are treated to an album, a concept that may seem foreign to those on a steady diet of “Kids,” “Time to Pretend,” and “Electric Feel.” Replacing them are a series of solid songs display-ing the artistic side of MGMT, with instrumentation far surpassing that of “Oracular Spectacular.”

While the release of “Flash De-lirium” as the first single confused most people as to what this music actually was and set expectations for “Congratulations” incredibly low, the song actually makes sense in the context of the album.

Sandwiched between “Some-one’s Missing,” a short pop song with the phrase “It feels like some-one’s missing” over and over again, and “I Found A Whistle,” a slow guitar ballad, “Flash Delirium” meshes together with the rest of the album, ending up almost hidden by the rest of the activity of the album.

The masterpiece of “Congratu-

Daniel GallenEditor in Chief

track of “Congratulations” seem tinged with irony.

The band isn’t saying “Con-gratulations” to the world. They’re saying “Congratulations” to them-selves for doing what they want to do.

So, MGMT, “Congratulations.” You’ve made what you wanted, and it surpasses the low expectations with a B.

This is the album cover for MGMT’s new album, “Congratulations.” The album was released on April 13, 2010 and has gotten decent reviews.

Ryan Lina

“Poison Heart” by The Ramones

“I Know a Place” and “Tip The Board” by Bob Marley

“Superhero” by Jane’s Ad-diction

“Something You Forgot” by Lil’ Wayne

What is better to do on summer road trips than kick back and listen to some music? Here is a list of some of our edi-tors’ favorite songs of all time.

Allison Siegel

“Gone” by Jack Johnson

“Feeling This” by Blink-182

“Howling at the Moon” by

The Ramones

“Foundations” by Kate Nash

“Why Can’t I Be Like You?”

by The Cure

Kristin Marzullo

“Disloyal Order Of Water

Buffaloes” by Fall Out Boy

“Tell Them She’s Not

Scared” by Envy On The

Coast

“About A Girl” by The

Academy Is...

“Be My Rescue” by The

Apathy Eulogy

“Weekend Warriors” by A

Change Of Pace

Daniel Gallen

“100%” by Sonic Youth

“Daydream” by Beach Fossils

“Midnight Surprise” by

Lightspeed Champion

“Living Saints” by Polar

Bear Club

“Sleep Paralysist” by Neon

Indian

Kaitlin Bobbin

“Chicago” by Sufjan Stevens

“The Funeral” by Band of Horses

“Ahh…Men” by Say Any-thing

“Deep Blue Sea” by Grizzly Bear

“Grapevine Fires” by Death Cab for Cutie

entertainmententertainment13Volume 45 Issue 6 April 2010the patriot

Ever since its debut on March 2, “Battlefield: Bad Company 2” has been getting much attention from the media. As it turns out, this attention was well deserved.

DICE, the creator of Battle-field, knew that this game had to be good because it was com-peting with the “Call of Duty” series. “Call of Duty” has been popular for years and has always been favored over other first-person shooter games. The best feature about this game is the single player story. Though the first mission is dark and a little dull, the action picks up and the game becomes more and more exciting.

One thing that makes the game so great is the fact that it is so much different from any oth-er first-person shooter. Though the storyline isn’t very original, the limitless possibilities as to what can happen are unprec-edented.

For example, the player can make the game much easier or more difficult for himself by de-stroying a single building. This can have a huge impact because it could clear an entire area in seconds as opposed to killing off your enemies one by one.

Compared to the other games where the same thing happens every time, this con-cept makes this game even more interesting. A downside to this game is that it is only for one player. Yes, there is a mul-tiplayer option, but that is only for online play. To be honest, the game would be much bet-ter if it had an actual multiplay-er mode.

Considering how much dif-ferent the game is from other successful games similar to “Battlefield,” its online feature is surprisingly exciting.

What makes the online mode so much different from other games is how realistic it is. There are no unfair pow-er-ups that make a character superhuman. There are only weapon attachments, which are more consistent with real life. Because of the game’s ex-tremely large maps, it would be miserable to have to run across the entire map, die, and re-spawn at the beginning to do it all over again.

DICE has offered two sim-ple, yet new solutions to this problem.

The first solution is multiple spawning outposts. This means that, depending on the game mode, a character can choose

Battlefield: Bad Company 2where he wants to re-spawn. This gives motivation to do well in the game and work as a team. The better the game is played, the more options there will be to spawn. Another aspect of the online component of the game is joining a squad. When choos-ing to join a squad, the player has the option to spawn next to another teammate. The other solution to getting across a huge map is vehicles.

There are about four differ-ent types of vehicles the player can enter in order to get from one place to another. These ve-hicles include an ATV, a tank, a helicopter, and a boat. Each vehicle has its own advantages. The ATV is the fastest land ve-hicle, so its advantage is speed. The tank has a lot of firepower, so its advantage is strength. The helicopter is the only air vehicle, so it has many advantages, but it is hard to find. Finally, the boat is the only water vehicle, so its advantage is that it enables you to cross rivers.

Overall, this game turned out to be something that I had never seen before, so for those players that are interested, but aren’t sure if this game is worth the money, it may help to know that “Battlefield: Bad Company 2” rates an A+.

Nico CvachEntertainment Editor

‘American Idiot’ play enhances Green Day

skillful intertwining of my favorite songs off of it with the ones from “American Idiot,” such as “Last of the American Girls” with “She’s a Rebel,” made me unbelievably happy.

It doesn’t hurt that the cast’s rendition of Green Day’s songs doesn’t bother me in the slightest. I usually cannot stand it when peo-ple do covers of a song that I think are perfect already, especially as their version tends to turn out ter-rible nine times out of ten. My fa-vorite songs off the Broadway ver-sion would have to be “21 Guns,” “Favorite Son” of the “Rock Against Bush Vol. 2” soundtrack, “Last of the American Girls/She’s a Rebel,” and “Letterbomb.” “21 Guns” currently holds my num-ber one spot because it has all of the cast singing in it. I personally love this version more than Green Day’s version.

The video for “21 Guns” has al-ready been playing on MTV along with Green Day’s video for “Last of the American Girls.”

There are some who will claim that Green Day is selling itself out between this musical, their new Rock Band deal, and their hits on MTV. I, however, respectfully dis-agree. This musical is something Billie Joe Armstrong and the rest of Green Day has been hoping for. “American Idiot” only en-hances them as a band and shows how truly versatile their music is.

One would never think it would be possible for the rebellious punk rock band, Green Day, to be moved to tears. But, it can and happened for the opening of their musical on Broadway. Yes, you heard correctly. I said musical and I said Broadway.

Green Day’s “American Idiot” opened on April 20 and is already one of the favorites to win a Tony Award for best musical.

The play is based off of Green Day’s rock opera “American Idi-ot,” which won two Grammys and sold more than 12 million copies worldwide.

The soundtrack, which is avail-able on iTunes, has all of the tracks off of “American Idiot” with several songs from Green Day’s latest rock opera, “21st Cen-tury Breakdown” (such as “Know Your Enemy” and “Before the Lobotomy”) and a couple songs specifically written for the play (like “When It’s Time”). The fi-nal track of the album is a pseudo-bonus track because it is Green Day’s own cover of the song “Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life).”I fell in love with Green Day when the “American Idiot” video started playing on MTV and VH1 in 2004. “21st Century Breakdown” is the band’s best album yet in my opinion, so the

Alex DunnNews Editor

Matt Pond’s songwriting ability has always been under appreciated. Throughout his career, his band, Matt Pond PA has mastered covers of Oasis and Neutral Milk Hotel, and have toured with Ted Leo and the Pharmacists and Neko Case. Perhaps this lets on that they’re just another quaint band of the slow and steady variety, but their music is far from ordinary.

Their music, most notably the songwriting, is wonderfully and artistically crafted, worthy of great appreciation, yet Matt Pond PA’s albums just seem to seep into life and become quickly forgotten somewhere in the market of mod-ern day hippie and indie bands.

The latest release, “The Dark Leaves,” has progressed from their forgettable days. In fact, it seems as though the other albums were only practice for the pleasingly melan-cholic effect they were attempting to perfect.

Matt Pond is a wordsmith to say the very least. He displays control throughout his writing, as if creat-ing such a pensive mood from an album comes naturally. His musi-cal abilities and unforgettable lyrics are comparable to that of Ben Gib-bard, but his fan base is practically Gibbard’s opposite.

Maybe it’s because the audience for a mild, innocuous, reminiscent band is hard to pinpoint. It’s hard for a band to be soft without being depressing. It’s hard to write a love

sounds that it’s nearly impossible to identify a fan base.

Perhaps a love for Matt Pond PA is naïve, or a teenager’s desire for something amusing that falls be-tween Conor Oberst and Band of Horses. Their work is commend-able, nonetheless.

“The Dark Leaves” is a remark-able addition to Matt Pond PA’s discography. Each track is as im-pressive as the next.

Maybe “The Dark Leaves” doesn’t fit into the mold popular culture embraces, but is that really a bad thing?

Matt Pond PA makes lasting impressionKaitlin Bobbin

Editorials Editor

This is the album cover for Matt Pond PA’s “The Dark Leaves.” Matt Pond PA’s audience was not expecting anything special this time due to its previous albums, but fi nally, “The Dark Leaves” has raised the bar.

song without an indie foundation. It’s hard to be innocent and peace-ful without knocking off some tune or another from the 1960’s.

“The Dark Leaves” is at times brooding, but at other times bright, yet always an incredible listen.

Their somber pathos is always contrasted with a mellow sound. The artistic variety makes for a unique product, and it’s unfortu-nate that Matt Pond PA’s style is lost between Elliott Smith and Iron and Wine.

The band can be placed be-tween so many different styles and

14 entertainmententertainmentVolume 45 Issue 6 April 2010

the patriot

At age 11, senior Benny Clough put a Beatles album into the CD player in his parents’ car. Seven years later, he has never looked back.

“I have a passion for music,” Clough said. “I believe I can carry a message to my audience through my performing.”

Clough’s senior project of writ-ing and recording an album factors greatly in this mission. He wants every listener to come away with the message he is trying to spread.

“The message I’m trying to get out to my audience is that we are in a complicated world, but we’re all connected as one and there’s a lot more good than bad,” he said.

In writing his album, Clough has finally been able to channel all of his creative energy into one project.

“The experience [of writing an

album] has been incredible,” he said. “I’ve never done anything like this.”

The album, currently titled “Oc-tober Streams,” showcases the wide range of Clough’s talent.

“I have blues songs on there, folk songs, love songs, and rock and roll songs, but they all tie together with the message at the end,” Clough said.

Clough started his music career by learning cover songs by his fa-vorite bands. Two years ago, he started writing his own music be-fore starting to play publicly last year.

“[Shamrock Coffee] was my first open mic night,” Clough said.

Clough has gone from five min-ute time slots at Shamrock to play-ing a three hour cover set at Loo-ney’s Pub in December. Of all the places he has played, he has had some of the fondest memories of playing at the Open Door Café in

Bel Air.“I play there a lot and it’s more

intimate,” he said. “I get the chance to draw my audience in more.”

Clough’s audience factors greatly in his passion for performing mu-sic.

“I want them to feel good,” Clough said. “I want to give them all a chance to listen to music from another generation.”

As with most musicians, Clough’s music has gone through a transformation as he has matured to shape his musical tendencies.

“My material has changed,” Clough said. “It’s sort of evolved from music you would typically hear to music with a more subtle message. I’m more into singing protest songs because the world needs to hear it, especially now when things are changing.”

Right now, Clough has one goal in mind: “I’d like to make CDs and bring positive music to the world.”

Above, senior Benny Clough shows off his unique musical ability to play guitar and harmonica simultane-ously. In between his gigs at various restaurants, he fi nds the time to perform at various school functions.

Photo by Katie Doherty

NACHMAMA’S

410-342-2922

11AM- 1AM Sunday- Th sday11AM- 2:30 AMFriday-Saturday

2911 O’ Donnell St.On the square in Canton

Clough aspires to musical futureDaniel GallenEditor in Chief

Students transform local music scene

Senior Vince Gruse shakes with excitement as he sets up his drum kit in preparation for his band’s performance. No longer nerve-stricken by the thought of playing in front of an audience, Gruse and fellow senior Kurt Karolenko have become accustomed to playing at local shows, as have other students like senior Kelly Stetka. Although Bel Air’s music scene may not seem as lively as Baltimore’s, it’s certainly not something to be over-looked.

Gruse and Karolenko became friends through their involvement in both soccer and jazz band during their sophomore years. “Through both, we built a friendship,” Gruse said. “In jazz band, I noticed that [Karolenko] seemed pretty good at bass. So, I invited him to come jam at my house, and I was blown away by his talent. Ever since that day, we’ve played together.”

Six months ago, Gruse and Kar-olenko decided to form a two piece band. After throw-ing an assortment of paper marked with adjectives and conjunctions into a hat and pulling out three pieces at ran-dom, they settled on a name for their band: Lush and Bro.

With their own eclectic sound, Lush and Bro frequently performs around the community at places such as the Bel Air Armory. “Our music is kind of hard to describe. It is deeply rooted in funk, but uti-lizes electronic, alternative, metal, and hip-hop/rap influences,” Gruse said. “It would be easiest to say we play whatever we feel like playing, from blues to screamo, from jazz to alternative, from Latin to indie.”

As Karolenko plays bass and piano, Gruse covers drums and vocals, sometimes even inviting guest singers, such as junior Pat St. Clair and senior Lexie Wohl-fort, to accompany them during performances. Although their cur-rent venues for performance are relatively small and low key, Lush and Bro hopes to start playing at bigger theaters, such as the Recher in Towson, once the group’s album comes out near the end of May or mid-June.

“I want people to be unable to control their internal pulse [when listening to our music],” Gruse

said. “They should not be able to keep from clapping, or tapping their feet, or banging their heads.” Gruse and Karolenko channel all the excitement and emotion they feel before each show directly into their instruments. “The people re-act to the emotion with which you play,” Gruse said. “I try to translate everything I feel into music.”

Without question, emotion serves as a key element in both writing and performing music. Stet-ka also shares this viewpoint. “I re-ally put emotion into my music be-cause that’s how I express myself,” Stetka said. “I love the freedom of being able to use my creativity to do whatever I want with a song. There are no rules.”

Stetka, who sings and plays guitar and piano, doesn’t perform out in the community as often as she used to, partially because of the exten-sive practice required for preparing for a show. Stetka said, “Also, I’d rather play on stage with other mu-sicians instead of going solo. I don’t get nervous or have stage fright, but

I think it’s more fun to share the excitement with other people.”

Whether Stet-ka decides to con-tinue playing solo or perform with other musicians instead, there are plenty of venues in Harford Coun-

ty for her to take advantage of, such as local coffee shops that hold open mic nights. Stetka has already per-formed at Huckleberry’s Tea and Coffee, the Talking Head Club, the Bel Air Armory, and Shamrock Park, and other various locations.

Stetka compares her music to something along the lines of acous-tic/pop with an indie twist. She’s been compared to musicians such as Ingrid Michaelson, Sarah Ba-reilles, and Taylor Swift. “I think I hear [my music] differently than other people do because I analyze it so much and focus on what I could fix,” Stetka said. “I just write what I feel and play what comes out.”

Music is the means by which Stetka is able to best express her-self. Whether she’s writing lyrics or performing, music is part of who she is. “My favorite thing about mu-sic is how powerful it is. It has such an impact on people,” Stetka said. And thanks to Bel Air’s accessible music scene, students like Stetka, Gruse, and Karolenko are having an impact on people too.

Nicolette HatzidimitriouGeneral Staff

‘‘I just write what I feel and play what comes out.”

- Kelly Stetka

editorialseditorials 15Volume 45 Issue 6 April 2010the patriot

“They don’t mean anything, the game took away the meaning.”-Patrick St. Clair ‘11

S T A F F E D I T O R I A L

What does ‘The Patriot’ have to say?Students should promote JC

What does ‘compelling, considerate, and uncompromising’ mean to you?

“They’re just a way to make the school look better.”

-Jesse Herliehy ‘10

Six months ago, banners display-ing the words “Compelling, Consid-erate, and Uncompromising” were first hung throughout the hallways. Buttons with the same words deco-rated the skirts and jacket pockets of the student body. We listened to teachers give speeches about how the words from the obituary of our namesake were embodied in hearts and minds of the JC student.

However, do the students even really care? Or, more importantly, do we even know what uncompro-mising means?

The question remains about whether this brand is what John Carroll really means to the stu-dents. Did we decide to come to this school because the teachers are considerate, the opportunities are

compelling, and the ideals are un-compromising? We need to find a way for the students to get behind the brand so that they embrace the words and use it as motivation to love the school.

It’s not that the brand isn’t what is right for the school (as it was cre-ated after focus groups, surveys, and consultations with a profes-sional marketing committee), but students aren’t able to get as en-grossed as they need to be in order to support and understand it.

Still, we applaud President Rich-ard O’Hara, who will be sending surveys out to the student body to assess the branding. Assuming the results are utilized, they can offer more insight into what the students really think about the brand. Hope-

fully they will have suggestions about how to make it more practi-cal and better able to be applied to the operations of the school.

Maybe instead of just saying the words, the administration could immerse the students in the brand. Applying it to the Black and Gold Award winners for seniors is a good start, but what about reward-ing students that embody the brand on a monthly basis? The buttons assembly, while slightly cheesy and far too long, was able to get stu-dents to rise up in support. The school should continue doing simi-lar contests but make sure they are focused on these events in respect to a time-frame, so they do not lose the attention of the students.

To promote the brand and

make it more relatable to students, the administration should use the students as a tool. There should be art and graphic design students create new promotional materials featuring it and focus groups com-ing up with ways to get students engaged in the ideas. In addition, TV Production should be mak-ing videos relating its stories to the school’s YouTube channel, and photo classes should be making al-bums of students representing the brand in the classroom.

After all, we are trying to create an ever-changing face of the brand. Every aspect of the school would be showcased, not by open houses and brochures in the mail, but by real students with real connections to the school.

“Other than the buttons? Nothing really.”

-Maria Edwards ‘12

“It changes the way stu-dents feel about the school.”

-Ellse Adamson ‘13

At Wit’s EndBy: Allison SiegelSurviving ten days without inter-

net, cell phone access, and televi-sion was supposed to be a real chal-lenge to my communication skills. As it turns out, the trip may have been the best thing for them.

Until recently, I had never trav-eled farther than United States soil could take me. But over Spring Break, I travled to Europe.

Trekking the few thousand miles to Greece and Italy showed me that there really is so much to learn about not only history, or science, or culture, but about people. Hu-manity is such a bizarre thing –no matter where you are in the world, it can still surprise you. People will always be people, whether that is in the most complex or simple sense.

There is something to say about getting to know a person while shipped alongside them to a place you can’t even begin to imagine. It doesn’t matter whether you have ever talked to him or her in the cafeteria before, or whether this person would be caught dead talk-ing about the history of the Parthe-non and the Greek gods worshiped there while actually in history class.

Being able to see someone out of their regular environment re-ally lends to a truer reading of their character. Over the course of ten days, I befriended some people that I didn’t even know went to our school. It became clear that I truly have been missing out. It’s so easy to open up to someone and share jokes or tell stories when you know that no one’s under the pressure of having to fit in at school.

The people that I met and were able to talk to during my adventure showed that there is so much to be hopeful about for mankind. In America, going into your average café or coffeehouse can be seen as an individualist activity because you go in, get what you want, sit down on your laptop, explore the world of Tumblr, and leave. In Greece, most of my favorite moments and people were found while I was idly having coffee. There were shop owners that could make me laugh or determine what my grandmoth-er would want in three seconds. Some café waiters could carry on a conversation with you for a half hour, despite the fact that we could barely speak the same language.

The biggest surprise and the most refreshing bit of knowledge that I acquired was that there is something out there holding hu-manity together, no matter what we think about how it is falling apart. This generation isn’t lacking face-to-face contact. There’s a whole world out there ready to hear a story and smile with you.

ATTENTIONhow to: students payGET

to

It’s normal for most kids to not pay attention in school as it is. But what are teachers supposed to do when it’s almost May and senioritis starts to show in the freshmen?

Well, valued and scholarly teach-ers of mine, I have a few ideas. This is not about giving all of your stu-dents an easy A. It’s not about class parties or free-mods. It’s about en-gagement. We’re teenagers. That doesn’t mean we’re incapable of getting involved in the classroom.

All it takes is something to get us interested about the subject. We don’t want you to preach to us. We understand that there is a curricu-

Kaitlin BobbinEditorials Editor

lum that teachers have to cover, but why can’t the curriculum relate to us? If it’s worth taking the time to study, it has to have some impor-tance to our lives.

PowerPoint presentations and projects don’t relate to us. They don’t make us feel a connection to the lesson. We don’t like taking notes or doing mundane sequences of arbitrary activities. In fact, I’ve learned the most from the classes that never required a single note. Not because the teachers aren’t challenging, but because they un-derstand that education shouldn’t be separated from interesting.

I’ve always felt the most engaged in a classroom with a lively teacher. When it’s apparent that the teach-

er’s main concern is not slamming information into our heads for the purpose of not losing their job, class becomes bearable. When the teacher genuinely cares about the students, the class becomes decent. When the teacher truly wants to in-terest us in the subject, their class becomes a favorite.

When teachers are passionate about what they’re teaching and they see the connection between what they’re teaching and why it’s worth a student’s time to learn it, students enjoy school. And when students enjoy class, they learn.

Honestly, we aren’t learning what makes the information we’re taught relevant if the only thing it’s good for is a test grade at the end

of the day. Deep down, we know that there must be a reason why we’re studying the variety of sub-jects that our school requires. It has to be more than test grades, college acceptance letters, and big money from a successful career.

The reason why 12 years of our young lives are reserved for educa-tion is more purposeful than mon-etary success or academic awards. School is supposed to teach us how to think in new ways and how to learn from the successes and fail-ures of our ancestors. Incorporat-ing this into class does not require a sacrifice of college or test prepa-ration. As soon as teachers learn this, they will know what it takes to engage their students.

Editor offers advice for teachers to heed

16editorialseditorialsVolume 45 Issue 6 April 2010

the patriot

With an incoming freshman class numbering at 160 and the ad-ministration fighting against the ef-fects of the still-faltering economy and the demographics of Harford County, I question if advertising and marketing efforts are being pursued correctly to reach the mag-ic number of students each year.

I do recognize the difficulties we face and am admittedly not intimately involved in the process of enrollment, but I am told, when interview-ing various members of the administration, that it is the job of the entire John Car-roll community to promote the school. So why is that not happening?

As a reporter, I know that every story needs a face, or a description fo-cusing on a person at the beginning of an article. It’s what draws people in – a human voice, a story with appeal, a single focal point to paint a picture for the reader and set the tone of the article. To increase enrollment, the school must take advantage of the surplus of student achievements and stories available.

I’m thinking about the four girls that got lacrosse scholarships, but have they been featured in promo-tions? “The Patriot” was just named

a finalist in two national journalism competitions, with the possibility of winning in both, so shouldn’t our editor in chief be called to share the papers’ stories? We run trips over breaks and exchanges to all over the world, but are we telling people that we’re going to China in 2011?

We should have these students actively going out into the commu-nity and promoting the school, ex-plaining how John Carroll has pro-

vided these opportunities. They’ve taken the tools they’ve been given and are running with them.

Their stories should be featured on the website much more promi-nently. Where the pictures are now should be features about student achievements. Athletes should go back to the recreational centers they played at as children and

hand out awards at ceremonies, talking to kids about what John Carroll offers. Tailor promotional trips to feeder schools by involv-ing a greater variety of students to address different aspects of John Carroll. Having President Richard O’Hara and Principal Paul Barker speak at school functions is great, but continue to allow more indi-vidualized time where potential stu-dents can listen to their peers speak about what specific aspects of high

school life interest them. Promotional materials can profile a variety of creative and intellectual pursuits, and can be more effective when told from the eyes of a student.

However, to get the stu-dents to do this, they have to be enticed. Members of the enrollment team should stand up in front of the school and ask for their help more often. Don’t just tell me during interviews that everyone has to pro-mote the school. Work to

engage current students in a way that makes them want to sell John Carroll.

A teacher made the best point, as I ranted to them about the low enrollment numbers. They gave the example that for the brand-ing, it would have been effective to get the entire school commu-nity involved: have English classes

deciding on slogans, art students making logos, photography classes taking shots of everyday life in the classroom and beyond. That’s how you get students excited about the school and allow them to feel that they have a stake in its future.

In addition to utilizing students’ stories, the Board of Trustees and the administration should include students even more directly in the deci-sion mak-ing process about what aspects of the school to promote.

The ad-ministration is either secluded in a hallway or halfway across campus. The Board espe-cially isn’t in school every day, sit-ting in the classrooms, walking the halls. That’s the students and teach-ers. I appreciate their marketing ex-pertise, but shouldn’t the market-ing committee have students that love John Carroll come to meetings and give their say? Likewise, the administration should seek inspira-tion from students by incorporating them into advertising efforts.

Develop focus groups of inter-ested students and faculty, ones that really have a lot to say about our school. This includes a variety of ages and interest levels outside of the classroom. They can pick

what to promote, as they know best what made them want to come to John Carroll, whether as a student or what draws them as a teacher. They know what potential students and families want to hear and how best to present the information to young people.

If we recognize the importance of utilizing students to tell their story, the way to get them to rally

behind John Carroll’s mission is to give them an active say in the future of the school. Give them a chance to say why they came to John Carroll to find out what best to market, and then, in turn, give students a chance to share what they’ve gained

through their time on campus.However, I want to make this

clear: I love John Carroll. It has provided me with countless op-portunities for success and growth as both a student and as a person. I want other people to have the chance to belong to this commu-nity, to this family. We have the story. We just need to sell it.

Let students be the voice for our marketing attempts because they’re already the most effective face. That’s how we can show potential students what they want to and need to know about our school. We owe it to 45 years of students passing through these halls to take into account what they have to say.

‘‘We have the story. We just need to sell it.”

Kate FroehlichExecutive Editor

ThePoint1. Utilize student stories to better promote the school2. Engage students in a way that makes them want to sell John Car-roll3. Get ideas from students and teachers about why they chose John Carroll

For some reason, the school’s faculty is constantly decreasing the amount of freedom that students have. Whether it’s as simple as the dress code or as complicated as getting involved in students’ lives, the freedoms of the student body are constantly being diminished.

With the addition of girls hav-ing to wear saddle shoes and fresh-man guys wearing whatever those things are that they’re wearing, and incoming freshmen having to wear the same ties next year, the dress code is starting to make less and less sense. It seems more like the leaders of the school are going on a power trip. It’s like they had a meeting and said, “The uniforms aren’t bland enough. I know! Let’s make everybody wear the same shoes, then they’ll have nothing!”

The uniform rules used to make sense. They used to say that the dress code made us look present-able and let the students know how to dress when going in for some-thing important like a job inter-

view. Now, that no longer applies. They act as if when you went into a job interview, the man conduct-ing it said, “This man is not wear-ing a John Carroll tie, he is not getting this job, and I will smite him!” Actually, if you went to an interview wearing one of those ties you would not get the job. In fact, you would probably be dismissed as a crazy person.

Furthermore, it seems as though the administration is lurking over our shoulders outside of school as well. If somebody hears a rumor of you doing something that does not cohere to the JC moral standards of conduct or they find one pic-ture of you holding a red cup on Facebook, you may have to face academic reparations.

The school is cracking down on freedom of expression left and right. It’s a depressing thing to think about. I’m not even looking forward to spirit week next year be-cause of how controlled and school oriented it’s going to be. It’s a good way to keep students under con-trol, but lately it has gone too far.

Ryan LinaGeneral Staff

School constrains student freedoms

Volcano eruption creates opportunity for crime strike

Capitalizing on student stories can revitalize image

As I woke up for school one day last week and turned on the TV, news anchors continued to pour out their own commentary on the eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull vol-cano in Iceland.

When the volcano erupted on Wednesday, April 14, a large plume of ash was blown into the air cancelling thousands of flights and causing airlines to lose over $200 million a day while ash drifted over the northern European skies.

It’s amazing how, in our high-tech world, a natural phenomenon such as a volcanic eruption, where no casualties or direct devastation occurred, can throw a part of the world into havoc.

This eruption is just one of many recent windows that have been set up by Mother Nature for scammers to benefit from. Others include the earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, China, and Thailand’s Tsu-nami. But isn’t it then that we, as neighbors, are supposed to cooper-

Taylor SchaferFeatures Editor

ate and help as much as we can? Apparently not all of us think so. In the midst of this turmoil, some people looked at it as a window of cruel opportunity.

As frustrated travelers waited hopelessly in airports, airlines

scampered to reschedule flights, and mil-lions of people watched the surreal events unfold on the news, pathetic con artists took full advantage to gain all the cash they could bargain from inno-cent people.

What happens in this situation is that these con artists find a par-ticular person’s location (a young man stuck in a London airport, for example) and retrieve the phone number or e-mail address of a vul-nerable relative (mainly grandpar-ents or aunts and uncles). They then pose as the stuck family mem-ber asking the relative for a large

amount of cash after explaining a false reason of why “they” need cash in a hurry.

In reality, they are probably mis-erable people too lazy to work for their own money. And in an urgent situation, most family members

would not hesitate to wire the money to help out. I was stunned that people would dip this low for their own ben-efit.

It’s a win-win situ-ation for the scam-mer, but a lose-lose for the victims. Not

only are they hurt by the disaster that just happened, they are out a few hundred or thousand dollars.

So, props to the few human be-ings who never cease to amaze me with their constant greed and self-ishness. No matter what Mother Nature may have in store for us, a few of us always seem to feel the need to outdo her. Keep up the good work! I think we’ll really grow from our experiences.

‘I was stunned that people would dip this low for their own benefit.”

Photos from Patriot Archives

editorialseditorials 17Volume 45 Issue 6 April 2010the patriot

Kaitlin BobbinEditorials Editor ▲

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On Friday, I was able to watch a house burn in San Diego, California, via CNN live. How incredible has the online news venue become that I can sit on my computer and watch the plumes of smoke float from somebody’s home in real time? Seriously. I can only dream that jcpatriot.com will one day reach this pinnacle.

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I was staring into the distance, living my mun-dane everyday life when I was told that I should live in an Earthship. Just the word blew my mind. When I first placed my eyes on this “radically sustainable home made of recyclable materials,” I discovered my life goal. All sarcasm aside, when I come across $1.5 million, I will be living in an Earthship in New Mexico.

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If Charles Darwin saw the cur-rent state of evolution, he would be crying. Evolution, or at least hu-man evolution, has stopped. Evolu-tion has slowed so much that now it seems more like neverlution.

Recently, there was a video re-leased on the Internet of a lady try-ing to get close to the polar bears at a zoo by going into the polar bear tank. If you’re reading this and thinking “that’s a good idea,” you’re an idiot. Obviously, while the lady tried to pet the polar bear, the bear proceeded to eat her face.

What did she think was going to happen, the bear would just be happy that an overweight 32 year old woman was invading his personal space? False. The bear is going to attack the deranged woman.

That’s simply evolution: bear gets attacked, bear defends itself. On the other hand, we humans decided to help the lady and hit the bear with a stick until it let go.

In my opinion, that’s bad genes. Evolution says this lady is crazy and should learn a lesson from this, but instead the zookeepers rush to her help and let her produce children who are going to think it’s a good idea to go pet a lion.

People just don’t learn from their mistakes anymore. It used to be, when we see the crap about to hit the fan, we step to the side of the fan. However, now people will stand behind the fan thinking “I’m

okay here! I know what’s going to happen.”

People will stand behind that fan for years, but when they get your order mixed up at Taco Bell one time, they’ll go ballistic. If they give you a taco instead of a burrito, just fold it sideways! People freak out over the littlest things.

Politics around the world have stopped evolving as well. Re-cently, the government spent over $180,000 to clone a dog. We should spend our money on some-thing beneficial. Every five sec-onds, a child dies of hunger related illnesses. We could spend our money helping them. Did I miss the meeting when we established that we were just going to clone ev-ery starving child after he dies?

The world has stopped evolving so much that people no longer look for good traits in oth-ers. Everybody judges each other on their outer ap-pearances instead of personalities and

intelligence. This leads people to get plastic surgery so they can fit in.

People are no longer learning from their mistakes or trying to find good genes in other people. Instead, people continue to repeat their mistakes and choose cosmet-ics over intelligence.

If this continues, then the pre-diction of the world ending at 2012 will come true. However, by that time, the process of neverlution will be so extreme that instead of freak-ing out because the world is ending, we will say, “No one is watching the car dealership; were going into the apocalypse in style!”

Ryan LinaGeneral Staff

When my homeroom teacher passed out the little white slips of papers, I looked down and saw a balance of $258 staring back at me. Two hundred and fifty-eight dollars for three AP tests.

Exchanging a glance with my friend, we couldn’t help but ask each other: what was wrong with the College Board and its outra-geous testing fees?

To be fair, the cost of an AP test is miniscule in comparison to the amount of money a student could save by placing out of a general col-lege course. However, many stu-dents who are taking an AP test are most likely taking more than one. Those 86 dollars, multiplied by any number of AP tests, quickly add up to a frightening amount.

According to College Board, fi-nancial aid is available for students who meet certain requirements. Through financial aid, the cost for an exam can be lowered to $56.

While the reduction certainly

helps, it doesn’t make the exam free. A 35 percent reduction prob-ably will not help someone in dire need of financial aid. And while some students from middle class families might not qualify for finan-cial aid, it still could be a struggle to pay for several exams.

At JC, the balance AP students receive in April comes right around the time when their tuition deposit and technology fees are due for the next year. So while one AP test might not break someone’s bank account, two or three might just be enough to cause one’s parents to tighten the family’s spending a bit.

After seeing the balance for the AP exam fees, some students might consider backing out. Don’t. You might not have to pay the full $86, but you’ll have to pay a small fee to cover the cost of unused supplies. You might as well take the test.

Regardless of the actual price of an AP exam, I’m still bothered by the fact that students have to pay to prove themselves. College Board is making a ton of money at the ex-pense of thousands of students.

Student deems AP exams worthy of extravagant costs

Jenny HottleManaging Editor

heses‘‘ggPeople just don’t learn from their mistakes anymore.

Modern society seems caught in ‘Neverlution’

For two weeks, I sat on the floor of the Senate in the Maryland Gen-eral Assembly in a gray jacket as a student page, soaking in the hours of debate and hundreds of papers distributed daily.

During my last week, we had an eight hour long session with-out a break and must have killed 938,438 trees.

After spending that time there, talking with the senators and ob-serving the political process, I was surprised by much of what I was able to see.

On bills with serious debate, only a handful were bipartisan in the final vote. The major bill that sticks out in my mind as follow-ing this was medicinal marijuana, which saw support from both the Republicans and the Democrats in the Senate.

There was a core block of sena-tors that voted with the President of the Senate at all times. Even with the opposition proposing amend-ments that made undoubtedly the most sense, they were still shut down.

I watched senators fail to argue their point and pass it off to some-one who was not involved with the

bill at all and still see their work pass. One senator made a single point during his entire time pre-senting a bill, refusing to address the other side’s concerns, and his bill passed. He simply ignored im-portant points brought up in pro-posed amendments.

However, at other times, I thought senators would argue sim-ply for the sake of it. We literally must have spent two hours on a bill about not securing dogs on leashes during snow storms.

In addition, not all of the sena-tors even pay attention. I watched some get on the Internet, one play chess online, and a few that put the Duke-Butler NCAA champi-onship game up for the pages to watch.

This can be explained, however, by the fact that, according to one of the senators, much of the work is done in committees and the floor debate is “for show.”

It should not have surprised me to see this. It is politics, right?

But I wish there was less of this pointless nonsense and more col-laboration.

Yeah, most of the senators care about their constituents, and be-lieve me, they all said it about a thousand times each day. But may-

Kate FroehlichExecutive Editor

Future of state politics proves feeble

be instead of shoving through bills because there is a majority or pro-posing unnecessary amendments that don’t have a chance of passing, both sides should work to come to a logical agreement instead.

I heard from pages in the House of Delegates that only two bills dur-ing their two weeks in Annapolis were completely based on party lines. I applaud that type of bipar-tisanship and wish the same had occurred more frequently in the Senate chamber.

When issues are based on party lines, nothing can get done effec-tively. How can you really expect a state to see improvements, espe-cially with such a huge debt, when their senators can’t even attempt to see or understand both sides of the bill?

It seems to me that this is the best way to make the state stronger as a whole. And while a lot of good gets done in Annapolis, there are still a significant number of flaws that could use amending.

Photo by Katie Clarke

Delegate Eric Bromwell sits at his computer in the House of Delegates at the State House in Annapolis, MD. According to pages in the House of Delegates, there was bipartisan support behind the majority of the bills passed.

It’s that time of the year when indie music festivals across the country sprout up like poppies. How I wish that Baltimore would have a spring festival. It’s not impossible to swing $200-300 to see a plethora of my favorite bands gathered to-gether in one place. But add in a four night hotel stay and a round-trip flight—well, my plans are slashed. I don’t understand why I must be teased like this. Please Balti-more, get your act together.

“ODDSAC” is all I have to say. What does that mean? Well, I still don’t know. Animal Collective has left every hipster in Baltimore wondering just what this visual album was supposed to be. Perhaps it means nothing, or perhaps it means everything. Are some people just weird for the sake of being weird? Maybe the most impor-tant question of all is sim-ply, “What color are your pants?”

Summer jobs can be the opportunity for teens to make money and gain some independence. They can also be the reason why your summer is spent in a poorly-lit room full of stress and pain. I suggest picking sum-mer jobs carefully. If you aren’t seeing the light of day enough, it’s time to rethink striving for independence.

18 sportssportsVolume 45 Issue 6 April 2010

the patriot

Joey HoffManaging Editor

Sherry Hudson

SoftballQ: How did you get involved

with softball?

A:I started playing organized softball when I was 8 years old. I have two older brothers and a younger sister, so we were always playing Wiffle Ball in the backyard. Additionally, my dad coached my brothers’ baseball team so I was always tagging along with them to practice since an early age.

Q: What do you like about softball?

A: Some people think softball is a slow paced game, but it is actu-ally a short game with lots of bunts and steals. In softball, the bases are closer than baseball, and the pitcher’s mound is closer. It can be a mental game. You have to decide whether to swing at a pitch that is coming at you 50 or 60 miles per hour.

Q: When and where did you start coaching?

A: I was the assistant coach at John Carroll for many years. I took over as head coach six years ago.

Q: What do you like about coaching?

A:The best thing about coach-ing is the interaction with the girls. It brings me great pleasure to see them mature and grow every year. Also, just being around the girls and the different personalities is a lot of fun. They make me laugh every day.

Q: How would you describe your coaching technique?

A:I think I am a pretty disci-plined coach. My philosophy is to stress the fundamentals of the game. I also hope that by being on the team they become more

Q: What is your favorite JC coaching memory?

A:Two years ago, we beat Spalding in the end-of-the-year tournament and went to the cham-pionship game for the division. It took the program to new heights and showed the girls [that] they can play with the best teams.

photo by Katie Doherty

Varsity softball coach Sherry Hudson speaks to a player during the game against Mount de Sales. Hudson has been coaching the team for six years.

responsible for their own actions whether it is coming to practice ev-ery day, finishing their school work, or taking care of obligations with their family or community. I also try to convey to the girls the impor-tance of doing things with passion and commitment. They shouldn’t just go through the motions.

Track team smashes several school records

Julia EarnshawIn-depth Editor

photo by Katie Doherty

Junior Ben Pickett races the 1600-meter run against Baltimore Luther-an’s Corey Armes. Pickett holds the school record in the 3200-meters.

Blizzard results in combined winter/spring athletic banquet

Assistant Athletic Director Tim Perry deemed it a “perfect storm of events” that caused the winter ath-letic banquet to be postponed and combined with the spring banquet.

“We were getting down to the wire, giving everybody ample no-tice about the banquet,” said Perry. “But we only had a minimal num-ber of tickets sold.”

Although he admitted that he “really doesn’t know” why there were so few tickets sold, Perry thinks that it was due to a combi-nation of the poor economy, the weather, and the start of the spring sports season.

“Most of our athletes play mul-tiple sports, and it’s hard to afford [tickets for] two or three banquets in a school year. Also, the winter banquet had already been pushed back because of the snow and so athletes just figured that they need-ed to be at their spring sports try-outs,” Perry said.

Perry is optimistic about the success of the coming combined sports banquet, saying, “Every-

body, I think, will work together on this.”

However, he admitted that there were “a couple compromises we had to make. But, I mean, it was the worst winter since I was a baby,” Perry said.

Perry and the Athletic Depart-ment have decided on May 20 for the com-bined event.The only major differ-ence is that the teams will not have breakout sessions.

They needed to work around the seniors’ schedules, “it [was] quite the juggling act,” Perry said.

He added, “One of the tough-est challenges [in scheduling the banquet] is that some of our teams are so successful and prolong their season by advancing in the end-of-the-season tournaments.”

Despite these challenges, Perry said that he plans to “give all stu-dents and parents ample opportu-nity to come together and enjoy JC

athletics this spring.” Student athletes have mixed

emotions about the combined sports banquet. “I think it will take the spotlight off winter sports. The emphasis will probably be on spring sports,” freshman swimmer and golf-player Jon Leishman said.

Junior wres-tler Lance Waters agreed. “I’m not go-ing,” he said. “I don’t play a spring sport and I think [winter and spring sports banquets] should be separate – each season should get its

own banquet.” However, the other student-ath-

letes seem to think the combined banquet is a good idea.

“I think it’s good, because it brings everyone together in the John Carroll community,” Marcus Munroe, a freshmen on the JV bas-ketball team, said.

Freshmen JV lacrosse player Hayden Sharretts agreed. “I think it’s a good idea [to combine ban-quets] because of the economy right now.”

Mollyann PaisPhoto Editor

‘‘It brings everyone together in the JC community.”

- Marcus Munroe

As sophomore Ben Pickett stood on the line for the 3200-me-ter run on April 10 at the Pikesville Invitational, he took a look around at the other top distance runners in the state and knew he was in for the race of his life. Two miles later, Pickett sprinted across the finish line in fifth place with a final time of 9:44.9, a new school record.

The Pickett family is no stranger to record-setting. Josh Pickett, class of ’07, formerly held the 3200-me-ter record of 9:55, until the young-er Pickett shattered his mark.

Pickett credits his success to his training, eating well, stretching before each meet, and doing the best he can. To keep his motiva-tion high during his hard practices, Pickett looks to the rest of his team. Keeping positive, Pickett said, “If they can do it, I can, too.”

Pickett wasn’t the only one set-ting records this season. On April 17 at the Knights Invitational at North County High School, fresh-man Derek Alban, Pickett, and seniors Chris Kunkel and Ian Rich-ardson ran 8:41.9 in the 4x800-meter relay, beating the old record.

On April 21, the 4x800-meter relay record was broken again in a meet against St. Mary, Beth Tfiloh, and St. Frances, this time by a team of Alban, Kunkel, Richardson, and senior Daniel Gallen. This team shaved .3 seconds off the time, run-ning 8:41.6.

Richardson, who set the record both in 2007 and 2010 and also set the school record in the open

800-meter run in 2009, under-stands that JC has a reputation to uphold in the 4x800-meter relay.

In the 4x800-meter relay, it’s not just about the individuals, but about the teamwork that is put into action. “We go out there for each other, and each win is not an individual, but a collective achieve-ment,” Richardson said.

Sophomore Heather Kirwan ini-tially experimented with sprinting 100-meter and 200-meter races, but once she tried pole vaulting “for the heck of it,” she found her new love.

Now, Kirwan is achieving suc-cess in pole vaulting, holding a record of seven feet, six inches. “My new goal is eight feet and dur-ing practice my goals are to work on getting faster and [improving] form,” Kirwan said. Kirwan will continue to challenge herself, “lit-erally to new heights,” because of her passion and love for the sport.

Freshman Kiana Wright has burst onto the scene in 2010, set-ting the record in the 400-meter dash, running 59.9. “Before a race, it’s pretty much the worst part of my day. I am incredibly tense and nervous and I can’t function. After the race is a whole different story,” Wright said.

As for the rest of the season, the team’s attitude is staying confi-dent, thanks to the records. “The outlook for the end of the season is hopefully the girls will get in the top three in the championship. The guys will do very well; we have a talented team throughout,” coach Robert Torres said.

sportssports19Volume 45 Issue 6 April 2010the patriot

The most poignant scene in the NCAA Tournament wasn’t Butler forward Gordon Hayward’s last-ditch shot attempt to beat Duke in the final game. It wasn’t Michigan State guard Korie Lucious’ buzzer-beater to sink Maryland in the first round. It wasn’t even Butler as a team advancing to the Final Four up the road from the school.

Instead, the scene that defines the NCAA Tournament is that of West Virginia coach Bob Huggins on the ground, comforting Moun-taineers senior guard Da’Sean Butler after Butler suffered a scary knee injury in the Moutaineers’ Fi-nal Four loss to Duke.

I watched in shocked silence af-ter Butler crumpled to the ground, screaming in agony following an awkward collision with Duke for-ward Brian Zoubek. It was the typical train wreck reaction – some-thing you want to look away from, but you just can’t.

But I’m glad I kept watching. I saw something that defines athlet-ics as a whole, something that I will definitely remember for the rest of my life, more so than the fact that Butler almost won the whole tour-nament.

I’ll remember the love that a coach showed for his player. Af-ter Huggins’ few choice words to the referees about Duke’s play, the coach kneeled down and caressed his star player’s head, talking to him quietly and trying to soothe him.

The emotion displayed was one I had never seen before. Often times, we see coaches giving high fives and offering words of encour-agement, but rarely do we see any-thing like this. The image of Butler lying on the ground in pain with Huggins next to him wrote itself into my memory.

And after this happened, the game didn’t seem so important. It reinforced the idea that the re-lationships formed on teams and groups are more important than the overall result that is reached. When it gets down to it, a team is about caring for one another and looking out for each other, some-thing the member of any team

At halftime of the game between Duke and Butler, Butler came on to CBS to speak about his injury. The soft tone in his voice showed that he truly had been affected by Huggins’ act, that Butler came out of this experience physically injured, but stronger overall as a person.

We’re left with the relationships and the experiences we’ve had through bonds with others.

Overtime By: Daniel Gallen

Senior golfers play through links strongly

Photo by Kristin Marzullo

Senior John Borowy follows through on his shot. Borowy has spent four years on the golf team with seniors Trey Profi li and Brad Ross.

Daniel GallenEditor in Chief

Every spring for the last four years, seniors Jon Borowy, Trey Profili, and Brad Ross have dusted off their clubs following long win-ters to prepare for the Patriots’ var-sity golf season . While the team has struggled to compete in the MIAA A Conference, Borowy, Profili, and Ross all feel their time on the team has been some of the best they have spent in high school.

“[The golf team is] the best ex-perience I’ve had related to this school,” Profili said. Profili has been golfing under the coaching of Serge Hogg since eighth grade who convinced him to join the team.

Borowy and Ross both acknowl-edge that Profili is the hardest working member of the team, be-cause he played at Winters Run Golf Club every day over the sum-mer in addition to constructing a driving range in his attic so he could work on his swing over the winter months. Borowy and Ross would both practice at every open opportunity.

Borowy has been playing golf since he was 12 years old and met Hogg through his brother Nick, class of ’07. Ross met Hogg through his brother Matt, class of ’08, and cites Hogg as a main rea-son for enjoying the team.

“They’re all supportive,” Ross said about Hogg and assistant coach Eric Neff. “Serge is serious

with us, but knows when to goof around with us too.”

“It is my goal to create a positive memory of their days of playing on the John Carroll golf team,” Hogg said.

“We’re the closest team, team-bonding wise,” Profili said. “We all get along.” All three players feel that having a good time and staying loose is the key to having good play and good team chemistry.

“There’s some squares in the league [for whom] golf is their life and they’re no fun to play with,” Profili said.

“Even though we may not have won as many matches as we could or should have over the past four years, I truly believe that they have enjoyed their experience playing golf here at John Carroll,” Hogg said.

All three players look forward to

the end of the year individual tour-nament to determine who the best golfers in the MIAA are. Before this year, none of the players had made it to the second day, but they all enjoyed the experience of see-ing all of the golfers in the league in one place. This year, both Borowy and Profili qualified for the second day of play.

Profili’s favorite memory of his time on the golf team is when he birdied the last three holes to tie a match with Calvert Hall’s No. 1 golfer, while Borowy’s is playing a match against Spalding in his fresh-man year with his brother.

For the future, Ross is attending Ohio State University to major in finance and said he is “not quite good enough” to make the Buck-eyes’ squad.

Borowy plans to attend and play for CCBC-Essex for two years be-fore transferring to a four-year school.

Profili was set to play golf for McDaniel College, but due to fi-nancial constraints, will attend either CCBC-Essex or Harford Community College while working on his golf game. All three recog-nize that their time on the golf team was special and an experience that will be difficult to duplicate.

Hogg knows that he may not have a group of players like this again. “The friends you meet and the experiences you share during these days are what shape those memories,” he said.

20sportssportsVolume 45 Issue 6 April 2010

the patriot

Junior shortstop KJ Hockaday began his baseball career when he was three years old. His favorite part of baseball is being in “situations where it’s you and the pitcher. The game is resting on your shoulders, and you have the opportunity to hit the game winner.” Varsity baseball coach Joe Stetka compliments Hock-aday’s work ethic. “He is usually the first one to prac-tice and the last one to leave every day all season long.” Hockaday is committed to play Division I baseball for Maryland. “I am looking forward to first, the great education and second, to being the man who gives the state a name and brings the Maryland tradition back,” Hockaday said.

Stetka brings success back to baseball team

Photo by Katie Doherty

Senior Dave Pons checks Friends’ Johnny Magwood during the April 14 game. Pons has come back from an injury that he suffered during 2009 lacrosse season.

Pons overcomes injury, dominates lacrosse fieldRachel Kokoska

Sports Editor

obviously wants to win. We work on everything from technique to game situations.”

Baseball techniques are not the only goal on Stetka’s mind. He wants to change the “losing” atmo-sphere into a “winning” one. To make this happen, “the players need to buy into what we’re doing,” Stetka said. “They’ve accepted me and we’re seeing results.”

For instance, junior Brendan Butler was featured by “The Balti-more Sun” as Athlete of the Week for the week of April 12. His per-formance in the games against Mc-Donogh, St. John’s, St. Paul’s, and Calvert Hall contributed to the de-cision.

“I could not have done it without my teammates and coaches,” But-ler said.

The game against Calvert Hall on April 9 was not just important

for Butler, but for the team and the school. “It is the biggest win in the school’s history,” Stetka said. The perennial power Cardinals were ranked 11th coming into the game, while JC was only ranked 13th. “It was like David and Goliath,” Stetka said.

“Coach Stetka, along with Coach Glen Gustafsson, had a huge part of me being honored with Athlete of the Week. They not only helped me become a better baseball player but also a better person. I will use what they teach me in life as well,” Butler said.

Stetka plans to continue winning and make the playoffs. “Coach Stetka is a true baseball man. His interest is always making the team better on and off the field,” Dukes said.

“I want [the players] to leave confident that they can play against anyone anywhere,” Stetka said.

from FRONT PAGE

Photo by Katie Doherty

Coach Joe Stetka responds to a play made by the JC baseball team. Stetka came to JC after a career at C. Milton Wright.

Midfielder senior Jenn Etzel has played on the varsity level for women’s lacrosse since her freshman year. Etzel started playing as early as she could at the age of six. She enjoys “the game itself” and has played for the Sky Walkers Lacrosse Program. Her favorite JC lacrosse memory is winning the IAAM champion-ships in 2007 and 2008. This year she is a captain along with sophomore Erica Bodt, junior Sarah Den-nison, and senior Alex Mezzanotte. Varsity lacrosse coach Krystin Porcella picked Etzel because “she is a true leader. Jenn takes care of what she needs to do, along with helping other players.” Etzel will play Division I lacrosse for University of Denver next year.

Patriot of the Month highlights student athletes who may or may not get due recognition for success in their chosen sport. They are selected by the Sports Editor.

With his lacrosse stick in hand, senior Dave Pons prepares to smash his opponent’s stick when an opening arises. He immediately strikes when his opponent’s arm moves farther away from the oppo-nent’s body. The ball flies out of his opponent’s possession.

Pons checks his opponent and throws himself forward to scoop up the ball. While cradling the ball in his stick, he races off to pass the ball to one of his team-mates without feeling the pain of his hernia that he suffered from last year.

Pons walked onto the team this spring com-pletely cleared for play following a hernia injury that sidelined him in the fall.

He injured himself while lifting weights before the lacrosse season began last year and was not sure on the specifics of the injury.

Varsity lacrosse coach Keith Hinder responded to the situation by insisting Pons find out what was wrong and get proper medical at-tention.

Pons was diagnosed with two hernias, but Pons decided to con-

tinue to play for the entire season. “I was lucky,” Pons said. “I didn’t need surgery, just physical thera-py.”

“I’m always concerned for all my players. I talked to them and Erik [Fabriziani] to make sure they can go [play],” Hinder said. But he was not worried about losing Pons for the season. “[Pons] is a very tough player,” Hinder said.

Even though he kept play-ing, Pons was concerned he “would never be completely healthy again.”

Hinder checked in with Pons, along with his other play-ers, before prac-tices and games to make sure they felt alright. “[Pons] is smart

enough to know when to shut it down,” Hinder said.

As the lacrosse season ended last year, Pons made the decision to forego his last football season. “I didn’t care. I just wanted to get bet-ter,” Pons said.

Pons spent many hours a week in physical therapy up until late Oc-tober when he was finally cleared.

The injury was not completely a negative experience for Pons. “The experience taught me how to eat well and take better care of my body,” Pons said.

The next challenge for Pons was getting back in shape and build-ing up to where he had previously been.

“I started running and then lift-ing. But due to my previous expe-rience, I haven’t lifted as much and instead I have focused on lacrosse,” Pons said.

At this point in time, Pons “feels good.” He has no side effects from his injuries besides the need to see a trainer before practices and games to properly stretch his muscles.

Pons advises other athletes fac-ing injuries to get help sooner than later. “You’re better off get-ting help; you get back to the game sooner,” Pons said.

He is certainly not the only player on the team with existing injuries. “Not one player on the team is 100 percent at this time of the season. The running, check-ing and hitting takes a toll on the body,” Hinder said.

Pons and senior Sam Chell were chosen as defensive and offensive

captains, respectively, this year. “Having Dave on the team is great. Not only is he a great captain along with Sam, but also a leader and a coach on the field,” Hinder said.

“Dave is a very dedicated athlete to lacrosse, demonstrated by his work ethic through adversity,” said Athletic Director Larry Dukes.

Pons plans on “aiding his team to win a championship” this year. In the further future, Pons will at-tend the University of Kentucky and play club lacrosse.

‘‘Not only is [Pons] a great captain, but also a leader and a coach on the field.”

- Keith Hinder

Photos by Katie Doherty