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SLA Plans, Prepares for Facility Upgrades at Ben Franklin

May 23, 2019 by lpahomov Leave a Comment

Zoe Kwasnicki

Staff Writer

Starting next school year, Science Leadership Academy Center City will no longer be located at 22nd and Arch. Instead, our new campus will be located within Ben Franklin High School – or at least half of it.

But that is all the majority of the student body knows – excluding sketches of floor plans and photos of construction hung up in the hallways. The more intimate details of our new home is largely unknown which has resulted in jittery sophomores and confused freshmen – terrified that their first day at school will be spent wandering aimlessly between classrooms. Not to mention the potentially awkward social interactions between SLA and Ben Franklin students.

Sophomore Lily Bromley expressed worry that the Ben Franklin students will be annoyed that it’s through the addition of SLA that the quality of the building will be improved.

“I’m excited in some ways – like I’m excited to have a nicer building but there are some things I’m worried about. Like that there might be some inequality between our school and their school… now that we’re coming in they’re getting all this stuff.”

The school is designed to prevent more division between the schools however because while the majority of the building will be split down the middle, the first floor will be shared by both SLA CC and Ben Franklin students although the main entrances will be different. SLA CC students will enter on Green St. and into a common area while Ben Franklin students will enter on Broad St. and into the main hallway.

Also on the first floor will be the auditorium and the gym – two building features never before enjoyed by SLA CC students. The cafeteria is moving from its original space on the 6th floor to the first floor as well.

In the cafeterias there will be one kitchen, but two separate serving and seating areas. The SLA CC cafe will be outfitted with “Starbucks-style” seating in the words of Principal Chris Lehmann, with low seating and high seating mixed throughout the space.

From there the second, third, fourth and fifth floors will be divided and designated for classrooms with the sixth floor featuring both CTE rooms, the art room, and – a new addition to SLA – a terrace!

Classrooms will be outfitted with a variety of furniture similar to the mix we currently have at SLA. Teachers were able to choose between single or table seating for their rooms although all seating will remain consistent in classrooms, with a style similar to the current classroom furniture.

However, there will be some more unique chairs known as the Ruckus in the cafe and the Study Skills lab.

But besides classrooms and bathrooms, the second through fifth floors will also have small “collaboration” rooms/areas throughout the school along with a “Living Room” on the second floor which will be spaces in which students can work on their ongoing projects or simply relax.

All of these changes are backed enthusiastically by Mr. Lehmann, who emphasises the fact that every single alteration was due to the unique wants and needs of SLA’s community:

“I think the general goal is this: I think SLA has a unique culture and I think we all enjoy that. And I think [what we are doing is] figuring out what that culture looks like in a new space and figuring out how to continue to involve and develop and enrich the culture…in a new space.”

And amid the apprehension of a new location and new neighbors, students are still optimistic.

“It’s going to be weird, but I think we’ll figure out,” stated Sophomore Mo Kelly.

Movie Review: Us

May 23, 2019 by lpahomov Leave a Comment

Lily Bromley

Staff Writer

The motif of the evil twin is a common one in horror films. What is more terrifying than an exact copy of you, that walks like you, talks like you… and knows all of your weaknesses? Jordan Peele’s “Us” brings a new take to the evil twin and poses the question, “What if we all had an evil version of ourselves, plotting our demise?”

His follow-up to the politically-minded blockbuster “Get Out,” Us follows Adelaide Wilson played by Lupita Nyong’o as she takes her children and husband to her childhood beach house, the same place where she faced extreme trauma as a child. The film is filled with flashbacks from Adelaide’s childhood, as the beach house brings back memories, and eventually some very real terrors. Like “Get Out”, “Us” is definitely a commentary on American society, which was my favorite way to experience and analyze the plot.

The movie starts with a flashback to Adelaide as a child, around 6 or 7, she is at the boardwalk playing games with her mother and father, when she strays away from them onto the beach. While on the beach, she wanders into the “Shaman Vision Quest Forest”, a twisted mirror funhouse, with a stereotypical Native American character painted on the front. This funhouse is the first political comment of the movie, as when Adelaide returns to the funhouse as an adult, the Native American has been lazily painted over, and the fun house is now named “Merlin’s Enchanted Forest”. The Funhouse plays as a metaphor for the way that many issues are handled in our current society. When a complaint is made, it is only resolved when it is profitable for the owners and is often done as lazily as possible.

Their first night at the house, Adelaide and her family notice a group of people outside of their house. The group of people breaks into Adelaide’s house and we find out that they are all carbon copies called “tethers” of Adelaide’s family, with a few small differences. Jason, (Adelaide’s son) has a tether named “Pluto” who looks exactly like him, except that he wears a mask to cover severe burns he has on his face. The tether of Adelaide’s husband, Gabe, is named Abraham and unlike Gabe, does not wear glasses. When Abraham and Gabe meet for the first time, Abraham takes Gabe’s glasses and puts them on. Abraham is exactly like Gabe, so it makes sense that like Gabe, he would also need glasses. However, as a tether, Abraham was not given the same resources as Gabe, meaning that he must have spent his entire life with impaired vision.

This is another example of political commentary in the movie. By showing the differences in the resources that the tethers and the normal people get, Peele is making a commentary on the opportunities that we give people in our society. If everyone was given the same education, the same medical care, the same housing, who knows how they could succeed in life?

Going into the movie, I was expecting that it would be more focused on racial commentary, similar to “Get Out.” and, while the idea of racial oppression was a theme could be taken from the movie, it definitely isn’t the only point the movie is trying to make. The movie focuses on the broader theme of “Us vs Them” and the way that that narrative has affected the minds of American people. We are constantly being told to fear the other, but what if the thing we should be afraid of is ourselves?

The strength of the commentary in “Us” is that you get to decide how involved you want to be in it. If you are into the conspiracy theories, you can watch the movie through a critical lens. But if you just like to be scared and are looking for a genuinely good horror movie, you can get that too.

Column: The (Plastic) Infant Invasion

May 20, 2019 by lpahomov Leave a Comment

Mo Kelly

Staff Writer

It seemed like a normal day. I had just finished Algebra and was running down the stairs so I wouldn’t be late for Biochem. I’ve gotten used to the filth of the back stairwell, so nothing seems too out of the ordinary.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something unusual… a small figurine baby.

I walked into my next class, still confused, but I wasn’t the only one. A classmate asked if I had seen the babies. Apparently, they were all around the school, Hidden in lockers, stairwells, or any small crevice that they would fit in. Forget that day’s lesson plan — The babies were the main topic of conversation for the next hour and five minutes.

By the end of the school day, even my advisor knew about them. She had picked one up in the middle of one her classes, and she was also very confused.

Some of my friends pulled out multiple babies that they hoarded. Admittedly, I took one as well and am probably going to keep it for a very long time.

Soon after the initial fiasco, posters about the babies had appeared. They said that it was a game. “Find a baby. Hide a baby.” It called them “Nae-Nae babies”, which after some research, I discovered is a meme. About three days after first poster, a second poster went up declaring that more diverse babies were to be added to the bunch.

The game made sense, but I didn’t quite buy it. Why would the posters go up after the babies had already been planted? Now I was determined to solve this baby mystery.

Right off the bat, I had a suspicion on who it was. The wording of the poster was written exactly in the style of one of my friends, who has made other posters for the school. I texted him, and my speculation was correct. He told me he created the posters but did not plant the babies, just as I suspected. He thought the idea was funny and he and a friend made the posters in Dig Vid. But, he doesn’t know who hid the babies.

There is now an “SLA Baby Blog” on Instagram, documenting all of the babies that were found and where they were eventually re-hidden. Posts include pictures of founds babies and the posters.

This has all been fun to watch. But who planted the babies? A few days later, it is still a mystery to me. I’ve tried asking around, but no one else seems to know. Or perhaps they are hiding something. I don’t think I will ever find out. I think this says a lot about SLA as a whole. This school is a pretty weird place. This isn’t the only thing that has told us this. There are strange things constantly happening, and people just learn to accept it.

Although this was a creepy occurrence, it’s also definitely one of my favorite things to happen at SLA. Seeing people come together in confusion or just excitement about these odd babies shows that no matter how out of the ordinary something can be, people will find a way to interpret it and make it their own, whether it’s through Instagram, posters, or some other medium. SLA is a place where people always find a way to show their creativity, even if it’s in the form of joke posters around the school.

Read This Article, But Don’t Spoil The Ending!

May 20, 2019 by lpahomov Leave a Comment

Juliana Long

Staff Writer

In every corner of the school, someone is talking about one of two things: the new Marvel Endgame movie or the final season of Game of Thrones.

Funnily enough, the thing people talk about the most is not talking about it.

From what I’ve observed, people at SLA have been taking Endgame spoilers much more seriously than GOT spoilers. Ever since Endgame was released on April 26th, fans who haven’t seen it yet have been working tirelessly to avoid spoilers on social media and in real life alike. Needless to say, people really didn’t want to find out what happens before the movie came out.

Junior Mo Kelly took an intrepid approach to the spoiler phenomenon. She’s not an avid Marvel fan, but she looked up the spoilers to use as blackmail against her brother.

“Marvel has been around for a really long time and a lot of people have been watching Marvel movies since they were kids. They mean a lot to people,” she said.

“It’s this big finale that people are so ready to see, and people know that big things are going to happen. Seeing spoilers really takes away from the experience that you get seeing the movie in theaters.”

SLA math teacher Brad Latimer, who prohibited discussion about GOT and Endgame in his classroom, has similar opinions.

“If you’re someone who really enjoys certain shows, you’ve dedicated a lot of time in your life to being very involved in these plotlines. A big component of that is not having anything spoiled for you,” he said.

“I want to see it play out how the creators wanted it to play out, not from someone saying something about it.”

Kelly and Mr. Latimer have both taken some wild measures in order to avoid spoilers.

“When Avengers and Game [of Thrones] came out, I personally put myself on internet quarantine,” Mr. Latimer explained. “The only website I went to was my email and the School District website to put in my attendance.” He also jokingly claimed that he would fail students and write the Seniors letters of “disrecommendation” if they spoke about spoilers in his classroom.

Kelly hasn’t gone as far as that to avoid spoilers, but she’s witnessed it all over social media. “I’ve seen people saying ‘If you spoil it for me, I will block you.’ And also on Twitter, people are blocking the words ‘avengers’ and ‘endgame’.”

Neither seem to judge or blame anyone for avoiding spoilers. Latimer spoke a bit about the importance of remaining respectful to those who haven’t seen the show or movie yet. “People who do spoil things, like, post on social media, ‘so and so died’ or ‘so and so killed so and so’, I don’t understand why they get out of that.”

According to the Russo brothers, the creators of the Marvel universe, the “spoiler ban” was lifted on May 6th, meaning it was now acceptable to talk freely about the movie’s contents without being scolded.

However, the creators of Game of Thrones have not yet confirmed that talk of spoilers is allowed, so I’d recommend keeping quiet around Mr. Latimer if you want him to write you a letter of rec for next year.

Why Don’t Men at SLA want to Talk about Street Harassment?

May 20, 2019 by lpahomov Leave a Comment

Lily Bromley and Faryn Heffner

Staff Writers

Imagine yourself walking down the street. You’re going to school or to your house. How do you feel? Are you alone or with a group of people?

Most of all: do you feel safe?

For many SLA students, especially female students, this is a loaded question.

As two young women commuting around Philadelphia, we have both had to deal with street harassment many times. Most of the times we have tried to communicate what our commutes are like to men, they have belittled our experience or called us paranoid.

As a result of our experiences, we decided that it would be interesting to explore how students of SLA have experienced street harassment, as well as what they imagine commutes are like for people of other genders. We sent out a survey in the advisory memo, as well as interviewed students individually. Ten students answered the survey and of that group, there was only one male-identifying respondent. We later individually interviewed male students to get a better view of their opinions.

Street harassment is can be a complicated concept to define. The best working definition we could find comes from “Stop Street Harassment”, an organization focused on ending street harassment: “Unwanted comments, gestures, and actions forced on a stranger in a public place without their consent and is directed at them because of their actual or perceived sex, gender, gender expression, or sexual orientation.”

The definitions provided by SLA students included mention of what the harasser was seeking to get out of the experience.

“Street harassment is any verbal or physical interaction with another person, most often a stranger, with the objective to objectify,” wrote Sophmore Caleb McCreary.

“Street harassment is any interaction that crosses a universal boundary, as the use of suggestive language to a stranger without them requesting it, or touching a person without them requesting it, especially in interactions where the action is only meant to benefit the harasser,” another respondent wrote.

Through the survey we conducted, most students remarked that they would rate their overall feeling of safety during their commute as a 3 or 4 (with 1 being extremely unsafe and 5 being completely safe).

It is important to point out that it’s not only women that can fall victim to street harassment.

“I have been called racial slurs on the way to school” Sophomore Kofi Kohl explained.

Kohl’s experiences confirm that street harassment isn’t always sexual harassment. As women, we have mostly faced street harassment based on our perceived gender, so Kohl’s experiences remind us that anyone can be street harassed.

Many female students expressed that during the summer and spring when people start wearing warm weather appropriate clothing, they feel more uncomfortable on their commute.

“In the winter I feel less watched, but now wearing like skirts home because it’s warm I’m more afraid of being confronted,” Senior Sofia Powers explained.

Other students brought up reasons why the warmer months can mean more harassment, for instance, when it is colder out people tend to be on the move, instead of staying outside.

We spoke to two other students and asked them what their definition of street harassment is. Junior Olufemi Beatty said: “I feel that street harassment is any sort of unwanted attention/gestures, usually, the acts are demeaning”.

We also spoke to sophomore Fionn Hyland, and his definition is very similar to Beatty’s, but Hyland pointed out that usually if a man compliments a woman and even though the woman shows clear signs of not wanting the attention the man will continue to harass the woman.

Junior Juliana Long said “When I commute alone, I often feel unsafe either because of potentially getting things stolen from me since I’ve gotten my phone stolen while commuting before or being put in a situation with a man making advances on me when I’m not comfortable with it because rejecting men’s advances is potentially really dangerous.”

These sort of things are feelings that women have to deal with every day.

We set out to write this article to highlight the blind spots that anyone who has never experienced street harassment (mainly men) might have. As mentioned before, only one male student answered the survey that we put in the advisory memo. Do SLA boys not care about women’s issues?

Sophomore Mo Kelly presented a possible theory:, “Some boys get uncomfortable talking about issues pertaining to women because a lot of times it’s men that cause the issue and they don’t like to think of it.”

The idea is that instead of facing that street harassment is an issue that women face, usually at the hands of men, it is easier to push it aside and not talk about it.