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Aaron Watson-Sharer

Editor

The phrase is “If you’re on time, you’re late, and if you’re late, you’re fired.” Well at SLA, we have four latenesses equals one detention instead.  Surprisingly, I’ve never had to attend a detention at SLA. 8:15 A.M. has become a staple in my head over the years; just get here by that time and the phone call home won’t come so I won’t get aired out by my mom. That’s my only objective when I my alarm goes off at 6:55 A.M.

I wake up and take a 25 minute shower that feels like only seven minutes. It’s now 7:20 A.M. I’ve got 22 minutes to get out the house or I’m late. SLA is unique in Philadelphia as we have no uniform, which I love. The next challenge is to make an outfit on the spot. Most of the time it’s just a hoodie with some pants or basketball shorts and a pair of Nike sneakers but even that takes a good five minutes to put together (often because my clothing smells like it hasn’t been washed or has some random stain). Now it’s time to give myself a quick once-over to make sure nothing is off with my face. Ears are there? Check. Eyebrows? Check. Bags in my eyes from exhaustion? Check. My hair is pretty used to it’s look so I push it back twice and to my right three times. My appearance suggests I’m ready for school. It’s now 7:28 A.M. I have 14 minutes to leave the house.

Here’s when my mother sends me a text reminding me to go to school. It’s not unusual so I shrug it off. It’s 7:30 now and I go to wake up Luke. Luke has a hard time getting up some mornings. You have to scare him to get him up. He gets woken up at 7 A.M. but always goes back to sleep.

“Luke it’s 7:35!” “Get Up!”

“Oh {expletive}”

This is when I proceed to go pack a lunch and Luke turns into Usain Bolt. I pack the usual. The peanut butter and jelly, the protein bars, pretzels, yogurt and probably leftovers from previous nights. I tend to need 3000 calories to stay among the living. I have this packed and then pack my baseball bag. For a practice, that means just a glove and cleats because I don’t feel like having a change of clothes. It’s now 7:40 A.M. I’ve got two minutes.

These two minutes go about 50 times faster than a math class. Oddly enough, in just five minutes, Luke’s left the house. The competitor in me kicks in and I bolt out the house and walk to the trolley stop.

Like usual I’m two minutes late to my stop, which still gives me a solid chance of being on time. I know 7:53 A.M. is the magic time where the only way I am on time is if SEPTA conductor code name “Jerry Rice” is driving. The driver gets his name because of his surprising resemblance to former football player Jerry Rice. He’s very fast and hasn’t let me down before.

If everything goes as expected I get on the trolley at 7:50 A.M. I’ve got 25 minutes. Before my senior year, there was always one person who I knew if they were on my trolley I was late. That was Micah Henry. He accumulated almost 200 lateness’s (if not more) in his SLA tenure and the sight of him on the trolley was equally exciting as it was frightening. I didn’t want to be like Micah, my Saturday mornings weren’t meant to be spent in our cafeteria.

The trolley lands between 8:06 to 8:14 P.M. If it’s before 8:12 A.M., Benjamin Simon, who also rides the trolley, classifies the extra minutes as “leisure time.” When there’s leisure time no matter how short, I get a good conversation in with Benjamin before school. When it’s too late to enjoy that leisure time, I speed walk to school. I see other kids run and even though I could be late, it gives me a good chuckle. I never run to school unless I have three lateness’s from that month. If it’s 8:15 A.M., I celebrate the on time and get ready for class even though I’m late to that.

SLA has provided me with a glimpse of how I’m going to function everyday in college and has brought understanding to how I’m geared from the moment I wake up. That start time 8:15 A.M. isn’t a when school starts. It’s a countdown. My weekdays are geared to successfully reach school before this time, which I failed to do yesterday, when I acquired a 14th lateness.

Saamir Baker

Staff Writer

Starting over the summer, I began to plan the long grueling job that would be ordering newly designed jerseys for the SLA ultimate uniforms. A feat that has not been accomplished since the first uniform designed when the first team was established.

It all began with meeting with the lady that would order the uniforms for our team, Candi Crispin. She would connect us to her company’s uniform makers and give us discounted prices. The first step towards success in this terrible process.

After discussing the pricing, the next thing I absolutely had to do was get Chris Lehmann on board, the ultimate frisbee coach. Set in his ways, he wasn’t super keen to the idea of getting new jerseys at first because he still liked the simple design. But I was gung-ho on having this process go through all the way. So after a short sales pitch on why we should have new jerseys ranging from “They’re only $32! That’s way cheaper than what  they run for ($70),” all the way to “This is a new era of SLA ultimate! We need these.” He finally tentatively agreed and I set out to show him that this wasn’t just another student proposal that wouldn’t follow through. I had to show him that I meant business.

After many weeks of planning these jerseys, I made a google questionaire for players to give me all of their information for sizes.Sadly after a week of constant form replies, they died down. With these results I had to turn into a monster, hellbent on one mission:get everyone to sign my form! Countless passive-aggressive facebook posts on the ultimate frisbee group went out, emails, and up-close encounters.I did whatever it took to get everyone to fill out the form to make sure I had everyone down with each information column filled.  

I set up two ambassadors who could help me with collecting money from the other players. Jorin Gervani would remind everyone and give me money, Eli Block would help check names off of our spreadsheet, and bring the money he collects to Ms.Diane

The main selling point was us joining the exclusive group of teams who have names on the back of their jerseys. Candi would order the jerseys for us before we paid so we would have them in time for our first tournament. She agreed to this as long as we paid her back within a month which added more pressure onto my already stressful job. So I put on my new persona as the passive-aggressive bill collector that wanted his money as soon as possible, giving a deadline that was way before the money was even due, giving a sense of urgency to the players. Once again facebook was my outlet to inform everyone of when money would be due and how much it cost.

The first day of collecting money? Only two people out of the 36 gave us money. Jorin sent out a new facebook post and the new rule was: anyone who did not pay wouldn’t get their uniform until they did. With another round of passive-aggressive emails, yelling at every ultimate player I saw, and even interrogating another player I finally had all of the money in and ready to go. With help from our CFO Ms.Diane.

We ran into a few problems on the logistics part, we didn’t have an official a design ready. Okay to be clear… we HAD designs but none of them were good enough to really pay for, nor did Lehmann particularly like any of them. Finally after stressing about how we didn’t have a design Mr.Lehmann pointed me in the direction of Ms. Giknis, who I wished he had told me about a long time ago. Seriously Mr.Lehmann, a lot of stress would have been saved! After 10 minutes of sketching and designing she had an official logo ready for us by that night. I can recall the almost tears of joy I had.

After the planning process started in August, official spreadsheet collecting started in January, the home stretch began in March. We had collected all the money by the 10th and our first tournament was March 31st. We were almost there, almost done. Our jerseys finally here the day before our first tournament. We marvel at the jerseys and I think of the big accomplishment I had just made. My fight to get the team new jerseys had come to an end. I was able to make it happen, and the first to do so as well.

Mekhi Granby

Staff Writer

For as long as I can remember, paying for Septa meant using a transpass, token, transfer, or cash of some sort. With the exclusion of the senior citizens pass, you’ve got to swipe, drop, or feed your payment into some kind of a machine before you can get a ride.

But now that’s no more. The future is here. Ladies and Gentlemen, I have just been introduced to a new option which is the “Septa key.”

According to SEPTA’s website,the SEPTA key is one reloadable contactless chip card that will offer a host of options. When I heard this I was like “oh okay, that sounds really cool,” because everything would be made more simple.

Then I started to think about the negatives…what if you lose it?

The website addresses this problem in its FAQ section. “It’s very important that you register your Card if you put money on the Travel Wallet. This way, if your Card is ever lost or stolen, as soon as you report this to the Key Call Center or online, the funds on your Travel Wallet will be protected and can be transferred to a replacement Key Card…”

My biggest issue with this is that it’ll discontinue/replace the other forms of payment. For those who actually like making payments with the other forms will be out of luck. I think there are some very irresponsible people who use SEPTA that often lose transpasses and that whole lost key card thing will just be a big inconvenience, but it would be less of an inconvenience than losing a transpass, which can’t be canceled or replaced.  

I don’t have any other reason for the Septa Key not to be a thing but I don’t like how our options in payment will vanish. In terms of preference it may not satisfy everyone. It’s like Apple getting rid of the headphone jack on its phones. There’s still ways to plug in headphones to your iPhone 7, but not everyone likes it or is happy with the headphone jack being gone. Same goes for Septa, I feel like it’ll be the same scenario which kinda sucks.

I like how convenient the septa key can be, but I am also very concerned with how this septa key will work for the future of students. My original thoughts were “the septa key thing will be super cool, nobody has to wait in line for transpasses anymore,” but then I heard that it has actual fees connected to an account. Will there be a student septa key? Will it have the same restrictions and privileges of a student transpass?
Other than preference, the SEPTA key doesn’t have many downfalls; it’s clear to me that it has been extremely thought out and well planned. The SEPTA key will be more convenient for everyone who owns one and the only problem lies within moving into the future and giving up the past. Later down the line when the SEPTA key replaces all other forms of payment, some nostalgia will be created. I’ll miss the old transpasses and tokens but things will be much more simplified with the SEPTA key.