Mayoral Control: Efficient Decision Making or One Man Rule?

Before Mayor Michael Bloomberg was elected, “most observers agree that the school system was a big mess,” Stuyvesant’s Parent Coordinator, Harvey Blumm said. “Nobody had control or accountability.” The members of the Board of Education (BOE) were picked by the mayor and each borough president. And then the BOE picked a chancellor. However, this system [...]

Emily Martin: Hitting All the Right Keys

Many of us will only gaze from a distance at Gracie Mansion, the Mayor’s formal, white-columned residence. Some might gawk at its fancy rooms during a guided tour. But on Friday, May 1, while many Stuyvesant students were unwinding after a long week of cramming for Advanced Placement exams, sophomore Emily Martin was cruising in [...]

Spring In, Fall Back

4:00 p.m. Wednesday May 20. It was a quiet, humid, spring day in City Hall Park. Kids sucked on popsicles and sat on the edge of the fountain while adults relaxed in the lush oasis of downtown New York. 4:30 p.m. Girls in different colored soccer jerseys had been trickling in for half an hour [...]

Neighborhood Profile: Cultural Heaven or Yuppie Haven?

Bronze statues dot the plazas. People gossip and talk about politics on street corners. Traders hawk mysterious perfumes and gold ornaments. This is not the Roman Forum, not an acropolis in Ancient Athens, but rather the culturally rich and diverse neighborhood of Harlem in New York City. After a mass migration beginning in 1904, the [...]

The Forgotten Film Reel: The Band’s Visit

In the bleached white setting of the Negev Desert, the sky-blue uniforms of the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra stand out. In Eran Kolirin’s “The Band’s Visit,” an Egyptian police band is on its way to perform at the Arab Cultural Center in Petah Tiqva, led by the stubbornly self-reliant Tawfiq Zakaria (Sasson Gabai). When they [...]

A Tasty Fundraiser

On Saturday, May 16, Taste of Tribeca took over Duane Street for its 15th year to date. Taste of Tribeca is a culinary festival whose profits support the local Tribeca elementary schools: P.S. 150 and P.S. 234. It was run entirely by volunteers, many of whom were Stuyvesant students. Each year, the festival raises tens [...]

Allen Granzberg’s Ballroom Grace

Sheets of brightly colored silk fan through the air, twirling around and around, the light from chandeliers overhead catching every little embellishment on the fabric. It is here, at a top-level ballroom dancing competition, that we find senior Allen Granzberg. At age five and a half, Granzberg was put to the task of ballroom dancing [...]

A Little Village in the Big City

Greenwich Village, or “Green-witch village,” depending on whether you’re a New York native or tourist, has always been an artsy part of the city. At the beginning of World War I, Greenwich Village was widely known as a bohemian community. The Village was often referred to as a place to go for low rents and [...]

Isamu Fukui: Back in Enemy Territory

After leaving college, most students still have to plan their whole careers. For Isamu Fukui (’08), high school was the beginning of his career—his first novel was published while he was a senior at Stuyvesant. During the summer after his sophomore year, Fukui wrote “Truancy,” a dystopia novel about a group of students who plot [...]

SU Elections 2009

Junior Paul Lee and junior Casey Griffin vie for Student Union Presidency, to be determined by the General Elections on Monday, June 8.

Student Union Caucus:
Paul Lee and Keiji Drysdale
Casey Griffin and Oren Bukspan