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conuly
About the graduating Stuy class.
I went to Stuy. When I was there, there were a lot of people making bad jokes about how "if anyone ever were to attack, we'd be in the middle of it" and how "if anybody attacked a school, it'd be us". Nobody ever believed it would happen, of course, but a lot of us said it anyway.
Stuy is "just north" of the WTC (one stop north, in fact), but... it's not the closest school. My mother worked a block and a half away from the WTC. Between her and the twin towers were a pair of linked schools. When 9/11 happened, those kids were all evacuated into Staten Island. Some of them saw things falling out of the windows, had stuff hit them.
And afterwards, there was article after article about Stuyvessant, but none about those high schools. They were displaced a lot longer than Stuy was, and, because they're linked schools, being displaced meant that they were each essentially without half of their staff and student body.
I loved Stuy. Even when it made me miserable, I loved that place, I loved the people. It was like home to me, but with more tests. And yet... I had teachers who, if we got an answer wrong in class, would say "What do you think this is, Brooklyn Tech?" (the third-ranked specialized high school at the time. Easier to get into than Stuy, but hardly an easy school). I had other teachers specifically chew us all out for insulting the students at BMCC next door. Many (not all, but many) of the kids there were from fairly well-off families. I had classmates say something about their house in the Hamptons, only to catch themselves and clarify "but not the good part of the Hamptons", which says a lot more about them than just the house part. I had otherwise intelligent classmates try to tell me that their families were almost struggling because only one parent worked - and that parent made over $125,000 a year! That's not rich, but it's far from struggling.
If they want to do an article about the class that entered high school in 2001, that's great. If they want to do an article about the students at schools near to the WTC, that's great. But it doesn't have to always be Stuy. Those kids are already in an environment that breeds a heady sense of privilege and entitlement. It doesn't help that they're always the school getting articles in the paper, or interviewed on NY1, or that the school newspaper has even been published by actual media. It's not fair to the kids at Stuy, and it's not fair to anybody else in the area, either.
For This Class, 'Remember When' Mingles With 'Never Forget'
By DAN BARRY
THE distribution of yearbooks the other day made it official: adulthood had come to the seniors of Stuyvesant High School. They cracked the binding and pored over four years of snapshot moments that began when they were 13, 14; children, really.
Here was Vicky, wielding her tennis racket. Here too was Lisa, smiling with friends on the track team. Here were Jason, and Chun Che, and Soleil. Remember Halloween, when that boy came dressed as Marilyn Monroe? Remember Pajama Day? Remember?
In a way, though, these seniors became adults just days into their freshman year. Nearly 800 students will graduate on Monday as the Class of 2005, but once you do your math, and remember that Stuyvesant is just north of what was the World Trade Center, you realize that theirs was also a Class of 2001; Sept. 11, 2001.
Their jumbled high school memories are both sweet and shocking, funny and not. Remember the junior prom, and physics class, and that first loud boom, and those car alarms going off? Remember the ballroom dancing, and the song-and-dance competitions, and seeing the debris falling from the towers? Was it debris? Remember?
But as some of these seniors recall their high school careers, strands of resilience weave through their stories. They refuse to allow a catastrophe outside their schoolhouse doors to define these four precious years of theirs. They remember the downwind whiffs of death, but they also remember biology tests, free periods, and the zing of first kisses.
It was the first Tuesday of their first year at Stuyvesant, an intensely competitive high school that attracts students citywide. Jason Hsu was putting a cover on his Spanish textbook when he heard a boom - the sound of the first plane hitting the north tower.
Lisa Cao heard a chorus of car alarms while sitting in art appreciation class. Soleil Ho was in English, trying to get lost in a poem she was writing.
Then the lights flickered. Vicky Portnoy was in math class on the fourth floor when she saw debris spewing from the south tower after the second plane hit. "I really wasn't sure what was going on," she recalled. "I remember one girl in my class starting to cry."
Some watched televisions; others watched from the windows. Jason saw "stuff" falling from the towers, but he says he doesn't think it was people; "at least I hope it wasn't." Chun Che Peng remembers a teacher telling students to focus on their work, but no one could.
A voice on the public-address system directed students to their homerooms and then out the north side of the building to West Street. Behind them, a billowing curtain of smoke; in front of them, crowds fleeing north. Lisa remembers giving a bottle of water she had to a firefighter heading south.
While some students gathered at Chelsea Piers, others set out to find pay phones, food, home. Soleil walked to Union Square with a friend, and remembers being annoyed that Urban Outfitters was closed. Chun Che had a burger at a McDonald's in Midtown. Jason walked all the way home to East 63rd Street.
WITH their high school taken over by rescue and recovery workers, Stuyvesant students attended truncated classes at Brooklyn Technical High School in Fort Greene, then returned in early October to a school that had been scrubbed clean, but was still just four blocks from the smoldering trade center pile. The air smelled of it.
"It felt like we were coming back to a strange land," Chun Che said.
"I think I was confused the whole time," Vicky said. "I'd come home and on the radio they were talking about how the air around here was not great."
Vicky and Lisa carried surgical masks in their backpacks, and people in orange vests interrupted classes to test the air quality. They became so much a part of Stuyvesant life, Lisa says, that two students dressed up as air-quality testers for Halloween.
Meanwhile, counselors gently discussed post-traumatic stress, though few students accepted their offers to talk privately. Instead, art appreciation helped, as did new friends, English homework, track practice.
From some windows the students could see the debris-laden trucks rumbling to barges on the Hudson. But they also had teachers before them, demanding answers to questions about other things. "Not really block out, but accept," Soleil said. "It happens. People died. They're still down there. Gotta go to school."
Sophomore year arrived, then junior year, and then they were seniors, Stuyvesant seniors. Some outsiders have connected 9/11 to a supposed drop in the number of those receiving early college admission. "That's a stretch," said Vicky, who is going to Columbia in the fall. Lisa agreed; she's going to Cornell.
The two young women sat in a coffee shop near Stuyvesant yesterday, flipping through a yearbook that dedicates two pages to 9/11, and the rest to smiles and inside jokes and senior portraits. They are both 17.
Under Vicky Portnoy's photo, it reads: "Life may not be the party that we hoped for, but while we are here, we might as well dance." And under Lisa Cao's, this: "Life is short - eat dessert first."
Edit: None of my commentary is in any way meant to imply that Stuy kids are horrible people or anything. In fact, most of the people there are far nicer than other people their age. Plus, it's a place where people make bad jokes about sinusoidal curves, and where it's okay to have a "Buffy Appreciation Society" (not to mention a Pinky and the Brain club), and where people play chess and/or Magic in the halls.
Edit again: I wonder that this article in no way deigned to mention that aside from the large Asian and Russian Jewish immigrant populations, Stuy has (or had, at least, and I doubt this has changed) a surprisingly large Muslim population. Not that large, but more than you'd expect from pure chance, I think. You'd think that might be important...
Edit the third: Coming as Monroe? Not bad. Of course, I remember when Jesus got stuck in the escalators. That was funny. (That was the same year somebody in my drafting class came in dressed up as "white trash" for Halloween.)
I went to Stuy. When I was there, there were a lot of people making bad jokes about how "if anyone ever were to attack, we'd be in the middle of it" and how "if anybody attacked a school, it'd be us". Nobody ever believed it would happen, of course, but a lot of us said it anyway.
Stuy is "just north" of the WTC (one stop north, in fact), but... it's not the closest school. My mother worked a block and a half away from the WTC. Between her and the twin towers were a pair of linked schools. When 9/11 happened, those kids were all evacuated into Staten Island. Some of them saw things falling out of the windows, had stuff hit them.
And afterwards, there was article after article about Stuyvessant, but none about those high schools. They were displaced a lot longer than Stuy was, and, because they're linked schools, being displaced meant that they were each essentially without half of their staff and student body.
I loved Stuy. Even when it made me miserable, I loved that place, I loved the people. It was like home to me, but with more tests. And yet... I had teachers who, if we got an answer wrong in class, would say "What do you think this is, Brooklyn Tech?" (the third-ranked specialized high school at the time. Easier to get into than Stuy, but hardly an easy school). I had other teachers specifically chew us all out for insulting the students at BMCC next door. Many (not all, but many) of the kids there were from fairly well-off families. I had classmates say something about their house in the Hamptons, only to catch themselves and clarify "but not the good part of the Hamptons", which says a lot more about them than just the house part. I had otherwise intelligent classmates try to tell me that their families were almost struggling because only one parent worked - and that parent made over $125,000 a year! That's not rich, but it's far from struggling.
If they want to do an article about the class that entered high school in 2001, that's great. If they want to do an article about the students at schools near to the WTC, that's great. But it doesn't have to always be Stuy. Those kids are already in an environment that breeds a heady sense of privilege and entitlement. It doesn't help that they're always the school getting articles in the paper, or interviewed on NY1, or that the school newspaper has even been published by actual media. It's not fair to the kids at Stuy, and it's not fair to anybody else in the area, either.
For This Class, 'Remember When' Mingles With 'Never Forget'
By DAN BARRY
THE distribution of yearbooks the other day made it official: adulthood had come to the seniors of Stuyvesant High School. They cracked the binding and pored over four years of snapshot moments that began when they were 13, 14; children, really.
Here was Vicky, wielding her tennis racket. Here too was Lisa, smiling with friends on the track team. Here were Jason, and Chun Che, and Soleil. Remember Halloween, when that boy came dressed as Marilyn Monroe? Remember Pajama Day? Remember?
In a way, though, these seniors became adults just days into their freshman year. Nearly 800 students will graduate on Monday as the Class of 2005, but once you do your math, and remember that Stuyvesant is just north of what was the World Trade Center, you realize that theirs was also a Class of 2001; Sept. 11, 2001.
Their jumbled high school memories are both sweet and shocking, funny and not. Remember the junior prom, and physics class, and that first loud boom, and those car alarms going off? Remember the ballroom dancing, and the song-and-dance competitions, and seeing the debris falling from the towers? Was it debris? Remember?
But as some of these seniors recall their high school careers, strands of resilience weave through their stories. They refuse to allow a catastrophe outside their schoolhouse doors to define these four precious years of theirs. They remember the downwind whiffs of death, but they also remember biology tests, free periods, and the zing of first kisses.
It was the first Tuesday of their first year at Stuyvesant, an intensely competitive high school that attracts students citywide. Jason Hsu was putting a cover on his Spanish textbook when he heard a boom - the sound of the first plane hitting the north tower.
Lisa Cao heard a chorus of car alarms while sitting in art appreciation class. Soleil Ho was in English, trying to get lost in a poem she was writing.
Then the lights flickered. Vicky Portnoy was in math class on the fourth floor when she saw debris spewing from the south tower after the second plane hit. "I really wasn't sure what was going on," she recalled. "I remember one girl in my class starting to cry."
Some watched televisions; others watched from the windows. Jason saw "stuff" falling from the towers, but he says he doesn't think it was people; "at least I hope it wasn't." Chun Che Peng remembers a teacher telling students to focus on their work, but no one could.
A voice on the public-address system directed students to their homerooms and then out the north side of the building to West Street. Behind them, a billowing curtain of smoke; in front of them, crowds fleeing north. Lisa remembers giving a bottle of water she had to a firefighter heading south.
While some students gathered at Chelsea Piers, others set out to find pay phones, food, home. Soleil walked to Union Square with a friend, and remembers being annoyed that Urban Outfitters was closed. Chun Che had a burger at a McDonald's in Midtown. Jason walked all the way home to East 63rd Street.
WITH their high school taken over by rescue and recovery workers, Stuyvesant students attended truncated classes at Brooklyn Technical High School in Fort Greene, then returned in early October to a school that had been scrubbed clean, but was still just four blocks from the smoldering trade center pile. The air smelled of it.
"It felt like we were coming back to a strange land," Chun Che said.
"I think I was confused the whole time," Vicky said. "I'd come home and on the radio they were talking about how the air around here was not great."
Vicky and Lisa carried surgical masks in their backpacks, and people in orange vests interrupted classes to test the air quality. They became so much a part of Stuyvesant life, Lisa says, that two students dressed up as air-quality testers for Halloween.
Meanwhile, counselors gently discussed post-traumatic stress, though few students accepted their offers to talk privately. Instead, art appreciation helped, as did new friends, English homework, track practice.
From some windows the students could see the debris-laden trucks rumbling to barges on the Hudson. But they also had teachers before them, demanding answers to questions about other things. "Not really block out, but accept," Soleil said. "It happens. People died. They're still down there. Gotta go to school."
Sophomore year arrived, then junior year, and then they were seniors, Stuyvesant seniors. Some outsiders have connected 9/11 to a supposed drop in the number of those receiving early college admission. "That's a stretch," said Vicky, who is going to Columbia in the fall. Lisa agreed; she's going to Cornell.
The two young women sat in a coffee shop near Stuyvesant yesterday, flipping through a yearbook that dedicates two pages to 9/11, and the rest to smiles and inside jokes and senior portraits. They are both 17.
Under Vicky Portnoy's photo, it reads: "Life may not be the party that we hoped for, but while we are here, we might as well dance." And under Lisa Cao's, this: "Life is short - eat dessert first."
Edit: None of my commentary is in any way meant to imply that Stuy kids are horrible people or anything. In fact, most of the people there are far nicer than other people their age. Plus, it's a place where people make bad jokes about sinusoidal curves, and where it's okay to have a "Buffy Appreciation Society" (not to mention a Pinky and the Brain club), and where people play chess and/or Magic in the halls.
Edit again: I wonder that this article in no way deigned to mention that aside from the large Asian and Russian Jewish immigrant populations, Stuy has (or had, at least, and I doubt this has changed) a surprisingly large Muslim population. Not that large, but more than you'd expect from pure chance, I think. You'd think that might be important...
Edit the third: Coming as Monroe? Not bad. Of course, I remember when Jesus got stuck in the escalators. That was funny. (That was the same year somebody in my drafting class came in dressed up as "white trash" for Halloween.)
