Harvard-Westlake • Studio City • Volume 33 • Issue 6 • March 20, 2024 • hwchronicle.com
Record tardies reported
Honor Code to be updated By Hannah Shahidi
By Connor Tang
Prefect Council will update the language of the current Honor Code to modernize it and lessen ambiguity following preliminary discussions with members of the administration, according to Upper School Dean Sharon Cuseo. The Honor Code has not been revised since it was first written by Prefect Council in 1992 as an initiative led by former Head Prefect and Editor-in-Chief Spencer Rascoff ’93. Prefect Council’s goal is to edit its language and read the updated version at Convocation for the 2024-2025 school year, according to Head Prefect and Print Managing Editor Davis Marks ’24. The initiative was first proposed by Marks during the 2021-2022 school year. Since then, Prefects have had conversations with the administration to discuss the possible adaptation. Marks said the initiative will focus on changing the written language in the Honor Code to be more relatable while maintaining its original ideas. “The Honor Code was created to establish a common set of values for our community, so when students are unable to remember it, it is failing to live up to its mission,” Marks said. “The project is rooted in a desire to fix this issue by looking at the Honor Code and exploring how we can update the language to resonate more with students. The goal is not to write an entirely new Honor Code but [to] revise it in a way that upholds these important and traditional values while allowing students to better embody them.” Cuseo said the goal of the revision is to make the Honor Code more direct and comprehensible. “The implementation of the Honor Code was entirely student-driven,” Cuseo said. “Students went around and visited other schools that had [honor] codes, and they pieced things they liked together.”
best interests at heart. “We felt that one of the strongest ways of sending the message to the community that we’re serious about making sure that the community can continue to enjoy the facility is to allow the community to continue to enjoy the facilities,” Engelberg said. “We left golf and tennis open for six years, even though for most of that time, the school was losing money running [Weddington Golf and Tennis].” When construction begins, boys’ tennis will practice at Los Angeles Valley College (LAVC). Boys’ tennis player Matthew Reiter ’25 said that LAVC does not have courts to fit both the tennis teams, and as a result, the varsity team will lose many members. “Right now we have a 20 to 25 person [varsity] team,” Reiter said. “Since construction is going to start, we have to cut off half of our team and put them on [junior varsity] and have a 12 person [varsity] team.” Following its 2017 purchase, River Park is currently slated to begin construction April 4.
Student tardiness in recent months has tripled since the fall, according to Student Discipline and Attendance Coordinator Gabriel Preciado. Los Angeles (LA) experienced historic rainfall in the month of February, according to the LA Times. The inclement weather caused multiple roads, including Benedict Canyon Drive and parts of Mulholland Drive, to shut down. As a result, a larger number of non-school commuters from the San Fernando Valley and the Studio City community are traveling to the west side of LA via Coldwater Canyon Avenue, causing greater traffic congestion. In September, 98 students were marked as late to their first class, according to attendance office data. The numbers increased twofold in the second quarter, with 186, 235 and 176 absences in the months of October, November and December, respectively, even with five days off in November and 11 in December due to school breaks. In the months of January and February, there were 372 and 432 students late to their first class, respectively, a change nearly double the number of recorded tardies in the first and second quarters. Preciado said the recent tardiness of students has been unprecedented. “It’s nothing like I’ve ever seen before,” Preciado said. “It’s an odd situation that we’re experiencing right now, with weather conditions and road closures. It’s one of the worst that I’ve ever seen in my 22 years here.” Despite the increase in tardies and detentions, which occur when six tardies are accrued in one quarter, Head of Upper School Beth Slattery said the administration has been lenient toward traffic-related lateness. “We’re not jamming anybody who is late because of traffic,” Slattery said. “Life happens, and traffic happens. Unless you’ve been abusing the attendance policy, nobody will get that mad.”
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PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF ARI ENGELBERG
GROUND-BREAKING VISIONS: The school purchased Weddington Golf and Tennis in 2017 and announced plans for River Park in 2019. After City Council approval, a date for beginning construction has been set.
River Park construction set to begin in April, seven years after purchase
By Eden Conner
Following its 2017 purchase, River Park is currently slated to begin construction April 4. Los Angeles (LA) City Council approved the project Nov. 14, issuing a conditional use permit for the school. As the school applies for permits from the Department of City Planning, they will start pre-construction activities like fencing, light grading and work on the clubhouse. Though the political battle for River Park ended following the LA City Council’s decision, opposition groups continued their fight against the project by taking legal action. Head of Communications and Strategic Initiatives Ari Engelberg ’89 said people opposed to River Park are suing the city for alleged mistakes made in the conditional use permit in order to halt construction. “Opposition groups continue their fight,” Engelberg said. “It’s the city’s process that resulted in the conditional use permit being issued and they want to appeal that. They’re suing the city argu-
ing that certain aspects of the conditional use permit process were erroneous. As a result, the conditional use permit to see up should be invalidated.” In addition to community members holding up the development process, Head of School Rick Commons said that there were several other factors that contributed to the delay. “It’s been seven years since we purchased the property and it’ll be another two and a half years of construction,” Commons said. “So it’s really gonna be a decade from purchase to operation. Part of that is the slowness that COVID-19 created, but then there was also a lot of intense work in working to get the community to feel like they could support it, and that made it possible for the politicians to support it and for the city to give its approval.” Engelberg said that over the last six years, the public was allowed to continue using the golf and tennis facilities, with the sole purpose of showing the community that the school has residents’
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IN THIS ISSUE
A2
A11
B6
C4
D3
Classes of 2028 and 2030: Administrators and students discuss admissions data from the 2023-2024 application cycle.
Screen Sensation: William Liu ’25 outlines his opinion on the potential disadvantages of the Apple Vision Pro.
Posting with Mates: Community members reflect on the culture of food delivery at school and possible economic effects.
Academic advisor: The satire staff provides satirical summaries of courses in the Chronicle’s annual curriculum guide.
HOOPS HISTORY: The girls’ basketball team became state champions for the first time since 2010, just hours before the boys’ team earned this title.