Harvard-Westlake • Studio City • Volume 33 • Issue 7 • May 29, 2024 • hwchronicle.com
Final vote to decide Honor Code By Hannah Shahidi If upper and middle school students and faculty vote in support of implementing a revised Honor Code for the 2024-2025 school year, it will likely be ratified and approved following a meeting between Prefect Council and the administration May 29, according to Upper School Dean Sharon Cuseo. An initial draft of the revised Honor Code was written by Prefect Council and sent to students to receive student feedback May 2. A second version of the code, which incorporated feedback from students, was sent for students and faculty to vote on May 23. Cuseo said Prefect Council tried to maintain the original ideas of the Honor Code while modernizing the language. “Some of the changes were based on feedback from students and faculty,” Cuseo said. “It was a real balancing act between maintaining some of the tradition and spirit of the original with the increased clarity and conciseness of the revision. Student and faculty members are voting on this new draft, so if both groups sign off, then it will get final approval from the School Leadership Team.” Head Prefect and Print Managing Editor Davis Marks ’24 said Prefect Council has been working on incorporating student feedback in the latest draft of the code. “If you look at honor codes at most colleges, they aren’t lengthy documents detailing every prohibited action,” Marks said. “Instead, they outline each community’s core principles. The feedback we have received from students shows that most are unfamiliar with the current Honor Code, so by revising it to be more concise and affirmative, students will be able to live by these principles. Over the past month, we have been discussing this project almost daily, working to incorporate feedback from administrators, faculty and students.” • Continued on A2
PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF HW MEDIA
BRINGING IN BLOCKS: The Middle School unanimously decided in cooperation with an independent company to implement an eight-day block schedule for the 2025-2026 school year. In the process, administrators proposed longer classes and a more uniform schedule across all grade levels.
Middle School announces eight-day block schedule for 2025-2026 school year after unanimous vote
By Everett Lakey
Middle school faculty and staff unanimously voted to change the Middle School schedule for the 2025-2026 school year in a meeting May 21. The school consulted with Independent School Management (ISM), a company that works to create student-centric scheduling, in developing potential schedules that were presented at faculty meetings in April. Head of Middle School Jon Wimbish said the school also assembled a scheduling committee filled with members from different departments that provided feedback on the proposed schedules before unanimously deciding to move forward with a schedule with 55-minute class periods that meet five days out of an eight-day cycle. The 2024-2025 school year will be used to finalize and address potential problems in the schedule, according to Wimbish.
President Rick Commons said “I think there will be a learning the implementation process will be curve, but I am excited because I similar to when the Upper School am going to have to experiment switched to a block schedule. with different types of teaching “We took a year to think methods,” Makhluf said. “I don’t about all of the different nuanc- think a lecture is going to work es and complications and then for 55 minutes, especially for sevimplemented and discovered a enth graders. [The new schedule] whole set of new differallows us to explore alent nuances and comternative ways to get inplications that needed formation to students.” to be adjusted,” ComWimbish said keepmons said. “We will ing the idea of middle follow the same pattern school academic exat the Middle School. ploration intact was a It is important that it priority while developis not a copy of the uping the new schedule. per school shift. That is “The schedule that L. Wood why the result is longer we chose wasn’t so Jon periods but not as long immensely different Wimbish as the ones that we have that it was going to at the Upper School.” completely overhaul Middle School History the entire class experience,” Teacher Joseph Makhluf, who Wimbish said. “We still wantwas a member of the scheduling ed to maintain the ethos of the committee, said he is looking Middle School, which is about forward to trying different ways exploration. We want kids to to teach his classes under the take lots of classes, so we have new schedule. semester-length courses. We
have requirements for public speaking and ethics as well as [for] performing and visual arts. We did not want a schedule that was going to scale back on the number of periods offered because we want kids to still be able to explore.” ISM scheduling consultant Sharon Schuster said she interviewed members of the lower school and looked through documents to get a better picture of how the school functions. “The process itself involved interviewing a lot of people,” Schuster said. “I spent about probably 20 hours interviewing teachers and staff [as well as] students. In addition to interviews, [I went through] hundreds of documents, everything from admission data, to curriculum, to scheduling information to facility information. For two weeks, I dove in and tried to learn every single thing I could about the school and then I came up with designs.” • Continued on hwchronicle.com
IN THIS ISSUE
A4
A11
B4-5
C1
D2
Greeting Goats: Members of the community enjoyed the presence of baby goats, which were brought by Prefect Council.
Pushing For PE: Assistant Opinion Editor Olivia Phillips ’25 argues for changes to the school’s PE requirement system.
Campus Confrontations: Community members examine the rise of campus activism around Israel, Palestine and war in Gaza.
Documenting The Days: Two Harvard School alumni discuss the production of a documentary about their high school experience.
Runner-Ups: The baseball team reflects on their loss in the Division 1 California Interscholastic Federation Southern-Section final.