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November 2009 The Walrus: School News
Page 3
NHS Inducts New Members
By DAVID RUFFOLO ‘10
The National Honor Society was
founded in 1921 and is the nation’s
premier organization established to
recognize outstanding high school
students. The National Honor Society
is more than an honor roll—it is an
organization that honors students
who have demonstrated excellence
in each of the four pillars: Scholarship,
Leadership, Service, and Character.
According to the National Honor Society
website, “Chapter membership
not only recognizes students for their
accomplishments, but challenges
them to develop further through
active involvement in school activities
and community service.”
At St. Sebastian’s, students are urged
to one day become a part of the National
Honor Society by following the
school’s motto: “Work hard, love God,
and take good care of one another”.
Students become eligible for election
into the National Honor Society
at the beginning of their junior year.
For eligibility, students are required
to attain at least an 85% grade point
average. In addition, each student
must write an essay that shows how
they have demonstrated excellence
in the four pillars during their time
at St. Sebastian’s. Finally, each one
of the student’s teachers writes a
recommendation either in support or
opposed to their induction. Once this
information is submitted, a panel of
St. Sebastian’s faculty then convenes
and renders a final decision for each
student.
This past week, the annual Sr. Evelyn
C. Barrett, O.P. Chapter of the National
Honor Society ceremony was held to
honor 53 students in grades 11 and
12. The ceremony was kicked off by
the Dean of Studies and Assistant
Headmaster, Mr. Nerbonne, who
provided a general overview of the
National Honor Society. Then, the
school’s President of the National
Honor Society, Chris Marino ‘10, Vice
President, Ned Kingsley ’10, Secretary,
Max Kingsley ’10, and member,
Joe Albanese ’10, each spoke
regarding one of the four pillars.
Each of these students gave brilliant
speeches regarding what it takes to
earn membership into the National
Honor Society. Their speeches were
full of enlightening advice, praising
those who are already members
and encouraging those younger
students to work hard so they can
also achieve this honor. Following
the speeches, the President, Chris
Marino, called each inductee up in
front of the church. Chris led the
new members in reciting the pledge
of the National Honor Society. Once
the pledge was complete, each new
inductee received a National Honor
Society certificate and pin from Mr.
Burke. The formal assembly concluded
when Headmaster Burke came
up and gave his final remarks on the
National Honor Society and praised
each of the speakers on their terrific
speeches.
The new inductees to the Society
were asked to stay behind after
everyone had left the assembly
for photos. For press purposes, the
students were called up according
to the town they lived in to take a
picture with Headmaster Burke as a
remembrance of the event. Following
the pictures, the members joined
their families down in Ward Hall for
a reception full of donuts, pastries,
and drinks. The members got to chat
it up with parents and fellow inductees
until Mr. Albertson came around
alerting everyone that they had to
go to their first period classes.
It was a great and memorable ceremony.
The National Honor Society
is a group that is open to every
student who aspires to achieve this
honor. The underclassmen should
watch this ceremony and visualize
themselves receiving that same certificate
in the future. To the sophomores
particularly, they should
redouble their efforts to embody
the four pillars of the National Honor
Society into their lives. In addition,
juniors have another opportunity
to qualify and should all work even
harder to ensure that they earn their
position in the group next year.
Being a part of the National Honor
Society not only might boost your
college resume, but it also makes
you feel good. It demonstrates that,
during your years at St. Sebastian’s,
you have proven yourself and made
the best of your time. It is a great
honor to receive at the end of your
Seb’s career as a symbol of all your
dedication and hard work. The ceremony,
however, is only the start of
your responsibilities in the National
Honor Society. Once inducted,
students are expected to continue
to live out the four pillars and be a
good role model for the younger
kids. In addition, the members of
the National Honor Society are relied
upon by the school to aid in many
charitable activities. For instance,
as a part of the society, members
are asked to help tutor struggling
students in a variety of subjects.
I wish the best to every St. Sebastian
student and hope each and
every one of them live a life full of
scholarship, leadership, service, and
character so that when it is their
turn, they are proudly standing up
on the stage being inducted into the
National Honor Society as well.
Movies with Mike:
By MIKE SANDERSON ‘10
I have to be honest, and say that I
went into this movie expecting the
very worst. I had seen the trailer, and
the impression I got was that the film
was a Keystone Cops-type account
of a bumbling executive turned
inept informant for the FBI. For the
first 10 minutes or so, I got just what
I expected; the attempts at humor
were cheap and borderline pathetic.
The choppy and utterly pointless
voiceover tangents were cringeworthy,
and I was tempted to join the
scores of people walking out of the
theater. In fact, if I didn’t have to write
this article, I’m sure I would have, but
I’m very glad I didn’t. The Informant!
starts slow, but evolves into one of
the most intriguing and genuinely
surprising films I’ve yet seen.
The Informant! is a difficult film to
lock into a specific genre. It takes
the solemn The Informant: A True
Story by Kurt Eichenwald and tries
to twist it into a medley of parts
satire, outright comedy, espionage,
and psychological thriller. Such an
attempt is widely considered the
cardinal sin of filmmaking, as only in
rare, brilliant instances does such an
eclectic approach come together and
succeed on all levels, and I wouldn’t
quite go so far as to say that director
Steven Soderbergh does that, but he
comes admirably close. The corporate
corruption theme hearkens back to
his hugely popular Erin Brocovich,
but takes a drastically different angle
on it.
The “protagonist” of the film
is Mark Whitacre, Vice President of
the Archer Daniels Midland corporation,
portrayed masterfully by Matt
Damon. At the starting point of the
film, the company has already been
involved in an international price
fixing scheme for some time, and by
chance the FBI starts looking into
a totally separate issue, in which
the ADM corporation is the victim.
Through that investigation, Mark
meets Special Agent Brian Shepherd
(Scott Bakula), and, at the urging of
his virtuous wife Ginger (Melanie
Lynskey), Mark decides to come clean,
and thus his six-year stretch as an FBI
informant begins.
As I mentioned, I thought that plotline
would be the essence of the story,
and I wondered why someone like
Matt Damon would attach himself
to such a project. That question was
answered resoundingly as the true
nature of Damon’s character began
seeping through. The plotline moved
along startlingly fast, and after merely
‘The Informant’
45 minutes or an hour the ADM
executives had all been arrested, and
I could never have guessed what
the second half of the film would
be like. Looking back, the first hint
that something was amiss with Mark
came during a meeting between
Agent Shepherd, his partner Agent
Herndon (Joel McHale of ‘The Soup’
fame), and some of their colleagues.
They wrapped up their presentation
of all the damning evidence
Mark had accrued, and congratulatory
fist bumps abounded. One of
the Agents not involved with the
case, however, posed an innocent
question, that began gnawing at the
back of my mind: why did Whitacre
come to the FBI out of the clear blue
sky, throwing his fat paycheck and
financial stability down the tubes,
to bring down this corporation,
of which he was Vice President?
Agent Shepherd skirts the question,
claiming that Whitacre is simply the
elusive truly good guy, motivated by
a sense of honor and moral fortitude,
and I accepted that answer at
the time. The film truly reached a
level bordering on brilliance during
Mark’s debriefing. Some inconsistencies
had arisen in Mark’s answers,
and I feel like I can’t really go much
further without ruining one of
the truly great plot twists I’ve ever
come across. I’ll simply say that Matt
Damon masterfully presents a truly
twisted character, one of the best
I’ve seen in an long movie- viewing
career.
The bottom line: I recommend
The Informant! (Not sure what the
punctuation rule is there with the
exclamation in the title at the end of
a sentence…) Matt Damon is incredible,
and I love the mind-bending
twist, but the movie is a little too
scatterbrained to be considered truly
great. The humor picks up as the
film gains momentum, and it’s just
a shade away from being a masterpiece.
You have to be willing to really
work at understanding it to appreciate
it, so casual moviegoers would
likely not enjoy the film; I, however,
would give it a very respectable 4
out of 5 stars.
Mike Sanderson gives “The Informant” four out of five stars.
The 53 new Seb’s members gather for a picture in the church after the assembly.
Student Council Updates
By CHRIS NADEAU ‘12
As the first quarter comes to a close,
the St. Sebastian’s student council
is picking up steam, as it continues
to organize many upcoming school
events. Although many of the events
will be the same as last year, some
minor details are being adjusted to
optimize student satisfaction. As
sophomore vice president Conor
Haughey says so elegantly, “Many
events may have the same idea, but
if you ask me, it’s the little things that
really make all the difference.”
One of the reasons why the
student council is able to effectively
produce so many events each year is
because of one of its only fundraisers,
the magazine drive. As every member
of the school community now knows,
the magazine drive will continue
once again this year. For all of those
in attendance at the magazine drive
assembly on Friday October 30th,
there are probably two things that
History Club Starts Up:
Future Looks Promising
ANDREW DEMATTEO ‘11
“Five, Six, Seven, Eight. Okay now,
how many for ‘Frost Nixon’ and ‘All
the Presidents Men?’ Only two, okay,
then we are watching ‘Gallipoli.’ ” It
has not been decided on when to
show the movie since the Finance
Club is meeting on the original date
as it was deemed necessary for both
programs not to interfere. Nevertheless,
sometime in the next few weeks,
the History Club will be showing “Gallipoli,”
starring Mel Gibson. “Gallipoli”
was one of Gibson’s first movies and
huge hit. The film is about Australians
who volunteered to fight for the
British Empire in the First World War.
They are sent to the battle of Gallipoli
to fight against the Turks. They try
to free the Dardanelles from Turkish
Control so they could offer supplies to
the Russian Army. The campaign fails
miserably, and the soldiers learn that
war is not fun and games. However,
just in case you really would like to
watch the movies that lost in the
vote, it is possible that the films may
be watched later in the year, when
the junior class learns about the
Watergate Scandal in United States
History.
come to mind, one being a pack of
hungry gorillas, and the other being
the ability to simultaneously raise
money for the student council while
raising cash for yourself. This year’s
magazine drive is focused on rewarding
students who sell magazine
subscriptions with cash, rather than
physical items and prizes. The additions
of the plinko game for those
who raise over $250 and the dodge
ball game for those who sell at least
$150, which both offer students to
increase their money exponentially,
and should prove to be great motivation
for the student body.
One of the student council’s
first events of November is a Middle
school social at Jillian’s Restaurant
and game lounge, which is equipped
with over 30 pool tables, 16 bowling
lanes, darts, table tennis, foosball,
not to mention a quadruple high
definition video wall and 12 plasma
screen televisions. After school on
Wednesday the 18th, the seventh
and eighth grades will travel by bus
Mr. Cleary, the Chair of the
History Department, founded the
club last year with the intention of
finding students “who like to talk
about history.” In its first year the
club saw the movies ‘Patton’ and ‘13
Days on the Cuban Missile Crisis.’
Some of the members also listened
to speakers such as Brent Scowcroft,
the national security advisor under
George H. W. Bush, Theodore Sorenson,
John F. Kennedy’s speechwriter,
and General Maxwell Taylor Kennedy,
who wrote a book on the battle
of Iwo Jima in World War II.
The club likes to meet at
least once every month to watch a
film, which is decided upon by the
board of directors in advance. The
first movie that the club watched
this year was ‘Black Hawk Down.’
For those who have not seen ‘Black
Hawk Down,’ it is a great movie
about United Nations activities in
Somalia in the mid-nineties. When
some routine military maneuvers
break down, the soldiers find themselves
trapped in a hostile city, which
rises up to fight them. The first 15
minutes of the movie are peaceful,
until all hell breaks loose and the
rest of the movie is a battle. This
movie, ‘like Gallipoli,’ reinforces the
to Jillian’s, where they will meet and
spend the afternoon with the girls
from Newton Country Day’s middle
school. Dinner will be served for the
two schools while they are able to
socialize with one another and enjoy
games of pool and bowling.
When reflecting on his
social experiences from the trip last
year, ninth grader Ryan Schnoor
commented, “For me, being such
a social butterfly, the trip gave me
a chance to strengthen my friendships,
but for those who may be
more shy, this trip was definitely a
great way to make new friends, and
to grow as a class.”
Another event that
received a great response last year
was the chili-cook-off between the
kitchen staff, teachers and students,
the student council. The student
council is not only continuing the
chili tradition, but also, they are adding
a similar competition that will
take place in the upcoming weeks.
Only instead if chili, the competition
will revolve around chocolate chip
cookies.
“Although the idea sounds so
simple,” says Haughey, “The wide
variety of styles is what will make the
contest so unique.”
During the day of parent teacher
conferences, three or four teams will
compete against Joe and Rafi to see
who can consistently make the make
chocolate chip cookie.
Another one of the student body
favorites is the candy cart, which will
once again be making an appearance
in the front foyer this year.
Although the date has not yet been
announced there is still great deal
of hype surrounding the candy cart
this year, partially due to the success
from last year, and partially due to
comments like sophomore president
Kevin Dillon’s, boasting, “It’s going to
be bigger and better than ever.”
The student council events as a
whole seem to be getting bigger
and better; lets hope that they can
continue to live up to the expectations
from previous years, and
continue to grow in popularity.
point that war is not what romantics
tell us, but is actually a terrible thing
that should be avoided at all costs.
The great thing about the
History Club is that you don’t have
to be especially talented at sports or
the arts to be in it. It is something
that anyone in the school can do.
You do not have to be in the History
club in order to attend one of the
movies. However, it is important
to note that all students under
seventeen who would like to watch
the movies will most likely need a
parent-signed permission slip in
order to attend any R-rated movies.
In the future, Mr. Cleary
hopes to organize trips to see different
speakers at the Kennedy School
of Government or perhaps the
Boston Public Library. Another possibility
is the foundation of a book
club, from some period of history.
Before I end, I just want to make a
quick shout out to all students who
are considering participating in the
Moot Court Competition. Participation
in Moot Court will really expand
your knowledge of history as well
as of the Supreme Court, and you
should consider entering the tournament.