Boston University Academy

| FROM ACADEMY PRESS | BY SARAH HOUGH | March, 2013 |

I peered out the window to find a sweeping expanse of sand, drifted into enormous dunes and extending as far as the eye could see. There was no sign of human habitation whatsoever. Yet for some reason I couldn’t take my eyes of the eerily haunting scene, and I only turned away with reluctance when the flight attendant wearily asked me to “Please shut the window, ma’am.” I looked up to see my screen announcing that we had traveled 6128 miles and had 482 to go. That was when it hit me. While my classmates were worrying about their English finals, I was on a 747 above Mongolia, headed to Beijing so I could, of all things, sing. I wasn’t entirely sure how I’d gotten there, and was mildly confused as to why I was going at all. All I knew was that I spoke absolutely no Mandarin and had no idea what I was going to be doing. It was a terrifying idea, but less terrifying than the idea of never trying anything new.

So how exactly did I end up on this plane? In November, Andy, the conductor of PALS, a chorus I’m in, told me that there was a possible opportunity for awesome in December. I was psyched—I mean, until I realized it was the week of BUA finals. I told Andy that I’d talk to BUA about it, but that I highly doubted they’d let me miss exams, the climax of the academic year. This was when he mentioned that the trip would be to China.

Now that was a surprise. To say the least.

With the blessings of the BUA administration, I embarked on a whirlwind of a month. The most stressful of my life, I had interminable rehearsals, countless projects, emergency trips to the State Department for a new passport, and that little thing called finals. Throughout the whole process, I forbade myself from thinking about the fact that I might actually being going, because it wasn’t a sure thing.

Finally, the day before we left, we had confirmation we were definitely going. And so because I’d never really thought about it being real, I was rather confused as I sat in that plane and stared out at the desert. But despite all of this, the plane landed in Beijing, we went through customs, and the most incredible week of my life began.

Let me start out by saying that Beijing wasn’t fun because of the tourist spots. Honestly (spoiler alert!) they were really a letdown. The Bird’s Nest was just a ginormous stadium which looks exactly the same as it does on television. The Forbidden City is just rather large. And while I know that the Great Wall should have made me think about mankind’s great and terrible power to create and destroy, all I was thinking about was how not to fall to my death. Because one thing you don’t realize until you’re hundreds of feet up in the air on a slanted surface without handrails is that it’s fairly icy in winter. Be careful, folks.

What actually made me think about “mankind’s great and terrible power to create and destroy” were the sharp contrasts on full display during the trip.

We were there to record some songs for a New Year’s Spectacular type event for children, and that part of it was, well, spectacular. There was elaborate makeup, absurd costumes, modeling shoots, and fancy studios.

But, with glitter still in our hair and stars in our eyes, we also saw the city—not as advertised in glossy brochures, but as it really is. The city, sprawling and packed with people, slapped you in the face with the realities of megacities. A layer of grime seemed to cover everything, the air was hazy with smog. There was high rise after high rise, and it made me wonder—what were all of the people in those depressing cement buildings getting to do with their lives? And why should I, a 14 year old who stumbled into China out of sheer luck, get to travel across the world? Why did I deserve this chance?

I couldn’t answer that question, but I tried to simply make the most of my luck. What more can we do, really? I sang. Played games with some Estonian girls also there to sing. Managed to have conversations with people even when neither of us spoke each other’s language. And more than that, I thought.

Because sometimes it takes being a stranger in a strange land to realize what’s bad—and good—about your home. Sometimes it takes a week in a place without clean water to realize how lucky you are, and a week of the unexpected to realize what you’re missing in your everyday life.

I’m back in Brookline now, but my memories of Beijing are still vivid. Maybe that’s part of why we travel—even when you’re back home, you’re not the same. Traveling changes you.

| FROM ACADEMY PRESS | BY ANNA LIN-SCHWEITZER | JANUARY, 2013 |

I’m a big believer in going to dances. They are a fun way to relieve stress, hang out with friends, and (most importantly) get free food. On the whole, a majority of the student population attends each BUA dance—Fall Festival, Semi Formal, and Spring Fling. Yet of the three, Semi has always been the most controversial. Whenever I put in a good word for it, the most common response has been, “Why should I pay all that money just to see the people I see every day for another four hours?” While I believe this to be a rhetorical statement, I have some answers:

First, what you really missed out on this year was the boat. I admit it; I was ambivalent at first. Though Semi had been traditionally held on a boat before I came to BUA, I questioned the sanity of this endeavor. In my naivety, I wondered how the food would stay on the tables, and searched out the Dramamine before I left the house. Prejudiced by a whale-less whale watch this summer, I associated boats with crashing through cold and windy weather with no land in sight. Indeed, I was quite wrong. For one thing, I didn’t even notice when the boat set off. I was pleasantly surprised when I happened to glance out the window and noticed the lights of Boston blinking by. And they kept blinking by. We did not lose sight of land at any point on the trip, and seasickness was the last thing on my mind.

Additionally, the food remained on the tables. I would have cried if it had not. I am easily impressed, but have been a picky eater my entire life; when it comes to food, not everything goes. However, I can confidently say that I was very sad when my plate was empty. The buffet meal at the beginning hosted the World’s Softest Bread Rolls, accompanied, of course, by an array of lovely salad, beans, mashed potatoes, pasta primavera, and chicken. There was even a carving station for sirloin and pork! Dessert was equally, if not more, impressive: cheesecake with white chocolate ganache and raspberry topping, and not only chocolate chip cookies but also chocolate mousse truffles on chocolate cookies. My mouth is watering thinking about them.

However, food only took up a small part of the evening. Music played the entire night and for most of it, the dance floor was overflowing. For such a small school, we are really great dancers. And those of us who are less great at dancing can still feel okay about ourselves because nobody can really see who is who anyway when there are strange colors flashing from the ceiling all evening!

You also missed out on seeing all your friends dressed up. While not to the same extent as Prom, most people put effort into their outfits, so you should make that work worth their while! My only complaint was not pertaining to the dressing up part as such, but to the shoes-on rule of the boat. Due to the potential safety hazard of broken glass, many dress-wearing individuals had to totter around in heels for four hours. Personally, I did not strive for comfort when I picked out my shoes and came expecting to take them off. As a result, I found several new places on my feet that I didn’t even know could blister. Next year, I think I’ll be wearing sneakers, just to be on the safe side. Another incentive to come: seeing me in a dress with running sneakers!

Even though I could barely walk by the end of the evening, I am not at all sorry I went. Even in heels. The ultimate highlight of the night was going on the top of the deck to see the entire Boston skyline over the water. Despite a deceptive sixty degree Monday that melted all the snow, Friday evening happened to be a particularly cold day of the week and my bare legs did not thank me for spending close to 10 minutes in the open air. But this just goes to show how beautiful the view was! I personally do not get to see the Boston skyline over water every day. Or night, for that matter; most of the time I am surrounded by tall buildings and towering people. Sadly, the view was short-lived, owing to my very exposed and very numb legs, yet there’s something about being surrounded on all sides by what you see that looking out the window at the top of the GSU doesn’t match. You had to be there.

After hearing all about this fantastic night, I can’t imagine that you are glad you missed Semi. Apply what you learn daily at BUA: nothing daunts a scholar! Not even a dance. If the boat aspect doesn’t appeal to you, you must be tempted by the World’s Softest Bread Rolls. They were so soft, I almost didn’t want to eat mine; all I wanted to do was stroke it. Even just seeing your friends in pretty clothes is a novelty. Great minds frequently prioritize work over dress; at BUA, it’s not every day you get to see a bunch of nicely dressed people all in one room! Yet whether or not you are considering going next year or ever, I’ll always have fun remembering the view, the dancing, and the food.

| FROM ACADEMY PRESS | BY SOPHIA WEDEEN | JANUARY, 2013 |

On December 14^th, Adam Lanza entered a Connecticut elementary school and fatally shot 20 students and 6 teachers with a semiautomatic assault rifle. This mass shooting at Sandy Hook was not the first time that a major act of gun violence has captured public attention; the attempted assassination of congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson and the shootings in an Aurora movie theater have likewise given the controversial topic of gun control a place in the national conversation.

In the weeks following Sandy Hook, both the proponents of gun rights and the advocates of stricter regulations have looked to these tragedies in an attempt to solve the problem of gun violence. Some see these tragedies as a call for further regulations, viewing organizations like the NRA as enablers. Others believe that firearms are necessary for self-protection and argue that these unprecedented killings illustrate the futility of gun regulation in preventing firearms-related violence.

I don’t recommend that President Obama travel door-to-door and pry people’s guns, bullets, and butter knives right out of their hands. Nor do I believe congress should enact a law requiring that all citizens purchase heat-seeking intercontinental ballistic missiles for self-protection. The problem of gun violence is a complicated one, and it won’t be solved overnight. However, I think there are a couple of sound and reasonable regulations that would make a huge difference.

To begin, let’s talk about semiautomatic assault rifles. Semi-automatic firearms are self-loading, meaning the user doesn’t need to manually cycle each round and can fire multiple bullets very rapidly. It is currently legal to manufacture and purchase semiautomatic assault weapons in the United States, and I find it insane that we have not reinstated a federal assault weapons ban. The previous decade-long ban expired in 2004, but because the majority of gun deaths in the United States result from handguns, it had a negligible effect on overall violence. That, however, is no excuse to make semiautomatics available to the public. Semi-automatic weapons were used in the shootings in Tucson, Aurora, and most recently, Newtown. The US Military currently issues several kinds of semiautomatic weapons, many of which US citizens can legally purchase. As Former US General Stanley McChrystal noted, semiautomatics are supposed be incredibly damaging because they are intended for military use and only military use.

The Second Amendment declared our right to keep and bear arms, but technology has made significant advances since 1789. We’ve already agreed as a society that we need to draw the line at certain weapons. Obviously, citizens aren’t allowed to purchase tanks or surface-to-air missiles. And once people figured out that armor-piercing bullets can be used for, well, armor piercing, they enacted a federal ban on those as well. We face this exact issue with semiautomatics, so we should acknowledge them as yet another unnecessarily dangerous weapon. This isn’t about gun rights – it’s a no-brainer about public safety.

Politicians, activists, and much of the national media view Sandy Hook as the root of the problem when it comes to firearms. But the reality is that shootings account for fewer than 100 deaths per year, a minuscule fraction of the 29,000 who are killed by guns in the US annually. And even though mass shootings are nearly impossible to predict, there still some regulations we can enact to address the epidemic of gun violence in this country.

Background checks are one example of a regulation that has not gone nearly far enough. It is currently illegal for licensed gun stores to sell to those convicted of a misdemeanor or felony, those residing illegally in the US, or those who have been committed to a mental institution. However, while licensed gun stores are legally required to perform this background check, private owners selling to individuals within their own State have no such obligation. According to a 1997 study, 35% of gun owners purchased their firearm from a family member or friend, 15% purchase from a retail gun store, and the rest obtain firearms from drug dealers (15%), on the black market (6%), from theft (6%), etc. In other words, only the 15% of gun owners who purchase from retail stores are required to meet the minimum standard of a basic background check in order to purchase a firearm.

While it is complicated and difficult to control illegal acquisition of guns, legislation requiring that private sellers perform background checks would increase the number of vetted gun owners by 35%. It’s completely insane that this isn’t already mandatory. The Department of Transportation set up the National Driver Register – a database that all sellers must consult before allowing someone to purchase a car. Why, exactly, does no such database exist for gun owners, even though they’re buying weapons?

What frustrates me most about the debates over gun control is that they fall so easily into hyperbole. As I’ve stated, there certainly are things we can do about gun violence, such as banning assault rifles and making background checks thorough and mandatory in all cases. But after each mass shooting comes an ideological mud fight in which panic reigns supreme and the only available solutions involve pointing fingers and radically undermining the other side’s positions. In 2013, the major problem we face isn’t finding some way to reduce gun violence, but finding a way to overcome the politics that surround gun violence. I honestly don’t know if the gun control debate bodes well for the future of the American political system or merely illustrates its failings. Either way, there’s a New Years resolution I encourage everyone to try out: when it comes to issues like gun regulations, calm down and use your head.  It’s surprising how far common sense will get you.