Stuyvesant High School Extra-curricula's

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Serious Play

Extracurricular Stuy-Style

There is no satisfactory explanation in stereotype of the diverse extracurricular successes of Stuyvesant students over the decades. The image of the bookworm explains the shelf in the library marked “Stuyvesant authors” plausibly enough, but shatters under the weight of a shelf of football trophies. The triumphs of the math team were no stretch for a school of nerds, but basketball championships ought to have been beyond their reach. Westinghouse/Intel prizes are a logical consequence of selection and education, but fencing victories in a building of working-class immigrant kids?

There is little rationale available in genetics…at least not in the fragmented knowledge we possess while waiting for the genome code to be fully revealed. The school’s very first club, the Chess Club of 1907, could be hypothesized to succeed based on DNA for skill sets that we would expect to coordinate with the fundamental DNA of intelligence. So, too, the more recent addition that designs robots to battle those of other schools. But the voices and performing gifts that have powered SING! and led so many graduates into stage, film, and television careers? Connect that, latter-day Cricks and Watsons!

Maybe then search in psychology, a branch of the sciences which had, at best, a wary existence around the periphery of Stuyvesant life. Maybe, if you create an atmosphere with the intention of inspiring people to fulfill their potential, populate it with young people whose full potential is unimagined and unimaginable, yet ripe, they will provide the unpredictable result of collectively trying everything, and succeeding.

In any case, as the brief histories, recollections of epic moments, and highlights of this chapter will demonstrate, Stuyvesant students have tried everything over their years in the school buildings, from the Forge Club to the Tree Huggers (and there are some less celebrated moments of forgery and odd activities in trees, as well). Filled with the limitless energy of youth, enough of them found the endless hours of class, commute, and homework insufficient distraction, and put enough energy into these extracurricular activities to give Stuyvesant imposing track records at many challenges, including track itself (despite the inherent handicap of the suspended indoor track at East 15^th Street, which taught the useless skill of running on a constant incline).

Ultimately, it is the sheer diversity of accomplishment that was the greatest accomplishment of all. Subtly, silently, Stuyvesant taught the lesson that it is not what you choose to be accomplished in that matters most (no primacy for football team and their cheerleaders here), but that accomplishment itself was what counted. Choose your own madness—an academic offshoot, an athletic activity, an anarchic effort to topple the administration or the world—and do it well. That was the message sent by example, and it is a truly inspirational one. It breaks loose the bonds of expectation, whether of family, peers, or teachers, and offers instead the passion of finding your muse in life.

There is, I posit, a very direct connection between the ridiculous array of activities we became involved in and our successes later in life. We discovered the freedom to choose paths in our Stuyvesant years, and the pleasure of pursing them furiously. Only some had a role in our careers or adult lives, but all gave us a taste of the joy of working to win. And we came back for more.

Paul Levitz '73, President & Publisher, DC Comics & MAD magazine (Time Warner)

Publications

Indicator

Caliper

Spectator

Student Guide

Box Seat

Nucleus

Stuy 2.0 Website

Voice

From its start in 1904, Stuyvesant HS students created their own publications. Although The Indicator, Caliper, and The Spectator have been published continuously since the early 1900's, other publications have came and went: Between You and Me, Bio-Med Times, Captain’s Log, Clue?Less, Colloquium, Culture Vulture, Environmental Times, Exit, Eye Sor, Forum, In Perspective, Inspiration, Introspectrum, Kaleidoscope, Math Survey, Muse, Junior Jots, Open Mind, Poleco, Rave of Lunatics, Resonance, Spectacles, Spectrum, Sports, Stage & Reel, Swords & Magic, Thoughts, Box Seat, Voice, and many others. While Irving C. Fischer, MD '27 was President of the Alumni & Scholarship Association(1954-62), the editors of The Spectator produced the annual Alumni Dinner Journal.

Thinking Back

I worked on the Spectator and the Indicator as a photographer. My first published picture was of Dr. Fliedner congratulating the football captains at the end of the season. - Marty Paull '64

The Indicator

Student Guide

Caliper

(Cover by George Segal '41)

Caliper

The Caliper literary magazine confronted me as a thirteen year old sophomore with the writer’s perpetual challenge: a blank page. Fortunately, faculty advisor Irving Astrachan was never at a loss for instructions on how to fill that page. “Write about what you know” he said.  He supplemented that motto with blackboard illustrations of a short story’s narrative arc and examples of well-constructed essays. What did I know?  My sophisticated classmates wrote stories about dating girls and mini-dissertations on particle physics and twelve-tone music and the falseness of bourgeois values.

In due time, despite my limited life experience, I became a co-editor of the publication, and I tasted the process of shaping the prose, poetry, and artwork of others. I learned to correct manuscripts and galley proofs using proper symbols and to select paper and typefaces. I remember joyfully inhaling printer’s ink at the Manhattan printing plant as Paul Stern and I picked up the final product in cartons. In my twisty career path since those 1957-1960 high school years, written communication has always been an important component, and Irving Astrachan’s voice still lives in my head.

Bernard A. Banet ’60, Ann Arbor, MI

The Spectator

The Voice

Founded in the 1973-74 school year, the Voice became one of the most successful, and controversial, publications in the school's history. Loosely modeled after "New York" magazine in its combination of serious journalism and service features, the Voice was a student-oriented publication that encouraged freedom of expression. After the administration limited student-run publications in the 1975-76 year, the Voice operated independently from school departments and budgets, and the publication made a small profit from direct sales and paid advertisements.

Gail Froiman '77, Sr. Chem. Engineer, US Environmental Protection Agency

Student

Government

Clubs

Civics

Arista

Big Sibs

Commuter

Debate

Training
 

Technology

Aeronautics

Cyclotron

Photo

Radio

Rifle

Preforming

Folk Singing

Orch, Band, Chorus

SING!

Theater

Liberal Arts

Jewish Culture

Languages

Math/Science

Astronomy

Chemistry

Chess

Math

Physics

Science Talent Search

Events

Pajama Day

The first club to form at Stuyvesant, in March 1907, was the Chess Club. The Camera Club was formed a week after the Chess Club, and the following year the Sketch Club launched, with twenty members.

Joining clubs

When we graduate from high school we shall not reminisce about the delightful Algebra or Trigonometry course we once took...but we shall talk or wish to talk of the fun we had in Stuyvesant...in other words, the social life of the school.

The clubs contribute the major portion of this social life. They are the organs which help bind us into a great unit. Many clubs work hand in hand with other bodies of the school, such as our publications. 

It is interesting to note that the school celebrities, that is, students who have in some way or other distinguished themselves from the mass, are members of several clubs, and often contributors to our various publications. We have noted that those most active have also the highest ratings. Are these two things synonymous? Does a club quicken the interest of the boy with school in general? We are inclined to think so. We think that school clubs may give students the added impetus that helps them reach scholastic attainments.

Last of all, the clubs unify Stuyvesant, give the school that break-through-the-line spirit. Join us, and we’ll hit the line together.

Samuel Berger '35, in the Caliper, December 1934

Thinking Back

Those were wonderful years for me at Stuyvesant. I did a lot of stuff at school---Photo Club, Ham Radio Club---W2CLE-"We're 2 Crazy Little Electrons", Cyclotron, Social Committee, Tennis Team (we played on asphalt courts under the Williamsburg Bridge and they were awful).

As a kid from Bensonhurst, I found it quite wonderful to make the City my world, go to Carnegie Hall and Philharmonic Hall, go to MOMA (it was 25 cents to get in for under-16 year olds) and get exposed to art and design, go to the Donnell Library to borrow classical music records, go to EJ Korvette's to buy records, hang out on Canal Street buying electronic parts (I was a serious phone freak and built a lot of stuff). I'm still close with friends I was close with then. The cultural and intellectual exposure and transformation most people hope for in college happened for me as a teenager. It was very powerful and has lasted.

Marty Paull '64 Architect/teacher, Southern California Institute of Architecture, UCLA

The Aero Club

There was the Aero Club, a group of Stuyvesant model airplane-building enthusiasts. These were depression-era years and few of us could afford gasoline-powered models. So the bulk of our activity was in building rubber-powered models, competing with each other and learning how to improve flight-duration performance. During warm weather, we competed in Central Park's Sheep Meadow, a venue for which we learned to obtain permission from Park authorities.  Sometimes, during competitions in Central Park, one (or more) of our planes would fly out of the park, and out of sight, mostly toward Central Park West. Generally we would get notified by a finder as to where to pick up our model.

In the auditorium at Stuyvesant, Aero Club contestants could achieve flying times of five minutes or more, barring someone opening a balcony door. Of course this would upset the contestant and cause much of a ruckus. We had to learn how to handle distractions such as this. Thus, participation in Aero Club activities gave us much experience and insight in the field we were preparing to enter as engineers. 

William Solomon '40

1921 Indicator

Arista

Arista

From the 1924 Indicator

From the Arista website

Big Sibs - from the 1994 Indicator

Astronomy Club

Thinking Back

I was the President of the Astronomy Club in '53-'54. Steve Maran '55 (later a NASA director of space sciences) was a close friend and he was President the following year. We spent time together as members of the Board of the Junior Astronomy Club in NYC and Brooklyn. I was student director of the Brooklyn College Observatory. My biggest effort was as a variable star observer and I was included in a July 25, 1955, LIFE magazine article (pictures and all) on junior astronomy. It included a light curve of a variable star based upon my observations during 1953-55, while I was at SHS. Over the years I have continued as an active variable star observer. I've always had a variety of telescopes but my astronomy has usually been of the stargazing variety, showing objects to the neighbors and local kids.

Charles Aronowitz '54

 

With interest in astronomy strong at Stuyvesant,  teachers Howard Natter and Myron Wechsler taught a telescope making course.  A class is pictured above, standing proudly with their six inch reflectors. This class picture appeared in a review of telescope making at Stuyvesant in the November 1960 issue of Mechanix Illustrated.

Chess

The Chess Club

One of the first student clubs at Stuyvesant, in 1907, was the Chess Club. A first match was successful against the Ethical Culture School, but we lost to the Morris HS team. The Chess Club team alumni(ae) stay involved through the Club’s website.

In the spring of 1992, Empire Chess reported on the NYC public school chess Championship, in which more than two hundred students from grades 1 through 12 participated:

“NYC’s Stuyvesant High School recaptured some of its glory from years gone by, by completely overpowering the other 15 schools competing for team honors. Stuyvesant had locked up first place without having to play their final round, but they did, finishing with a commanding 17.5 out of a possible 20 points.”

The Chess Team

I was the captain of the chess team at Stuyvesant, and I was proud that we contributed a North American championship trophy to the cases by the entrance doors of the old building. William Arluck was our supervisor then.

I took chess very seriously during those years, and I traveled to tournaments up and down the east coast. If memory serves, the bigger tournaments were held somewhere in the East during my junior and senior years. I recall trips to Washington, D.C., and to the University of Connecticut.

Costs for a big tournament, usually held over a long weekend, included the entry fee, travel, and hotel, unless the tournament was held in NYC. I think it is important for the school--and, as needed, the alumni--to support all kinds if extracurricular activities, including both chess and football and tons of stuff in between. The danger of an environment like Stuyvesant is that it can foster an attitude that the only important things in life are those that can be graded on an exam. The school should be trying to foster well-rounded individuals.

Dan Goncharoff’ '78

 

Chess Team Highlights

Manhattan Champions: 1911

City/Greater NY Champions: 1940, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1975

Eastern Champions: 1958, 1970, 1972, 1974, 1976, 1979, 1987

National Champions: 1971, 1981, 1984, 1985, 1990, 1999

Pan American Tournament: 1993 (top honors), 1996 (winner)

 

1970: Chess team moves to undisputed dominance of high school chess; wins every competition it enters, including city, state, and regional championships. The team is led by Jon Jacobs '72, whose games receive wide acclaim and are published in the New York Times and Chess Review.

 

Elina Groberman ’00 won three consecutive New York State women's championships from 1996-98. She tied for first place in the girls-under-18 Pan-American championship in Brazil in 1998 and played in the World Junior Chess Championships in France in 1997 and in Spain in 1998 and 1999. At age 17, Elina becomes U.S. National Women's Chess Champion.
 

Jewish Culture Club

The year was 1936 – and Hitler was spreading his venom throughout the world. In Manhattan, every Sunday the American Nazi Bund in full German uniform would parade on East 86th Street. Anti-Semitism was everywhere including our dear High School.

In the Fall of 1936 a group of Jewish Students from STUYVESANT got together and wanted to organize a club so that they could spread accurate knowledge about Jewish culture, holidays, etc. According to School regulations we needed twenty students and a Faculty Advisor to form a Jewish Cultural Society Club and would be given room in the School and a time when to meet. We met these criteria. However, our Principal Mr. Sinclair Wilson repeatedly could not find a room for us to meet.

At that time one of the Superintendents of the Board of Education was a man named Jacob Greenberg. I did not know him but I wrote to him explaining our predicament – that our principal was continually refusing to allow a Jewish Cultural Society to exist.

I did not hear directly from Mr. Greenberg but 2 months later Mr. Wilson called me into his office and asked me “… what day would you like to have a room for the club? “

Bernie Silverman '37
 

Cyclotron

The Cyclotron Committee

Being able to split atoms became a pressing need during the cold war, when the Soviet Union seemed to be moving ahead with an aggressive program of nuclear advancement. Stuyvesant responded to this pressure by forming the Cyclotron Committee, whose mandate was to build a working atom-splitter. The following is adapted from articles appearing in the December 6, 1961, issue of The Spectator:

The Cyclotron now being installed in the basement is the pride of SHS, the only one to be built by high school students in the United States. Construction of the Cyclotron was begun in 1957, following the launch of the first Soviet satellite. It was ascertained that a Cyclotron was in almost every junior college in the USSR. The students at SHS took charge of the Cyclotron Committee, a group of about 50 boys under the supervision of Mr. Alfred Bender of the physics department. Bender commented that at long last “boys will be able to operate and observe principles that are just talked about in classrooms now.” The cost of the atom buster is about $10,000 and contributions came in from the Hebrew Technical Institute, matched by a donation from the Board of Education. The American Iron and Steel Institute contributed a half-ton of steel for the magnetic yoke. The Phelps Dodge Corporation gave five miles of copper wire needed for the coils of the magnet, and the Collins Electronics Corporation donated a transmitter needed for the control system.

The progress of the Cyclotron has been keenly followed by the Atomic Energy Commission, and by several corporations, such as Collins Radio Company, and the Sylvania Company.

When completed, the Cyclotron will be used to put into practice the nuclear theories taught in chemistry and physics. Classes will be invited to observe the splitting atoms and transmutation of elements. The project was four years in the making and is due to be completed in early December, 1961. If not student constructed, it was estimated that it would cost $75,000. The labor alone saved $40,000. Attempts were made elsewhere but failed. They already have requests from other schools and hospitals to use it.

The Indicator of 1962 suggests that the cyclotron was completed, but there seems to be no existing record of its performance.

 

Bender with Cyclotron
 

---

Sing a song of atoms, a pocket full of bombs
Four and twenty scientists in a Cyclotron.
When they turned the switch on the men began to bawl.
Wasn't that a pretty dish for David Lilienthal?

The Spectator, September 1961

Thinking Back

 

        I vividly remember the formation of the Cyclotron Committee, of which I became a charter member.  It was somewhere in the midst of the Spring semester either of 1956, my Sophomore year, or 1957, my Junior year (I am not sure which year it was) in Dr. Efron's Honors Physics class (reverently referred to by his adoring students as "Efronics").  Dr. Efron suggested that we students should be able to construct a cyclotron, and asked for volunteers to form a committee to look into it and (hopefully) to bring it to fruition.  I think I was the first one to raise my hand.  My hand shot up before he had even finished asking who would be interested in joining the undertaking.  We wound up a committee of five or six members.  Marty Gersten, an Amateur Radio enthusiast and electronic whiz, became the chairman.  Other members included Jonathan Sutherland, who spoke with a pronounced Texas drawl (which was thoroughly appropriate since he actually came from Texas) and Robert Rudko.  I believe there was one more member, although I don't remember his name, or possibly two more members.  The Wikipedia article on Stuyvesant lists the faculty advisor as Abraham Kerner of the Chemistry Department, but I have no recollection at all of that gentleman.  I believe that our first faculty advisor was Al Bender of the Physics Department.  Mr. Kerner might have become the faculty advisor later on.

 

        Each of us took on a defined responsibility.  Marty Gersten designed the high-frequency oscillator that was at the heart of the control of electron-beam generation.  Someone else designed the electromagnet.  Another person designed the vacuum chamber, someone took charge of the DC power supply for the electromagnet, somebody did the collision-and-detection chamber, and my particular responsibility was the design of the vacuum system.  In those prehistoric times (that is, prior to the invention by Al Gore of the Internet, and prior to the advent of Google), getting information entailed many hours spent in the library.  My older brother was a student at Columbia University, so when I would take the subway uptown to visit him, I would make a side trip to Low Memorial Library, or maybe it was one of Columbia's other libraries, I don't remember for sure, to hunt for the information that I needed.  In those days, they didn't post an armed guard at the entrance to the library; anybody could walk in off the street and make use of the facilities, even going up to the stacks.  In fact, I had once found in the stacks at Low Memorial a book of 600+ proofs of the Pythagorean Theorem, and since I couldn't finish it all in one sitting, I went downstairs to the circulation desk and asked them if they would be willing to let me sign it out, even though I was not a student there.  They took down my name, address, and phone number, and I walked out with the book!  Imagine doing that today!!!  My design was for a three-stage vacuum system.  First was a mechanical vacuum pump called  a "backing pump" in geek speak, which took out the bulk of the air, bringing the pressure down to around one Torr (one millimeter of mercury, or about 1/760 of an atmosphere).  The second stage was an oil diffusion pump, which got the pressure down to either a hundredth or a thousandth of the crude vacuum produced by the backing pump.  The third and final stage consisted of a mercury diffusion pump, which brought the pressure down by several additional orders of magnitude.

 

        In addition to attending the committee meetings and working on the design of the vacuum system, I also visited the Physics Department at Columbia in Pupin Hall, and one of their faculty members showed me several cyclotrons that they had built and installed there.  And when I made an exploratory trip to the University of Rochester in my Junior or Senior year, to scout it out as a possible locus for my undergraduate studies, I visited their Cyclotron Laboratory as well.

 

        For me, being on the Cyclotron Committee was an invaluable experience.  It strengthened my penchant for being a doer, not a talker, and it gave me an enormous boost to my self-confidence.  Overall, it was one of the high points of my life.

 

Charlie Abzug, Associate Professor of Computer Science, James Madison University

Thinking Back

I started the project in 1956. Mr. Abraham Kerner of the Chemistry Dept was our faculty advisor, as Mr. Bender was too busy with his own extra-curricular activities to help us, although we were in his AR lab. I still have all of the original documents and drawings for the machine with the official received stamp of the B of E on the cover. Mr. Kerner arranged for delivery of the iron and copper during two phone calls from the phone booth in the lobby. I was with him in the phone booth. It was absolutely unforgettable. I remember the conversations verbatim. I got the big vacuum tubes for the oscillator from RCA when Gen Sarnoff visited Stuy to get his honorary diploma (1958?). The steel bars were too big to machine at Stuy or even at Brooklyn Tech. To get the steel machined, we rented a man and van, loaded the heavy bars on the truck and drove them up to the high-energy physics lab in the Pupin Building at Columbia Univ. We unloaded the bars on the loading dock and sent the truck away. The lab director was really mad at us, but finally agreed to have the blocks machined!

Some of us were also building a 'pickle-barrel' nuclear reactor, but that didn't get anywhere due to extreme problems with Mr. Schenberg, the Supervisor of Science at the B of E. He was a real political hack and we simply ignored him after two meetings on Livingston St. Getting us to meet with him was another self-promoting effort on Mr. B's part. Dr. Fleidner was very upset with us for getting the newspapers involved, after Bender, Efron, and Schenberg all copped-out on us. Mr. Yard, the physics lab tech helped us a lot, as did the very grumpy electric shop teacher whose name I have forgotten.

As I recall, that year Mr. Kerner won a big award for outstanding teaching and then retired. He was a very crusty old guy and taught us not to take crap from 'the system'. After many months of hearing platitudes from Bender, et al, we asked Mr. Kerner to help us. We had a short meeting with him and he went to the phone booth in the lobby with us. He called information and got the number of the American Iron and Steel Institute. He called and asked for the President. When the guy came on the phone, Kerner asked him if they could donate a few thousand pounds of soft steel to our project at Stuy. The president said no problem and the steel arrived about two weeks after we mailed the specs. He also called the President of Phelps-Dodge Copper Corporation and asked him if he would donate 1000 lbs of #10 enamel-insulated copper wire. The response was amazing! He just asked, "What kind of enamel insulation?" We didn't know what to say, and he suggested double weight Formvar was the best, The wire arrived before the steel. Later that term, when Gen. Sarnoff came to visit, I just politely asked him if RCA could donate a couple of 833 vacuum tubes and he said ok. Perhaps these were the bestlessons I learned at Stuyvesant.

Martin Gersten '58

Thinking Back

The cyclotron project attracted the interest of the Board of Education, culminating in a visit from an official from Livingston Street, Brooklyn, whose name I have forgotten, but whose responsibilities encompassed science curricula for the entire city. He visited the room where the cyclotron was under construction (formerly the G.O. offices) and among the questions he asked was how much uranium we would require to make it work. Clearly, he was apprehensive regarding safety issues, but completely misinformed about the nature of particles generated in an accelerator. We never envisioned the capability to accelerate a uranium nucleus; hydrogen would have been just fine for us.

Harold D. Doshan '58

Thinking Back

I was on the Cyclotron Committee headed by Mr. Bender. I remember that most of the material was donated and special cinder blocks (with lead aggregate) had to be used. The neighborhood was really nervous about the whole project. They had nightmares of atomic bombs being built by the eggheads of Stuyvesant.

Steven J. Wallach '62

Thinking Back

From my cyclotron days: I was reasonably active in '58-'59, especially in the math area. After that, I was only peripherally involved except for Bender's electronics class in '61-'62. There was a lot of soldering of copper tubing for cooling the system. And there were Erector set parts used for cable clamps and braces for power connectors. The cyclotron had two dees but only one was active and one was dummy...There was talk of making medical isotopes, but no money or space had been allotted for a "hot lab", so this part of the project went bust. It also meant that while we had a machine, it couldn't be put to any practical purposes that would allow it to pay for itself, as first envisioned. A low-power test was run in the spring of '62, enough that Bender was able to declare that the goal of a working cyclotron at Stuyvesant had been achieved. It is my understanding that the first full-power operational test later that year tanked the electrical system for the building and surrounding area! And the budgetary and safety problems were never overcome. No one  knows what happened to the machine.

I think some of the problems were exacerbated by professional and personality clashes between Mr. Bender and "Doc Ef." Efron was disdainful of Bender not having a Ph.D. and Bender liked to point out that the Physics Department Chairman (Efron) had never been a physicist! (Efron's PhD was in Comparative Education...) I remember instances when Mr. Bender played practical jokes on Dr. Efron designed to show in front of students and faculty what Bender called Efron's "lack of physics fundamentals." One of these tricks involved building a tiny transistor audio oscillator into an old radiotelegrapher's headset. Bender then showed it to Efron and told him that the headset had been making a "funny noise" ever since it was dropped in class, and could he possibly explain what was happening. Efron gave an elaborate explanation of induced hum from the room wiring and fluorescent lighting. After he left, Bender explained the hoax and made a point of saying that "any decent physicist would have caught on to the trick."

Matt Deming '62, Engineer, Boy Wizard (emeritus);-) Sr advisor, The Geek Group.