“On Saturday, Feb. 23, the fifth annual Social Justice Leadership Conference took place at 41 Wyllys Ave. First organized by Associate Director of Student Activities and Leadership Development Elisa Cardona and the Wesleyan Student Assembly (WSA) in 2008, the conference is a community-based initiative that brings students, staff, faculty, and Middletown residents together to lead sessions on social justice and improve their leadership skills.”

“The Community Outreach Committee (COCo) of the Wesleyan Student Assembly (WSA) held a Student Group Leader Summit on Feb. 2. Leaders from various student groups assembled to discuss their goals for the spring semester, to learn about new tools available to them, and to inform COCo about the difficulties that they face.”

“DeWitt Clinton High School should not be closed,” I write in the Points of View section of The Riverdale Press.  ”That would accomplish nothing and would waste a valuable and unique opportunity.”

Dear Mayor Bloomberg, Chancellor Walcott, and the people of the City of New York,

DeWitt Clinton High School should not be closed.  The closure of DeWitt Clinton High School will accomplish nothing but the waste of a valuable and unique opportunity.

It has been argued that the history of a school does not matter, that it is only the present activities of the school that matter.  That is not the version of History that I learned at DeWitt Clinton.  The History that I learned at DeWitt Clinton commands that the past is important, that the past is critical to the present.  DeWitt Clinton High School has a story that stretches over 115 years, starring hundreds of thousands of students, parents, faculty, and staff.

DeWitt Clinton High School, precisely because of its great history, presents an amazing opportunity.  Educators at DeWitt Clinton could leverage the school’s past to create unique, tailored educational materials that would raise standards like never before.  Students can read literature crafted by such alumni as James Baldwin and Countee Cullen.  Students can study the intersections of science and history through such works as the biology textbook that was at the heart of the Scopes Monkey Trial, written by a DWCHS teacher.

DeWitt Clinton High School’s thousands of living alumni are also a resource that it would be a shame to waste.  The alumni association claims to be the largest high school alumni association in the world, and includes executives at top companies in the New York City metropolitan area.  The mentorship that could be provided would be unrivaled.  Many DWCHS alumni are also educators.  Bring them back home, if you can.

Regardless, the students of DeWitt Clinton are in dire need of resilient teachers and administrators who can understand where they are coming from and how to address their needs.  Many of the students that DWCHS currently serves are undeniably some of the neediest children in the City of New York.  Many of these students come from broken homes, impoverished backgrounds, and may not speak English as a first language.  The DOE has already failed to adequately serve many of these students before they matriculate at DeWitt Clinton.

These students have special needs.  These needs require further resources and innovative approaches.  The same situation in the same standing structure with the same strategies will not help them.  Small schools that do the same thing as the large schools before them will not help these students.  Discarding the DeWitt Clinton name, heavy with meaning, will not help these students.

DeWitt Clinton may be a large school, but it is overenrolled.  By standards that the New York City Department of Education itself has acknowledged, DeWitt Clinton bears responsibility for more students than it has the capacity to serve.  A building long known as “The Castle on the Parkway” now stands increasingly in ruin, with everything from window shades to desks broken.  Students come to classrooms that can barely physically accommodate the desks in them, let alone match the recommended class sizes for optimal instruction.  Students come to classes without the materials necessary for success, without materials as basic as textbooks.  Students come to teachers depressed by what they increasingly view as a fight against the Department of Education instead of alongside of it.  If you truly want to see the school and its students succeed, you will give it the resources, the space, and the motivation necessary to do so.   If you truly want to see the school and its students succeed, you will give it the opportunity to do so.

For all of its struggles, DeWitt Clinton continues to provide unrivaled opportunities for its student body.  Fifteen Advanced Placement courses demonstrate the academic rigor that is possible.  Fifty clubs and sports teams illustrate the enriching extracurricular environment.  A new community garden–complete with composting–tugs at the legacy of the school’s involvement in New York City’s very first community garden, adjacent to its former campus at Hell’s Kitchen.

The ivy climbing the walls of DeWitt Clinton’s present structure–it’s third–has long been cleared away, but DeWitt Clinton continues to help graduates climb the socioeconomic ladder by attending Ivy-caliber institutions of higher education.  The MACY Honors and Gifted Program that I graduated from continues to provide a sense of community and investment that is infrequently matched by this city’s schools.  Even while the school received an F on its progress reports, it received a B for college readiness.  With students enrolling at such low achievement levels, it is an astonishing feat that they graduate prepared for college-caliber studies.

This is a school that the U.S. News & World Report has ranked as one of the 96 most outstanding high schools in America.  This is a school whose football team has played against the likes of Columbia University.  This is a school whose graduates have graced halls of fame, held nobel laureateships, and stood at the helm of some of America’s most recognizable corporations.  This is a school of no small significance.

This is a school that graduated the creators of Spiderman and Batman.  This is a school that, today, needs a hero.  Please be that hero.  Please save DeWitt Clinton High School.

Related Links

• The Riverdale Press – “Students, Teachers Stand Up to DOE to Save DeWitt Clinton”
• New York Times – City Room – “DeWitt Clinton’s Remarkable Alumni”
• Notable Alumni of DeWitt Clinton High School (July 2012 Edition)
• DWCHS Witt Seminar – Composting Project

Support the Movement

• Sign the PETITION.
• DeWitt Clinton High School – Twitter
• DeWitt Clinton High School – Facebook
• Stand Up for DeWitt Clinton High School – Facebook

This is an iMovie presentation on the nationalism of Taiwan (the Republic of China) for GOVT 278 Nationalism with Professor Peter Rutland.

The nationalism of Taiwan is complicated by its ever-evolving relationship with mainland China, today presided over by the People’s Republic of China. It’s brief stint under Japanese rule also played a significant role. Today, nationalism in Taiwan is one of the most hotly contested social and political issues and is critical to understanding the polity.

“The Wesleyan Student Assembly (WSA) held an open forum meeting on Oct. 28 to discuss the influx of incidents between University students and non-University students over Homecoming Weekend. They addressed the campus reaction to the assaults and their plans to prevent further events like these from occurring.”

The streets are closed off for a rally in support of Chris Murphy for U.S. Senate, starring key Connecticut Democratic officials and former President Bill Clinton.  Other speakers included now-Representative Elizabeth Esty, Lieutenant Governor Nancy Wyman, Governor Dannel Malloy, and Senator Richard Blumenthal.  Hurricane Sandy is approaching.

“The Wesleyan Student Assembly (WSA) announced last Tuesday, Sept. 25, that it was forming a new subcommittee of the Community Outreach Committee (COCo) called the Committee for Inclusion and Diversity (CID). This committee, which will begin meeting in early October, is slated to work to facilitate discussions about diversity issues at the University through both outreach and organized events.”