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Category Archives: 12th Season (2024-2025)
Head Monitors Chapel Talk Spotlight: Jared Vilcina Brown
By Jared Vilcina Brown, Class of 2025
Editor’s Note: Chapel talks, given primarily by VI Formers and community adults, are a central part of our all-school chapel services held twice a week. They can be informative, personal, thought-provoking, and even constructively critical—but they always aim to strengthen and inspire our community. Chapel presentations aren’t limited to speeches; they can include music, drama, dance, and other creative performances. They offer a meaningful “pause” from our busy routines—a chance to reflect, learn something new about a person or issue in our community, and appreciate the talents and passions of others. At their core, chapel talks help us live more thoughtfully, connect more deeply, and recognize the many blessings within our St. Mark’s community.
Click HERE to view the recording of the talk
A Mirage of a Stronger Body Presented by Fitness Influencers: How Anabolic Steroids Have Become a Major Health Issue for Young Adolescents
By Ikon Kim, Vth Form
Editor’s Note: This was winning submission for the Harvard International Review Writing Competition, earning a Gold Medal (Top 3% of all submitted articles).
In a world of rapid change, information is more important to our daily lives than ever before. Platforms like TikTok and Instagram have become the base ground for exchanging knowledge, making it critical to discern facts from mere fabrications or half-truths. Creators intentionally spread misinformation for fame and financial gain, without taking responsibility for those most under their influence—teenagers. Despite the amount of time young people spend using social media, many lack the skills and experience to differentiate facts from falsehoods. A survey shows that teens were more likely to agree with conspiracy theories than adults; teens who spend more time on social media are even more gullible. Fitness influencers exploit this vulnerability through comparison culture, promoting the use of Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs) to make money. They show only one side of the drugs, while hiding or spreading misinformation about the dangerous side effects. Misinformation about PEDs in the digital age is particularly dangerous for adolescents, whose emotional vulnerability leaves them susceptible to falling prey to body dysmorphia—and the promise of a better body through PEDs.
Click HERE to read more.
Love Conquers All
By Sherry Mi, Class of 2026
Description: Essay for the Religion, Art, and Social Change class in Spring 2024, an art analysis on “Presentation of the Portrait of Marie de’ Medici” by Peter Paul Rubens (won a Silver Key in the 24-25 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards)
Peter Paul Rubens, Presentation of the Portrait of Marie de’ Medici, 1621-1625.
Despite the entrenched patriarchal order in 17th-century France, Marie de’ Medici, a Florentine noblewoman and Queen to King Henri IV, emerged as an influential political leader (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica). She commissioned Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens to illustrate her life and accomplishments, utilizing the grandeur of 24 large-scale paintings to advocate for her leadership and political power. She later displayed the painting cycle in the Luxembourg Palace to reinforce her authority (Hartt). In the fourth painting of the cycle, The Presentation of the Portrait of Marie de’ Medici, Rubens retrospects Marie’s love relationship with Henri IV to glorify their union. Using Baroque artistic conventions of intense dynamism, allegorical images, and earthly motifs, Rubens ultimately justifies her rise to power.
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Is God Really Dead in Existentialist Belief?
By Caitlin Bould, Class of 2026
Editor’s Note: Essay on Albert Camus’ The Stranger (awarded a Scholastic Gold Key)
In The Outsider, by Albert Camus, the character of Meursault represents a personification of Camus’s own existential beliefs and is amoral at his core. Existentialist belief states clearly that “God is dead” and “life is ruled by chance,” asserting that it is trivial to observe an organized religion (Meyer). Some key examples of Existentialist Thought evident in the book include Universal Chaos, existing “without purpose or destiny,” and that “humankind can only find meaning in life through commitment (to a task or to a personal relationship)” (Meyer). Although Meursault is ostensibly an existentialist, his actions are continuously dictated by some all-consuming power rooted in religious values. The novel is rich in biblical allusions concerning Meursault and other characters. While morality is not always based on Christianity, it is a fundamental concept of faith. Meursault’s amoral belief of universal rationality contrasts the Christian beliefs represented in The Outsider as his ultimate fate.
To continue reading, click HERE for the full text
On the Topic of Trusting Moral Intuitions: An Assessment Using Existentialism
By Jeff Wang, Class of 2026
Editor’s Note: Essay written for the John Locke Essay Competition Philosophy Category (Awarded Very High Commendation)
All humans possess two types of intuition. Foremost, there are instinctive intuitions. These include tendencies like seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. They are present at birth and developed out of the evolutionary need for survival. The other type of intuition is learned. These are intuitions that individuals develop later in life as a result of their experiences. Knowing that moral intuitions belong to this second group of honed behavior raises the question of whether there exists merit in trusting them, given the subjectivity of their nature. Such an inquiry has generated much debate in philosophy, with proponents arguing for the authenticity of decisions made in this manner, and critics questioning the underlying biases and reliability of such a system. Amongst the many theses and dissertations surrounding this topic, existentialism provides a compelling answer to this question, contending that moral intuitions are only dependable in familiar circumstances, but that we should still seek to implement it in our daily
lives.
To continue reading, click HERE for a full PDF version
Don’t Let the Bastards Grind You Down: To Oppose or Obey
By Lyla Cass, Class of 2026
Description: Essay for Dr. Barnes’s VF English assignment on The Handmaid’s Tale—an analysis of the use of a Latin phrase in the novel.
Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale represents the ways in which language forms identity, ideas, thoughts, and knowledge. The Handmaid’s Tale is a story told in the first person through the narrator Offred, which takes place in the future of a dystopian society in the U.S. The totalitarian regime, known as Gilead, places laws upon all women, stripping them of their identity and taking away their human rights. Women are not allowed to have possessions, jobs, or human rights. There is a hierarchy within Gilead, where men are distinguished as the highest position and infertile women at the bottom. It has constructed an atmosphere of fear, violence, and ambiguity by implementing harsh laws that come with severe punishments if not respected. Offred lives in a mimic household, where she is the Handmaid (a fertile woman), and the patriarch of the house is known as the Commander. Handmaids are not allowed to read or write, and their self-expression is restricted to entirely red clothing, except for their white wings. Red resembles their fertility, the color of menstrual blood. Deprivation of language and self-expression causes the Handmaid’s identities to be reduced to wombs dressed in red. In the society of Gilead, language is used against the oppressed women to further isolate them from society. Communication is limited and often not allowed between Handmaids; instead, language is used to manipulate. In Gilead, women are forced to fit into designated roles that are determined by their fertility. Their lives are primarily structured by a patriarchal society to maintain authority and prevent women from practicing any form of self-expression. When language is restricted, it impacts the self-perception of the Handmaids, their communication, self-identity, and community; the loss impacts the individual woman and the women as a whole. Through ancient languages, such as Latin, knowledge is transferred from the old world to modern life. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood implements a Latin phrase as a choice of rebellion against the Gileadian society or the option to submit to the patriarchal society.
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Do Not Impose Moral Judgments on Gilead: A Metafictional Critique of Historical Scholarship
By Ian Cho, Class of 2026
Editors Notes: Essay for Dr. Barnes’s VF English assignment on the Handmaid’s Tale.
Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is a fictional diary of a woman named Offred who is subject to institutional rape and has the sole purpose of reproducing under a totalitarian government called Gilead, where women are entirely stripped of rights. The speculative novel contains an Epilogue called “The Historical Notes” that deliberately draws attention to how scholars facilitate discourse about societies throughout history by framing Gilead society from the perspective of scholars 200 years after the regime. “The Historical Notes” is written as a transcript of a lecture by Professor Pieixoto, a renowned professor of Gileadean Studies, during the Twelfth Symposium on Gileadean Studies. Atwood uses metafiction to critique the danger of the complete avoidance of presentism and the objective nature of historical scholarship, as it affects contemporary society’s perception of morality and undermines the suffering of individuals throughout history.
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Spiraling into Control: Hitchcock’s Vertigo and Cold War Anxieties
By Jolin Yu, Class of 2025
Editors Note: Final research essay for VI Form English elective, “Cold War, Cool Culture,” taught by Mr. Eslick on Alfred Hitchcock’s film, Vertigo.
Introduction
Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo opens with a chase: a San Francisco police detective, Scottie
Ferguson, clings to a rooftop as he watches in horror his partner plunges to his death below. This scene embodies the essence of the film—its obsession with heights and falls, with control and instability, with the fragility of perception. Much like Scottie’s dizzying descent into a maelstrom of psychological and emotional turmoil, 1950s America sat on a precipice. At the height of Cold War paranoia, cultural anxieties surrounding control, conformity, and identity reverberated across all levels of society. Hitchcock’s 1958 masterpiece offers a profound critique of these anxieties, using its protagonist’s destructive obsession to mirror the era’s fear of instability and its relentless pursuit of ideals unattainable.
This paper argues that Vertigo critiques patriarchal control and societal constructs of identity and power, using Scottie’s obsessive recreation of Madeleine as an allegory for Cold War anxieties. Through its subversion of traditional gender dynamics, disorienting cinematography, and narrative structure, Hitchcock’s masterpiece exposes the fragility of male fantasies and the human cost of cultural repression. By situating the film within its historical and psychological context, this analysis reveals Vertigo as a layered critique of 1950s societal norms and their enduring implications.
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