The beginning of the next school year will mark Garfield’s second anniversary in the new building, yet construction is not yet complete. Random holes in the walls are still apparent, and the water fountains still run warm on occasion. Contractors can still be seen flitting around the school on a regular basis, and the list of teacher complaints with the building spans nine pages and hundreds of entries.

From the very beginning of the project, Garfield presented several challenges. The historic shell of the building had to be maintained, while the capacity of the school had to be expanded. BLRB architects, the firm in charge of the school’s design, estimated the cost at roughly $87.5 million.

Things did not go as planned, and Principal Ted Howard says that the actual price tag of the school currently sits somewhere around $120 million, a number that has made it very difficult to get things done around the school. Now that Garfield is at least $30 million over budget, every request the school makes involving money must go through a prolonged review process.

“We can’t even get the track equipment we need,” says Howard, “The answer [to the school’s requests] is no unless it’s a safety issue. The promise was that when we left, we would get everything brand new, and you can see that hasn’t happened.”

Exactly why and how the project got so out of control in terms of cost is a source of contention and confusion. Howard cited several rumors, including the rising cost of steel from China, but he didn’t have a definitive answer. One of the reasons for the confusion is the number of parties involved in a project like this.
 
When the Seattle School District decides to renovate a building, Maria Goodloe-Johnson isn’t the one that picks up the hammer. Each part of the process is delegated to a company with expertise in a particular field. For the Garfield project, the architecture was handled by the firm BLRB architects, a group that’s handled the design of several other high schools in the Northwest. Heery International managed the project, and provided onsite representation for the district.

Local company Lease Crutcher Lewis was responsible for the actual construction of the building, which they accomplished by hiring a variety of subcontractors to deal with specialized elements of the building. According to the Washington construction magazine Cornerstone, Lease Crutcher Lewis won the Associated General Contractors of Washington’s highest award for the Garfield project, which celebrated Lewis’ ability “to finish the job on time, with zero lost-time accidents.”
However, Howard says that anything that didn’t get done in terms of construction was Lease’s fault, as many of its contractors left before work was complete. A request for information from Lease Crutcher Lewis went unanswered.

Howard also says that Heery, the company that managed the construction for the district, has claimed that the Seattle School District filed too many last minute change requests to the project, a major factor in the ballooning costs for the project.

An audit is underway to determine who’s responsible for the rising costs, a fact that both Steve Moore, a Heery project manager, and Mr. Howard have confirmed. However, the information dries up here. When Howard inquired about the time the audit might be finished, one district employee told him that she has been asked by her superiors to not share the information.

Questions submitted to Mr. Moore regarding the audit were answered, but he had to submit them to his boss before they could be released. The answers were never returned, and Moore indicated on the phone that this may have been because the answers contained “sensitive topics,” for the district.
 
The physical results of this debacle can be seen throughout the school. Dust from construction still covers the top of the computer lab in the library, and tufts of wires hang out in random places. One afternoon in early spring, I was able to accompany BLRB architect Kurt Cross as he led contractors through the library. They were there to make bids for the job of replacing the skylights in the library, the same ones that have been banging in the wind ever since the Bulldogs moved back in.

“The [replaced] skylights were in the original design phase,” said Mr. Cross, “but they were removed once the building started exceeding the original budget. It’s a cost cutting measure.” The windows have been temporarily covered with plexiglass sheets, which don’t let light in and are incredibly noisy when the wind picks up. Eventually, they must be replaced due to possible leakage and dry rot, problems that had plagued the massive windows since the days of Old Garfield.

Shortly after speaking to Mr. Cross, I received an email from Tom Redman, the Seattle School District Community Liaison for the project. The email indicated that by pushing the project back, the district had been able to save $100,000 off the original cost of $250,000. Hoping to learn more from Mr. Redman, I directed a series of questions to him regarding the school’s construction. He assured me that he would pass them on to the right people.

I first contacted Mr. Redman in early February, and then submitted more questions to him in late March. I was repeatedly assured by Mr. Redman that everyone necessary was working on the questions and that I would get them back for my deadline. On April 29th, I received this telephone message from Mr. Redman:
“I’m sorry, but I’m not going to be able to get you these answers in the time frame you need. It’s just going to take some time. Not only that, we’ve got a priority situation here, with some crisis things going on. We want to do this right, and it’s just not going to be ready in time. I’ll be sure to keep you informed.”

I have yet to hear anything else from Mr. Redman or anyone else from the District.
 
Communication problems have appeared elsewhere in the process. Kris McBride is a Garfield Teacher who chairs the Building Leadership Team, a teacher group whose aim is to facilitate communication between teachers and the district regarding the construction process.

“One of the biggest issues has been a lot of inconsistency about who we’re supposed to deal with,” says Mcbride. The lack of communication “Causes more frustration than the holes in the walls.”

Last year, the team was mostly concerned with major construction issues, while this year has been dedicated to more varied problems. Furniture, for instance, is a major source of frustration. Rooms often don’t have the right furniture, but teachers are not allowed to bring in their own. “Teachers have been told to wait and be patient,” says McBride.

Even larger than this is the key card system that has been put on hold for two years. This system would allow teachers to swipe their way into the building, but as of now, they don’t have any sort of key. According to McBride, these problems did not appear during the construction of Roosevelt High School, another recently renovated Seattle School District high school. “There’s a feeling of not being treated as professionals,” says McBride. When problems arise, “Teachers are the ones that end up dealing with it.”

Ken Courtney wants to put up a bulletin board outside the counseling office to communicate important information to students passing by, but he’s been told that he can’t mount anything on the walls until further notice.

The specific problems that teachers are trying to deal with have been compiled into a nine page list, with 183 individual entries as of March 10, 2010. They range from a bathroom door trapping students due to poorly hung hinges, to electrical plates in the lunchroom kitchen causing a “major tripping hazard.”

“The bottom line,” says McBride, “is that some things aren’t going to get fixed, and we’ve resigned ourselves to that.”
 
With the lack of communication on the School District’s part, it’s difficult to see where the physical future of the school is headed. Hopefully, questions of who exactly is responsible for the budgeting problems can be put aside in the interest of wrapping up a project that was supposed to be done on the first day of school, two years ago.

This renovation was undertaken in the first place to replace a building where ceiling tiles were crumbling and enormous harbor rats could be seen scuttling through the halls.
Says Garfield Graduate Matt Mogan, “In Japanese class freshman year, a ceiling tile fell and smashed on an empty desk. One week later, another tile fell, same spot.” 

It seems a shame to spend so much and work so hard to develop a facility that supports the talents of the Bulldogs, and then leave it unfinished. What stands right now is a perpetual work in progress, a Doghouse that cannot truly be called complete.

A boat load of Garfield artists have been selected to participate in Naramore, an exhibition of work by students from high schools and middle school around the city. It’ll run up through May 15, with free admission on closing day. Anna Dailey, Emma Framson, Zorah Fung, Kate Guenther and Nina Pascucci represent the visual arts division, while Avi Loud, Ian Mckay and Juliette Riley have photography on display. Laura West, Sonia Giebel and Megan Flood entered ceramics pieces, so grab a tweed jacket and a pretentious air and go enjoy some peer-created art.

Power Tripping

The Seattle Youth Commission, the committee that advises the mayor on youth affairs, is accepting applications for the coming year up until May 12. This can provide valuable experience for those hoping to pursue a career in public service, or for those looking to become ruthless, iron-fisted dictators. Either way, the commission allows its members access to the ears of both the mayor and the city council, giving them the greatest amount of power available to the youth of the city. Information is available at www.seattle.gov/neighborhoods/syc.

Phil Harris Memorial

Discovery Channel’s hit show, Deadliest Catch, will be missing one of its most lovable cast members as future seasons proceed. Captain Phil Harris died on February 9, 2010, after complications from a stroke he suffered on January 29. The Discovery Channel will be hosting a public memorial for the gruff, lovable captain this Friday, April 30. Come down to the Smith Cove Cruise terminal by 6:30. The memorial precedes the first day of CatchCon, an annual fan convention for the show.

Crossing the Line

An Idaho teen is currently in big-time dooky for posting a Craigslist ad in which he advertised a four-year-old boy for sale to the tune of $5,000 dollars, according to the Associated Press. Police Lieutenant Corey Coon used internet search warrants to track the 17-year-old to his North Idaho home, where it was discovered that children were not actually available for sale. The teen’s motivation has been attributed to boredom. Lesson learned: life in North Idaho moves slower than a snail on tranquilizers.

Changing of the Guard

It is with a solemn face that I must announce the inevitable. This has been the last installment of “Tall Boy” newsbriefs, the last thrilling twist on a wild, gut-wrenching ride. I’m not one for long, tearful goodbyes, so I’ll just say that it has been an honor and a privilege to debrief the Garfield population on a bi-weekly basis.

The earthquake that shook Haiti and its capitol, Port-Au-Prince, registered as a 7.0 on the Richter scale according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The Richter scale works according to a base-10 logarithmic formula, and each point higher on the scale roughly equates with 31 times more damage than the preceding point. Quakes above 6.0 can be expected to do at least a moderate amount of damage any time they strike a city.

Haiti occupies a volatile space on the edge of two major tectonic plates, the Caribbean Plate and the North American Plate. The January 12 quake occurred as the two fault systems sheared against one another. The powerful shaking would’ve been rough on any city, but Port-Au-Prince is a fairly poor city, lacking in much of the modern infrastructure and building codes that can keep buildings standing and speed the arrival of help during a disaster such as this.

The relief effort after the quake was impressive in terms of the money and manpower dedicated it, but the New York Times called delivering this aid a “logistical nightmare”. Inter-American Development Bank, an organization dedicated to reducing poverty and inequality in the Americas, predicts the cost of re-developing the capitol as running somewhere between $8 and $14 billion. The estimated death toll ranges from 200,000 to 250,000.

Shaking Earth in China

An earthquake of magnitude 6.9 struck on April 13 in the Chinese province of Qinghai. The quake killed upwards of 2,000 people, and left at least 100,000 homeless, according to the New York Times. China’s Communist Party quickly declared the day a national day of mourning, which manifested itself in a variety of ways.

Newspapers from the province were printed in black and white, and all television channels displayed the same newscast of pictures of the tragedy. Videogames were pulled from the internet, and movie theaters, karaoke bars and nightclubs were forced to remain closed for 24 hours.

The relief effort has been difficult because the quake hit hardest in an area 13,000 feet above sea level. Aid has been distributed to both native Tibetans in the area and the Han, the dominant ethnic group in China, but journalists have been told to concentrate not on Tibetan Monks who have been volunteering in the relief effort, but on the Chinese soldiers and aid workers who were sent by the government.

Eyjafjallajokull Erupts

The Icelandic volcano, whose name means “island-mountain glacier,” began erupting in March, but did not start causing serious problems until April 14. On this date, steam plumes from melting glacial ice threw ash from the explosion high into the sky, creating a giant ash cloud that spread up to 35,000 feet in the air. The ash cloud, carried by the wind, started spreading south and east over much of Europe.

The biggest problem presented by the ash cloud is that of the damage mineral ash particles can do to jet engines. Among other things, they can erode metal and clog cooling and intake systems. This meant that it was considered unsafe to let planes fly through. By April 16, airspace in Britain, Scotland and much of Northern Europe had been closed, grounding all scheduled flights in and out of these areas.

These closures left thousands of passengers stranded, forced to wait out the closures or find alternative routes home. The BBC estimates that London lost over £100 million pounds in tourist revenue, which could be rough after the world-wide economic downturn of the previous couple of years.

Day to day, it can be easy to forget that the world is still shifting under us. Tragic events like these serve as startling reminders that the earth still flexes its muscles once in a while.

Slicing and Dicing
A Monday report on NPR indicated that the Washington State Legislature just passed a vote that will cut millions from public education, both at the K-12 level and at the university level. These cuts will affect pretty much everyone at Garfield, even those graduating this year, as this may result in state universities raising tuition yet again. At the K-12 level, roughly $120 million will be cut from the budget. The measure is supposed to help close the $2.8 billion gap that Washington State’s budget is currently experiencing.

New Turf
Central District News announced that the turf that’s been installed on the lower Garfield fields should be ready to play on within the next week or two. It will serve as the new home field for Garfield’s baseball squad, as well as the venue for the local T-Ball league. In related news, the Garfield squad has announced plans to join the aforementioned T-Ball league, hoping to improve its mediocre 4–6 record.

Orchestral Shenanigans
The Garfield Orchestra will be holding its annual Pops concert at 7:30 in the evening on April 22. They’ll be playing pop tunes like the scores from Star Wars and Pirates of the Caribbean. Senior Orchestra member Riley Mulherkar said that the pops concert gives him and his fellow musicians a chance to showcase the lighter side of their music. Mulherkar added, “Oh, sure, I’d rather be playing Mahler, but not everyone can connect with that. I feel it’s my humble duty as a musician to make our pieces as accessible to the general public as possible.”

Capitalize on Earth Day
Garfield’s offering a host of earth day activities this year, ranging from a cake walk to a watermelon eating contest. These are all cute and fun, but they don’t offer a serious return on your time investment. However, Wednesday’s activity of fern planting offers a quick and free way to start your very own frond farm. Fern farming was named the hottest emerging agricultural field in 2009, so it would be advisable to hop on this trend now before the market becomes saturated with excess foliage.

Helene Martin: It was really an accident. My dad’s an electrical engineer, and we had computers around the house for as long as I can remember.  Starting when I was 10 years old, he’d say, “Hey! You have small hands, why don’t you come help me?” I had no idea what I was looking at, but it was very exciting to me, and I started messing around. At that point, we were still using Windows 95, and I was changing things to make them pink. I never really thought that it was strange that I was into this.
 

SD: Kind of following in your dad’s footsteps, then?

HM: Yeah, that and I grew up in Palo Alto, in Silicon Valley. [Technology] was so prevalent, so many folks doing so many different things around the area. We had a lot of friends who were involved with technology in different ways, professors and engineers. I was really bathing in it. In high school, I did First Robotics, where you build big robots and then have them compete in sort of sports-like challenges. I acted as programmer, web designer, and systems administrator for my team, and then became the team leader in my last year. At my high school, we weren’t very good at sports, but we were good at robotics. It wasn’t like we were the dorky kids in the basement. We had a shop, our own huge space and just did our thing. It was neat.
 

SD: Is Garfield your first teaching job?

HM: Yes and no. I was a teaching assistant at UW for three years, and I co-taught an introductory programming course during my last year. Garfield’s my first high school teaching gig.
 

SD: A year in, how has it been?

HM: It’s a trip, for sure. I’ve been overwhelmed and incredibly busy, but also thrilled to have students that are so smart and curious. They stump me all the time. It’s been a really good year. They say that your first year of teaching can kill you, and I only feel that about 50 percent of the time, so that’s not bad. I’ve got three classes that are pretty hardcore programming courses, and the students are doing really well. My introductory courses are also coming up with really cool projects, and to me, that’s very motivating. But let me flip the question, what have you heard about my classes?
 

SD: Nothing but good things. The tech classes I remember from freshman year involved more sleeping than computers.

HM: I’m too loud to let people sleep! But seriously, that’s encouraging. It’s a challenge to keep everyone into it, but that’s been very important to me. If I’m going to be here and just teach ten students, there’s no point in me wasting everyone else’s time.
 

SD: Where do you see the program heading in future years?

HM: Okay, word vomit time. Next year, we’ll have more sections of the AP classes, which is exciting because it means we’ll have a strong base of students who know how to program. My hope is that once students have a kind of programming tool box, we can get them involved in projects in the community, to do things that are actually useful. I really do hope that we can bring in an engineering program, more mechanical and electrical stuff. That would be a nice segue into a robotics team.
 

SD: What kind of computer do you have at home?

HM: The facetious answer would be that I have tons of computers at home, in my alarm clock, in my kitchen, everywhere! But no, I have a black Macbook. I use my cellphone more than my laptop anyway; it’s an Android G1.
 

SD: Can you recommend resources for people interested in these type of subjects, but who don’t have room in their schedules for the class?

HM: As far as external resources, I would recommend staring on GarfieldCS.com. I try to put up every set of lecture notes I use, and we don’t use a textbook, so it works as standalone material. There are also pretty good tutorials available online, just Google what you’re looking for. Downloading open source software and messing around with it on your own is helpful. That’s how I learned.
 

SD: Anything that your students might be surprised to learn about you?

HM: I don’t think so; I’m pretty open. I know two other languages; my first language is French and I speak Spanish pretty well. I’m also French-Canadian, but that mostly just gets me abuse. I ride a scooter, so don’t run me over! If you hit me, I’ll give you an F. Oh! The guy who threw the last shot in the Butler game, Gordon Hayward, is a computer engineering major, and Avery Jukes is a mechanical engineering major. The Butler team’s phenomenal.
 

SD: How do you see students who don’t go into computer science applying what they’ve learned?

HM: Not everyone needs to be a programmer. The problem solving skills you learn are much more broadly relevant. You get a problem statement, you break it down, and then you work to solve every little bit of that puzzle. If you go into business, that involves figuring out efficient processes, allocating jobs to whoever can do it best. There’s a lot of scientific thinking, it’s the same kind of problem solving.
 

SD: Any other thoughts for students?

HM: Can I preach? Get up on my soapbox?
 

SD: Absolutely.

HM: Alright! Soapbox moment. High school is the time to take random, challenging classes, and I’d encourage students to try things out. Take classes in every subject, and find out what’s actually interesting to you.  

I’m Not Sick But I’m Not Well — Lit
Occasionally, I like to take my pants off and run around the house with this on full blast. Lit’s nutty lyrics and driving guitar give this song a frantic, nervous edge. Let this anthem of mental breakdown carry you off on your own miniature crazy binge.

Drunken Lullabies — Flogging Molly
High up on my bucket list is to belt out this raucous Celtic punk anthem with plastered Irishmen in a dingy Dublin pub. Flogging Molly pulls together traditional Irish instruments like the uillean pipes and the bodhran to create aggressive music that has a powerful sense of history behind it, though the band only goes as far back as 1993.

Dice of Life – Andre Nickatina
Andre Nickatina and I stopped getting along after I heard the line “My name is Nicky, but you can call me Dre,” for the hundredth time. He finally won me back with this swaggering, playful ballad. It’s essentially a four minute discourse on why his life is cooler than your life, set over a hypnotizing string and snare beat.

Gritz — RZA ft. Allah Real and Masta Killa
A stripped down guitar beat opens and quickly gives way to Allah Real’s soaring, gritty vocals. RZA and Masta Killa both turn in powerful verses centered around poverty-ridden childhoods and the “Hot pot of grits that kept my family from starving.”

Office Musik (Clockwork Edit)- Dwight K. Schrute vs. Lil Wayne
One of the greatest things about NBC’s “The Office” is its intensley catchy theme song. On this mashup, some presumably brilliant individual named Clockwork took the riffs from the theme and added a little snare and a little bass, then threw Lil Wayne verses over the whole thing. The result is an infinitely replayable mash up and pleasing images of Weezy swaggering through the Scranton, Pennsylvania branch.

Wavin’ Flag– K’naan
This cut had a brief radio run last year, so hopefully it has already reached the majority of the Garfield population. I don’t know how to classify it. It’s not reggae, it’s not rock, and there’s too much soaring musical layering to call it hip-hop. It’s some kind of super-genre, and it will inspire you to go do great things. God, I jock this song so hard.

The passing of Obama’s Health Care Reform bill made headlines this past Monday, passing by a margin of only seven votes. Amongst other things, this historic bill provides for the federal government to subsidize healthcare according to a family’s needs, and an insurance mandate that requires everyone to be insured or pay a fine. News Briefs correspondent Max David reported being “thrilled that I can finally become a professional pork rind-eater without having to worry about footing my entire insurance bill.”

Baseball Ascendant

Every fourteen years, Cicadas emerge from underground for one glorious season of mating and productivity. In a similar cycle, the Garfield Boys Baseball team has emerged from a murky history of mediocre seasons to sit atop a current 3–0 record. Rumor has it that Frankie “Harsh Judger of Other Sports Teams” Pavia is back on the mound after a season hiatus, so come out and support this up and coming team, or just heckle Pavia for all that nasty stuff he wrote about your March Madness team.

Dome Life

Most years, classes beef with administration over what can go on the class t-shirt. The negotiations usually begin with something fairly inappropriate and end up fairly benign after the powers that be demand them to be toned down. At Holy Names Academy, however, a glitch in the system has resulted in tee shirts emblazoned with the slogan, “Dome Life.” Holy Names senior Abby Chin-Martin said definitively, “I can’t wear it in public.”

Monkey Thieves

According to the St. Petersburg Times, a wild monkey has been running amok in the Tampa Bay, Florida area for more than a year now. All residents have been able to catch are brief glimpses. The article on the monkey’s most recent sighting indicates that after he had departed, “Some grapefruits were missing.” Clearly, this little simian is harvesting resources for the good of oppressed monkey kind everywhere, stealing from the rich and giving to the needy. He’s the Robin Hood hero they so desperately need. God speed, little fella, god speed.

Bathroom Whispers

As I was sitting on the john in the boy’s room on the second floor during lunch the other day, I heard a faint roar. I had difficulty tracing the sound, but finally realized that it was coming out of the toilet paper dispenser. Additional trips to this stall have confirmed that you can hear what’s going on in the lunch room through the wall via the dispenser. It’s a creepy yet entertaining way to while away the time spent on the porcelain thrown.

The following morning, environmental advocate Philippe Cousteau spoke to a group of Garfield students. Cousteau, besides stealing women’s hearts and plugging the Discovery channel a lot, delivered a message of environmental urgency. He played a video of a decaying reef, and emphasized how horrified his grandfather would be upon seeing the oceans of today.

After hearing these two speakers, I should’ve been motivated to go out and rescue infant polar bears or commit some other act of environmental heroism. Instead, I felt uncomfortable and mildly frightened for only about ten minutes afterwards, and from the look of it, the crowds around me experienced similarly brief moments of angst. Despite their charisma, despite the evidence they presented, something kept Diamond’s and Cousteau’s talks from packing the punch they should’ve delivered.

It could be that I’m wrong and that every other person who heard these two men speak is currently outside, aggressively tree-hugging and rallying in the streets. However, it’s far more likely that the audiences failed to connect with the speakers because of the fear their messages carried.

Diamond wanted his audience to fear mankind’s destructive power and to fear our society’s approaching end, while Cousteau wanted us to fear the loss of our world’s oceans. It’s true that these topics are scary and that they do need to be addressed, but trying to broadcast just how scary they are is an ineffective way to get people springing into action. When people get scared, they don’t act rationally, they don’t sit down and think. For the most part, they hide under the bed until the problem goes away.

It seems that most of the reports on the environment that I’ve seen over the last ten years or so have been delivered in this same, fear-plagued manner. The ice caps are melting! There’s a hole in the ozone layer! Cute things are dying; humans are evil; booga-booga-booga. Thus far, not a lot seems to have changed on any of these apparently planet-threatening topics. It’s time for a new approach, one where messages of fear and despair are replaced with recommendations that can give people a way to help alleviate the problems the planet faces.
Unfortunately, getting news organizations and environmentalists to transition from using scare tactics to providing helpful information isn’t something that’s going to happen on its own. Painting oneself green and assaulting the local newsoom is one option, but there are some milder alternatives.

Call King-5 or Komo-4 and ask them to offer segments on ways people can help alleviate environmental problems within their communities. Write a letter to the Seattle City Council or to Mayor Mike McGinn, the particular topic isn’t important. The important part is identifying some environmental concern that matters to you, and then bothering important people about it.

The shift won’t happen overnight, and it won’t happen unless someone tells the politicians, the media and the environmentalists themselves what they’re doing wrong. That someone ought to be all of us.

Born under the Nickels Administration as the Mayor’s Youth Council, the group was established in order to advise the mayor on a variety of topics related to youth concerns, including juvenile delinquency, law enforcement and the effectiveness of programs aimed at Seattle youth. Under the new mayor of Seattle Mike McGinn, the program has been renamed the Seattle Youth Commission, although its role as a youth advocacy group in city government is still fundamentally the same. It’s comprised of 25 members from around the city, five each from Ballard, Central, Southwest, Northeast and Southeast Seattle.

The commission gathers the material for their mayoral sessions from community meetings, held once a year in each of the five areas its members are drawn from. The annual Central District meeting was held just before winter break, and it was run in part by Abby Chin-Martin, a senior at Holy Names Academy in Capitol Hill. Chin-Martin joined the Commission a year ago.

“I remember being in class and hearing a guy ask, ‘How can the government represent us if we don’t vote?’” she says. Inspired, she decided to apply to the Council. Roughly 50 students apply each year, a process which involves answering a 10 question application, getting two adult recommendations and undergoing multiple interviews.

The meeting began with introductions, promises of pizza and a few ice breakers. After about 15 minutes of pleasantries, two-year Commission veteran Zabia Colovos finished up and got to the point, saying “Now, you guys tell us what you’re worried about, and we’ll talk to the mayor.”

Note cards were distributed, and attendees were instructed to list their top youth concern in the City of Seattle. The three most popular concerns, gang violence, police brutality and racism, were put up on a piece of posterboard, and the crowd of about 40 split up depending on which topic interested them most.

After 20 minutes of discussion, everyone came back together and each group presented possible solutions to their group’s problem. The police group’s findings, focusing on more community oversight, elicited a positive audience response. The gang violence group advocated for better education on gangs in schools, while the racism group didn’t have a solution, concluding that race relations were tense but deeply rooted. After a thank you by the Commission members, the meeting adjourned.

After these community meetings, the Commission will meet, and eventually “They’ll get to present policy recommendations to both the mayor and the city council,” according to Jenny Frankl, a program coordinator. This will be the first year that the Commission gets to present to both the council and the mayor, lending them legislative and executive influence in the city’s policy making process.

As she stacked chairs, Colovos said that it had been “a pretty typical meeting.” The 40 or so attendees represented a solid cross-section of both public and private schools in central Seattle. Three boys had come from Washington Middle School because of a flyer they had seen advertising free pizza, along with girls from Holy Names, a few boys from Lakeside, several from Garfield, a couple kids from Nova, and a handful of individuals who had graduated or who had dropped out.

The Seattle Youth Commission meets at least once a month to hold their committee meetings and draft policy proposals, and they hold their community meetings annually.

Frankl said that “the council meetings are a lot different from these [community meeting].” The mood is more business like, with the commission focused on writing policy proposals that have a legitimate shot at affecting city policy. When pressed for past commission successes, the members running the meeting explained that because most only spend a year or two on the commission, it’s difficult to chart how successful the commission had been in the past. It’s a sizeable time commitment, but Chin-Martin says,

“By being a part of this commission, it’s helped me believe that I can make a direct difference in the community.”

A list of current Commission members, information about applications and agendas for past meetings can all be found at seattle.gov/neighborhoods/syc/.

Elements of the New Year’s resolution can be found as far back as the Roman Empire. They named the first month of the year after the god Janus, who had a face looking backwards and another facing forwards, symbolizing retrospection and expectation.

Most New Year’s resolutions are focused on improving the quality of one’s life. Yet a 2007 study by Quirkology.com showed that only 52 percent of goal-makers were confident that they would accomplish theirs, and only 12 percent actually accomplished it by the end of the year. A cynic would use this as proof of people’s weakness and lack of determination, but as an eternal optimist, I like to think that most people are just horrible at writing New Year’s resolutions.

To begin crafting a killer resolution, an inspiring setting is critical. The first step for an aspiring goal-setter is to pack a backpack with a little food, some parchment and a quill. They should then bundle up in a down jacket, select a walking stick from a nearby park, and begin the journey of resolution. After several days or weeks of sojourning, civilization falls away, and the lone wanderer will emerge into the lush Northwest backcountry. Mother Nature will hail him or her with a vista of noble trees, illustrious mountains, and roaring rivers. Seated upon a boulder amongst ferns and hanging moss, the writer can now set about crafting their resolution.

The beginning of the resolution sets the tone, so make sure it opens strong. “I resolve …” is okay, but remember, British soldiers used to sit around before colonial battles saying, “I resolve to win,” and look where it got them. Use something like “I decree …” or “With Morticus as my witness, I shall …” for added oomph.

Unquestionably, the most difficult part of the resolution now confronts the scribe: to what cause does he or she swear allegiance? The University of Maryland Medical Center suggests focusing on writing realistic goals that can be broken down into small steps, but no one has ever been remembered because they took things one step at a time and kept things realistic. Without a certain splash of bravado, a New Year’s resolution will simply blend in with the crowd.

The best way to add this flourish is to take an average goal and make it extraordinary. Resolving to lose weight rates high on the US government’s list of top American resolutions. Don’t maintain the status quo; resolve to become the first human being to reach a mass of absolute zero, rendering travel at the speed of light possible. Promising to get fit also appears on the list, while learning to bench press boxcars loaded with cattle does not. Good resolutions don’t just improve, they immortalize.

From now until the end of next year, those words are law, creed and covenant. At all costs, the resolution must be fulfilled. If necessary, extra motivation can be found by writing out a list of painful and repugnant consequences to be inflicted in the case of failure.

In order to complete the determined task, set up a timetable to stay on track. Using the boxcar example, one should be benching senior Nick Thompson by mid January, and moving onto pianos (first upright, then grand) by late March. If the goal is light speed travel, eating anything but dust and liquid hydrogen after February 15 will add far too much weight.

This will not be an easy mission. If a resolution gets written and followed correctly, it should prove the most grueling, punishing experience the writer has ever experienced. Blood, sweat and tears should all be shed in its pursuit. When December 31, 2010 rolls around, those who have championed their goals will stand high in the eyes of humanity. So let this be a year of greatness, of courage, of success. Let this be a year of resolution.