Edition Five SRO

By: Arley Kekic

As the new Year 12 cohort is ushered into the bright lights, with events such as full school assemblies being scheduled only days after their induction into Year 12, we have been introduced to our new house leaders.

Each of the 8 houses, which are, Fletcher, Johnstone, Kelynack, Le Couteur, Manton, Metcalfe, Moulton and Prescott, have one elected house prefect as well as 2 deputy prefects.

These house leaders control house meetings, house activities and house charities as well as creating new activities for their fellow house mates to enjoy.

There is also another miscellaneous house which does not compete with the other houses in house events, it is the boarding house. The boarding house has 1 house prefect as well as 4 deputy prefects, unlike the usual 2.

The boarding house consists entirely of boarding staff and student boarders, these boarders are also members of the other 8 houses as well as the boarding house.

To introduce these new house leaders, the school conducted an assembly which started at an unusual time. This assembly started in period 1 and ended at the start of period 2. This altered the period times throughout the day immensely.

Boys were complaining all day about the ruckus this assembly had caused, with one boy in Year 7 even stating, ‘this assembly has completely thrown me off guard, I have been late to nearly every class today because of it.’

The new house leaders in Fletcher have wasted no time since their induction as house leaders, they have implemented new vertical house activities on every second Friday as well as house game shows in house meetings.

It seems to be a packed yet entertaining year not only in Fletcher but around the school with these new and enthusiastic house and school leaders.

-Correspondent
Edward Dam

Today at lunchtime, all the brass players from Newington’s music program congregated in the Music Practice Hall to rehearse for their biggest event of the
year.

Exclusive details obtained by Correspondent Edward Dam indicate that the
musicians were practicing the Sonata XIII, to be played in an opening fanfare on Prize Giving Day.
The Brass Faculty will be split into three choirs strategically deployed
around the back of the Sydney Town Hall, the venue for the annual event.
“It’s going to sound and look amazing!”, an email sent out to the College’s
musicians professed.

The fanfare, written by Renaissance composer Giovanni Gabrieli in 1615,
is about two and a half minutes long, and features a majestic, rousing melody and two tempo changes. It is in a b-flat major key signature and features a time signature that changes between 4/4 and 3/4.

A key signature is a set of sharps, flats and naturals notated on the music
staff. The time signature is a measure of how many beats should be contained in each bar.
“This music is really rousing”, said one musician. “It’s gonna be so epic
we finally play it!”

“Can’t wait to perform”, another exclaimed.

This year, the Brass Faculty is aiming for perfection, as they are performing
in front of all the College’s students and staff, as well as the many parents and special guests in attendance. Players are expected to learn their parts perfectly by the next practice session, so they can have a proper run-through.

The Music Department, however, has not given any indication as to when that
next practice session will be. It will be on the participants to be ready for their next rehearsal.

By Christos Fotopoulos

The time has come once more for the Student Representative Council to be decided on, and tensions are high for the candidates, especially for the boys in year nine. The boys from all years were notified on Wednesday that if they wanted to run as a candidate for the SRC, they were to let their housemaster know. their respective housemasters would then put the student’s name forward in order to become a candidate.

From here, the boys that applied to run for the SRC would usually have to present themselves to their year group during the year group meeting on Thursday and explain to them why they’d be the correct choice to vote onto the team. For year nine however, this did not happen as there wasn’t enough time in the year meeting due to more pressing matters being raised, including service learning, exchange opportunities and career choices in the future.

Nevertheless, even though the students didn’t get to hear from any of the candidates, the voting was still opened after the meeting in the form of an email with a link attached. Using the link, the boys were able to vote on their top three preferences with number one being their most prefered and number three their least prefered. The boys were also asked in the email to submit their forms by friday afternoon. There was no mention of when the results of the vote would be made public.

There was an air of competitiveness between the candidates throughout the last week, with all of the boys trying to persuade their peers to vote for them, and this will only continue until the results are finally released and the two SRC representatives are chosen. Until then, all the boys can do is wait until that day.

On Saturday the 21^st of October, Newington was the host of yet another improvised comedy night. Special Olympics, a foundation that supports professional sportspeople with intellectual disabilities, set the night up as a fundraiser, and it was an absolute success.

The first half of the show featured theatresports legends Jon Williams (host of various impro competitions), Lisa Ricketts, Will Erimya (SBP candidate 2016) and Steve Lynch They played a variety of short games, and brought the audience down onstage to help out. This included Sound FX, where the audience had to provide sound effects for the actors on stage. Hilarity ensued when the audience would forget to make a sound, which resulted in a plane crash due to the fact that the propeller wasn’t making noise.

Another game played was Expert Double Figures, which focused on an eccentric coach on who taught dogs how to play beach volleyball. The catch – members from the audience would need to provide arms for the actors. Hilarity ensued when they had to follow the actors around on stage as they gave a demonstration of the obscure sport in action.

The second half of the show called upon various other impro stars, including Old Boy and Student Body President Candidate Reuben Ward, to star in an episode of a soap opera. The plot, which revolved around Olympians injecting themselves with performance-enhancing cheese, left the audience in hysterics. Ward starred as Hans Free-throw, Australia’s best handball player, Williams starred as Ivan Draco, a Russian weightlifter, Erimya was a chef who cooked up cheese and would often forget his Italian accent, and that’s just a few of the zany characters who were on display. 

It’s funny how the script for a show literally made up on the spot can be so good. I’d like to finish this with what I consider to be the best line of the night, which, in my opinion, captures the entirety of Australian culture in three lines.

Jon: Here’s your parachute.

Will: Oh, I won’t be using one.

Jon: I like your thinking mate, have a beer.