Mannikin faculty advisors and Dean of Student Life Dr. Susan Delanty modified the 87 Senior Poll categories distributed to students today, eliminating 36 of the originally proposed questions, Mannikin Editors-in-Chief Allie Blitz (12) and Stephanie Moss (12) said.

“The categories removed were ones that we thought were going to be hurtful to students,” Delanty said in a phone interview. “We went through 123 categories; there were so many, some had to be cut.”

The eight SBP candidate pairs began their campaigns with speeches to the 8th grade yesterday morning. Many candidates talked about what the students could expect moving into the Upper Division, from body changes to an inactive SBP. SBP candidate Michael Davis (11) specifically spoke against the latter, saying that he would “move against the role of the SBP being a figure headed idiot who promises everything and accomplishes nothing by cooperating with the administration.”

Overall, candidates expressed general excitement for the race. “I’m nervous, everyone’s nervous, you have to give a speech in front of the whole school, but I’m really excited, I think it’ll be really fun to see how everything plays out, but I’m not really nervous,” SBVP candidate Katie Cacouris (11) said.

Historian James Oakes and playwright Tony Kushner visited Barry Bienstock’s Advanced Placement United States History class two weeks ago, bringing their historical and creative perspectives to the lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, as well as insight into the Civil War period.

The two, each “historians in their own right,” met minutes before the class began and had an open conversation with each other and attendees, Bienstock said.

“As you may have heard, your Prom this year will be at Pier 60,” Dean of Student Life Dr. Susan Delanty wrote in a grade-wide email to the senior class this past Wednesday, officially informing students of the Senior Prom’s change in venue from The Pierre, where the event has been held for at least the past 18 years.

Delanty decided to notify the senior class of the prom’s new location after having heard of an “eruption” among students on Friday, February 19th, when “somebody found out it wasn’t going to be at The Pierre and people started joining the bandwagon,” and having seen the results of a poll SBP Spencer Penn (12) and SBVP Dan Shapiro (12) sent to the senior class on Saturday, February 20th. The poll asked students, “If you could choose the location for the Senior Prom, where would it be?”

The third annual Service-Learning Day will comprise a mix of activities and beautification projects geared toward improving the community, representatives from community groups and Service Learning team members said.

Planned for May 15, Service- Learning Day is an event in which different community groups come together to better the community by “connecting action and engagement to education,” according to Director of the Center for Community Values and Action Jeremy Leeds ’72.

Fewer print copies of The New York Times have been provided to students and faculty this year after the Times stopped donating free copies to the school in the fall, Stephanie Doba, who runs the Times’ program which handles the donations, said.

After questioning about the program’s cutbacks by a Record reporter, Doba said she “will be able to make a classroom subscription available to your school once again, through May 28, 2010,” provided the school faxes a letter of consent signed by a faculty sponsor. Upper Division Head Dr. David Schiller said he supported the proposal.

While the bookstore next to the cafeteria has been closed for the past two and a half weeks, it will reopen immediately after spring break under new management, Head of School Dr. Tom Kelly said.

For the past year and a half, Follett Corporation, a retail distributor of educational materials and apparel, has run the bookstore. The corporation decided to end its business with the school because “its current economic standing forced it to make cuts, and Horace Mann was its smallest venture and thus the least complicated to withdraw from,” Kelly said.

The Real Alice in Wonderland, a pictorial biography written by Gabby Rubin (12) and her mother, C.M. Rubin P’10, ’13, was published this week about their ancestor Alice Liddell, the woman who was the inspiration for Lewis Carroll’s renowned book.

Alice Liddell was the daughter of the Dean at Price Church in Oxford University, and she lived across the quad at the university from Lewis Carroll. The two met there, and as their friendship and romance grew, the two started making up fantasy stories. Liddell pushed Carroll to write the stories down, and they turned into the book Alice in Wonderland.

The Model Congress team traveled to Harvard last weekend to debate topics ranging from the economic stimulus to overfishing in a simulation of the United States Congress and House of Representatives. The team won 11 individual awards from its 26-person delegation and tied for first with Dalton for most awards.

Divided into small committees, the delegates debated a new topic each day over the course of the three-day trip, students interviewed said.

As snow pummeled the streets of New York City last Thursday, a truck crashed into Supertrans bus on the Lower Park avenue route in an accident that injured none but initially caused Director of Transportation Robert Forcelli and Head of School Dr. Tom Kelly’s concern, Forcelli said.

On the freeway, the truck skidded, hit the stop sign attached to the left side of the bus, and drove away, bus driver Edward Muto said. Muto continued driving until he reached a stoplight, where he pulled to the side of the road and contacted Supertrans about the incident, students said. Supertrans notified Forcelli, who, after verifying that no one was harmed, asked that the driver resume his route because the weather was worsening, Forcelli said. The bus company called Forcelli to confirm that all students arrived home safely, he said.

Moving pictures of cars motoring down Broadway alongside the snowy Van Cortlandt Parade Grounds projected into a Rose Hall classroom this week, directed through the pinhole size lens of a camera obscura this week.

Photography teacher Pam Connolly constructed the camera obscura, a photographic device that consists of a dark room and a single aperture, which allows light from the outside world to project inside.