News

VIDEO: New Canaan High School Class of 2015 Graduates

By |

New Canaan High School Class of 2015 Graduation
Uploaded by Michael Dinan on 2015-06-19. After graduating from Princeton with a bachelor’s degree in English, and with honors from NYU School of Law, Stephen Vehslage worked his way toward a successful law practice, working primarily in civil litigation and white-collar criminal defense. All seemed to be going well to those who surrounded him, but inside, Vehslage had serious doubts the path he’d charted for himself was the right one. After some intense soul-searching, Vehslage decided that it was time to change course and go back to school, to become a teacher. Vehslage is now a 15-year veteran of New Canaan High School but his first year was anything but smooth, he told hundreds of Class of 2015 seniors and their families and friends on Thursday, in a keynote address during graduation ceremonies.

News

NCHS Senior Fashion Show [PHOTOS, VIDEO]

By |

Hundreds of parents, friends and other residents cheered from the darkened seats of the New Canaan High School auditorium on Saturday night as about 100 seniors strutted their stuff in casual, athletic, dressy and prom wear during the NCHS Senior Fashion Show. The major fundraiser for Post Prom, the annual show saw some $6,800 in tickets sold in advance, Chair Whitney Williams said. Here’s a video from the show featuring local band Triple Coil:
New Canaanite Video-NCHS Fashion Show 2015
“It’s pretty heavily attended,” Williams said as students shuffled from a pre-show dinner in the Wagner Room to separate areas to change and get made up for the runway. “We have prom fashions from A Step Ahead in Stamford and Camillo’s in Norwalk. The rest of the fashions have been provided by local vendors.”

Those included Athletic Shoe Factory, Blaze-In, Caren Forbes, Darien Sport Shop, Island Outfitters, J. McLaughlin, Jos.

News

Confidence, Competition, Camaraderie: Popularity of New Canaan High School Debate Team Soars

By |

New Canaan High School senior Matt DeMattia strode to the podium at the front of Room 105 after school on a recent afternoon, his fellow Debate Team members—a group that represents all four grades and numbers about 45, up from a half-dozen less than a decade ago—waiting during this practice to hear him argue in favor of this statement: “College athletes should be paid competitive salaries.”

A New Canaan Rams varsity football player recently restored to the Debate Team from the gridiron (and a state title), DeMattia argued that “the American economy is built on one thing, and that is capitalism—and capitalism isn’t necessarily fair, it isn’t necessarily even, but it’s built around the fact that those who generate income get to keep that income.”

“Big football schools earn $40 million to $80 million for a single season, such as Florida or Penn State. These football players are playing for their schools and generating massive amounts of wealth for their programs and for the NCAA, and they are receiving absolutely none of this wealth. They are generating this income and by the fundamental beliefs of capitalism, they should earn this income.”

It’s a cogent, reasoned argument that the teen delivered with confidence and facts—qualities, according to Debate Team coach Kristine Goldhawk, that DeMattia has developed over three years with the group. “When he started, he was very brash and not very organized and not really logical in terms of his thought process, so he tended to ramble all over the place,” recalled Goldhawk, a NCHS teacher whose classes include World History, Civics and AP Comparative Government and Politics. “Over the course of the years, he has really tightened up his argument style.