Issue 4: February 12, 2021 by The Campanile

The Campanile

Friday, Feb. 12, 2021

Vol. CIII, No. 4

family/household members, and all identified close contacts have been directed to quarantine, monitor for COVID-19 symptoms, and work with their healthcare provider to get tested as directed by the County of Santa Clara Public Health Department,” Berkson wrote. Berkson did not respond to interview requests. In response to senior's positive test, practices were canceled for those in her swimming pod. Despite two negative tests several days later, she and close contacts are still being instructed to quarantine for 10 days. Other swimming pods, including that of junior David Gormley, have continued practicing. Though

the senior girl told teammates about her positive test through a text message to the team, the Paly Athletic Department did not formally inform swim team members and their parents of her positive test. Athletic Director Nelson Gifford did not respond to interview requests. Despite the lack of communication with students, Gormley said school administrators did a fine job handling the situation. “Like any COVID case, or suspected case, it was a little frightening, but I think that the systems that were in place acted quickly responsibly and, as a result, most of us feel safe,” Gormley said. But the female swimmer who

tested positive said she felt like there wasn’t an established protocol for handling positive COVID-19 cases. She said, “I'm still going to quarantine for 10 days just to be cautious, so it doesn't really affect me that I'm not going to go to practice. But I think for other athletes (in my pod) who want to swim and have tested negative, practices are still canceled and they had very little communication from the Athletics Department as to what's going on.” Girls swim coach Danny Dye also did not respond to interview requests for this story.

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izes sexual harassment reports. One sexual assault victim who didn't want her name used said Austin’s message was like a slap in the face. “It seems like he truly doesn’t understand the impact of sexual assault on survivors, and worse, tried to undermine the number of cases reported by stating that the majority were only sexual harassment, as if that’s any better,” they said. In an interview with The Campanile, Austin said PAUSD administrators wants to talk to victims who would like to have their case investigated, even if the District has already reviewed the case through a Title IX complaint. “If (a victim) had not brought

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something forward, had brought partial information, or has had a change of their account, we will reinterview (them),” Austin said. As victims shared their stories over social media, many of their peers reposted messages showing support. But one survivor, who asked that their name not be used, said when the Paly community started to speak

out on the issue, it didn’t realize how much trauma resurfaced for survivors. “One thing that no one was really talking about when all the uproar on social media came is like no one realized how triggering things people were posting can be for someone,” the survivor said. “Everyone’s posting (things) like, ‘If you’re a survivor, share your story,’ and it's like, no, you don't have to –– it’s okay if you’re not ready.” Moving forward, Paly principal Brent Kline said he thinks discussion surrounding sexual harassment assault should continue in and open manner, and he hopes he can help facilitate that. “What we’re experiencing now is a reminder to me that things can’t rest,” Kline said. “We need to be constantly reengaging in conversations about what healthy relationships look like. And I think, maybe, we had gotten comfortable.”

Help is available: National Sexual Assault Hotline 1-800-656-4673 Crisis Text Line: text "home" to 741-741 National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-8255

To read stories written by survivors, visit A8. Gina Bae, Gianna Brogley & Avantika Singh Multimedia Editor, Lifestyle Editor & Senior Staff Writer

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PALO ALTO PERMIT #44

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SCREENSHOT FROM PAUSD FEB. 9 BOARD MEETING

Board Correspondent

Science & Tech Editor

ART BY GINA BAE

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U.S. POSTAGE

PAI D

Valerie Chu

Austin Xiang

SURVIVORS SPEAK OUT hen several survivors who were allegedly sexually assaulted by a Paly alumnus came forward to tell their story over social media in late January, a widespread discussion about sexual misconduct ensued, prompting more victims of sexual assault and harassment in PAUSD to share their experiences and frustrations with the way the District handled their complaints. Superintendent Don Austin responded to these claims later that week on Jan. 27 with a Schoology message and email to PAUSD families, acknowledging student and community outcry and saying the District investigates every incident of sexual assault and harassment reported to it. “The District is aware of reports and concerns related to sexual violence involving current and former students that have been posted on social media,” Austin said in his message. “While the social media posts are recent, we understand the incidents referenced in these posts relate to the 2019/2020 school year.” Austin said he assures students and families that PAUSD takes all reports seriously. Near the end of his message, Austin acknowledged a statistic many students were sharing on social media, saying most of the reports the District receives are sexual harassment and not assault. “We are aware of public statements that the District received 50 reports of sexual assault in 2020,” Austin stated. “In fact, in the 2019/2020 school year, the District received over 50 reports of sexual harassment in which five were reports of sexual assault or misconduct.” Several students criticized Austin for the implication in this part of his statement which they say trivial-

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Palo Alto High School, 50 Embarcadero Road, Palo Alto, CA 94301

!"#$%&'"#"()#)*#+&,-.'#"%'"#-)'/"/0%#1)2#3456789:;#</2$'#'(/,,/*<#=.&2&*"/*%'#&1"%2#1&$'%#-)'/"/0% One member of the girls swim team and at least one other person on campus have tested positive for COVID-19, but the senior girls swimmer has since tested negative twice since her initial positive test on Feb. 10. Those who tested positive, as well as their close contacts, have been instructed to self-quarantine regardless of follow-up test results. Assistant Principal Jerry Berkson sent two emails about separate COVID-19 cases, to Paly staff members on Feb. 8 and Feb. 10, informing them as to whether or not they were in close contact with one of the individuals who tested positive. “The affected individual has been isolated and their immediate

PALO ALTO UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT PALO ALTO HIGH SCHOOL 50 EMBARCADERO RD. PALO ALTO, CA 94301

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ART BY SASHA LEHRER

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All secondary students from seventh to 12th grade could potentially return to campuses for in-person classes by early March, Superintendent Don Austin said at the Feb. 9 school board meeting. Austin said before in-person classes for these grades can happen, Santa Clara County would need to be in the red tier for five consecutive days. The board did not vote on this plan because it already voted to reopen schools at its Nov. 10 meeting — a decision that both student board representatives urged the board to reconsider. Austin said this plan, which was discussed with the Palo Alto Educators Association, the teachers union, would require teachers to return to classrooms but still teach over Zoom. Austin said the plan will accommodate every seventh to 12th grade student who wants to return to campus in a way that requires no schedule or teacher changes and in-person safety measures will be put in place. Students do not have to choose between either online or in-person education. They would be split alphabetically into two groups and able to choose if they want to attend classes in person or online on their assigned days. The plan says Mondays will remain remote and synchronous for all students, and while at school, students will be socially distanced rather than in separate cohorts -- which were proposed in the hybrid plan -- when on campuses. Teachers will continue using Zoom to teach classes, and the district would leave the option of live-streaming up to individual teachers. Students who choose to attend in-person school will be able to interact face-to-face with their teachers at the end of the period during work time, as opposed to solely through Zoom during class. Austin said the district is working on details such as purchasing headsets for students to use in classrooms, getting vaccinations for teachers and providing COVID-19 testing stations for students. PAEA President Teri Baldwin said teachers are counting on district administrators to keep their promises about implementing and enforcing safety guidelines. “We're putting the trust in the district and the community to follow the guidelines and keep everyone as safe as possible,” Baldwin said. “But we would also like to point out research and data from around the country and the world show a variety of risks with opening campuses.”

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ART BY SASHA LEHRER

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Friday, February 12, 2021

The Campanile

News

ASB Update

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!"#$%&'()*$$#+'%,'-./$0' &%1+#$%'-,+2'%,0#%3#. As the second semester kicks off, ASB members are busy planning COVID-19 safe events and activities for students to enjoy. Just days away from Valentine’s Day, senior and Spirit Commissioner Sabrina Chan said despite restrictive circumstances, ASB is continuing the tradition of holding “Love Week” at Paly, which includes Matchomatics, a survey that matches students with compatible peers, and Valgrams, which are small stuffed animals that students can send to their valentine. Events and bonding activities specific to freshmen students, some of who have yet to attend high school in person, are a main priority for Shamsheer Singh, the freshman class president. Last semester, Singh helped set up study groups, where students got to know their peers over Zoom through shared class workloads, and plans to continue running them throughout this semester. “We’re also thinking about doing a Game Pigeon tournament like the

seniors did, and then try and do a movie night again because I think people liked that,” Singh said. Unfortunately, online 8-ball tournaments are likely to be the extent of senior gameplay; senior class president Emma Lin said the traditional senior elimination game and other bonding activities are difficult to simulate in the current virtual circumstances “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking in terms of how we could alter it to make it COVID friendly, but honestly, it’s been kind of a struggle, and I don’t feel like there’s a good alternative,” Lin said. While some traditions may be broken in order to abide by COVID-19 regulations, Lin said she is working to ensure new ones are born. She and other ASB members have been coordinating with a few seniors to create light-hearted videos for the class to remember their peers by. “One is about random acts of kindness, another is fundraising through dares and we’re also planning on doing a ‘Survivor’ style TV show with Gunn,” Lin said. “We also filmed a Seniors Got Talent parody-type video and basically drove around, found some seniors and asked them to show their talents.” Chan said several other events are in the works for everyone to enjoy, including a Mental Wellness week and a virtual Quadchella.

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News & Opinion Editor

ART BY AUSTIN XIANG

Through a statement released on its website, The College Board announced on Jan. 19 it would discontinue the SAT Subject Tests as well as the SAT optional essay. The statement said the COVID-19 pandemic led to the College Board’s decision as part of a continuing effort to reduce demands on students. “The pandemic accelerated a process already underway at the College Board to reduce and simplify demands on students,” the statement said. Paly college counselor Sandra Cernobori said the elimination of Subject Tests was inevitable. “I think the writing was on the wall that the Subject Tests were going to go away,” Cernobori said. “I think the pandemic made more schools go test optional

for (the) SAT and ACT. And, of course, those handful of colleges that were still requiring Subject Tests moved away from them as well.” The statement also said Advanced Placement tests would effectively replace SAT Subject Tests and allow students taking AP classes to demonstrate their proficiency in a specific subject area. “AP provides students rich and varied opportunities to showcase their knowledge and skills through collegelevel coursework,” the statement said. “Courses like AP Computer Science Principles and AP Capstone provide the type of hands-on learning experiences and practical, real-world work that colleges want to see from students.” Cernobori agreed and said AP classes and the attatched AP exams essentially made Subject Tests redundant. “Often, students who are interested in STEM take a Subject Test in math and chemistry or physics, if they weren’t already enrolled in an AP course for which they were going to take an AP exam,” Cernobori said. “(But) at Paly, many students who are considering STEM are already taking an AP course in one of those STEM classes.” The College Board did not respond to a request for an interview.

4.*+1*%/,$'5,1)+'&%/))' 3*((#$ Besides school-wide events, there are activities planned for just the senior class in the weeks that lead up to graduation. “We put out an Instagram poll the other day to see senior interest in things, like float building, movie night on the quad, car parade, cap decorating and a night time scavenger hunt,” Lin said. “They mostly got positive feedback, so I think this week we’re going to be deciding which ones we want to focus on, running them by admin and then approving them with ASB.” For the graduation ceremony, Lin said ASB is planning for several different scenarios depending on what tier Santa Clara county will be in come May. “If we were in the purple tier, (graduation) wouldn’t be able to be in person because of the guidelines,” Lin said. “I don’t think anyone wants to do a virtual ceremony, but that’s obviously another option.” In the case that Santa Clara county transitions into the red tier or below before graduation, Lin said a socially distanced, in-person graduation is definitely possible. But, she said that it presents its own set of challenges. “There’s the idea of having a drivein graduation, but the issue with that is there aren’t a lot of venues that have a big enough capacity for our grade,” Lin said. “(We) would probably have to be split up into groups –– either alphabetically, or maybe by request.” Lin also said ASB is considering a socially distanced ceremony, where only students would attend and other guests and parents would watch through a livestream.

6(/./%'7##8'/$'%3#'9,.8& COVID-19’s influence on in-person events carries over from graduation to spirit week, one of the most anticipated events in a normal school year. “At the beginning of the year, we were just calling to postpone spirit week until (spring), but then towards winter break, we were told that it was officially cancelled,” Chan said. However, the fate of spirit week also rides on what tier Santa Clara county will be in come springtime. “PTSA and other groups are starting to plan in person senior events … if they can do those, we might be able to do some sort of hybrid spirit week, like partially in person and partially virtual,” Chan said.

61."#2&'0*0#'&%1+#$%' /$%#.#&%':,"/$0';,.9*.+ Last semester, ASB hosted an array of virtual events, including Viking Week, an Among Us tournament, class-wide Kahoots and holiday-themed contests. Junior vice president Diana Narancic said she was pleased with turnout. “I’m really proud of the events we hosted last semester, but honestly, it’s hard to get students to come to the online virtual events, just because of Zoom fatigue,” Narancic said. Looking forward, Narancic said she hopes by pushing out more surveys measuring student interest, ASB will attract more students to online events. Narancic said, “We’re going to be sending out a survey to the student body about what kind of events they want to see, and what they think about the events.”

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PHOTO BY AVANTIKA SINGH

The new science building provides teachers and students with bigger, brighter classrooms. The next campus renovation project involves the Tower building.

Gianna Brogley Lifestyle Editor The science building renovation project is complete after construction on the site began over a year and a half ago. Built to accommodate the growing student body, the addition will eliminate the need for science instruction in portable classrooms. The new building’s four rooms can hold 32-34 students each, renovation project manager Jun Zhao said. Assistant Principal and construction liaison Jerry Berkson said the project, although delayed by a few months due to the initial stages of the pandemic, was generally a smooth experience. “Early in the pandemic, people didn’t even know if you could go outside or not,

so that set back some things,” Berkson said. Zhao said earlier in the year when school was in session, the construction team struggled with working around class times and tried to be considerate of students’ learning environment in the old wing of the science building. “Every now and then we would get complaints from the teachers and staff about the noise, though we did try our best to avoid making loud noises during class sessions and tried to schedule our activities to best fit everyone’s interest,” Zhao said. Berkson said while the main goal of the project was to expand the science building, he and the other administrators who helped to design it ensured that the new classrooms were equipped with higher-end technology, like dimmable

light fixtures as well as 86 inch TVs intended to replace projectors. “(The classrooms) also are meant to be functional for all the different sciences, whereas the original rooms, you have your chemistry room and your physics room,” Berkson said. According to Biology teacher Liz Brimhall, her portable classroom is old and outdated, so she is excited to experience the newness of the classrooms. “I use this kind of overhead projector that’s very old-school, and the edges of the counters are coming off; (the portables) are just not built durably,” Brimhall said. Aside from updated technology and new surfaces, Zhao said the rooms are more open and bright than those in the older wing. “One room has a full height ceiling, so when you

walk into that room, it feels much bigger than it is on paper,” Zhao said. “We also have a wall of windows that provides a great view of the exterior, which really opens up the space.” Brimhall said she is also looking forward to moving out of her portable classroom for accessibility reasons. “The hard thing is (the portables) are kind of far from the central science building, so I always had to move a bunch of equipment to have it in my classroom,” Brimhall said. “So I’m really excited to be closer to our bio lab prep area for sure, but also close to my colleagues.” Berkson said the next renovation project at Paly is likely to be an update of the historic Tower Building’s interior. He said that is a roughly 18-month process that won’t start for at least another year.

Friday, February 12, 2021

A3 !"#$%&'()*&+$',-.& /0(%#/&1$*2)&,*,2) Zack Silver Staff Writer

Paly sports resumed outdoor practices on Jan. 19, in accordance with Athletic Director Nelson Gifford’s announcement on Jan. 11. Gifford said he chose Jan. 19 as the start date for sports so students could have two weeks after winter break to ensure they are healthy and ready to practice. The start of the season comes in response to updated guidelines released by the California Department of Public Health on Dec. 14, which allow student athletes to practice with their team but require them to wear face coverings at all times. These guidelines also forbid inter-team competitions until at least Jan. 25. Still, players like shortstop and senior Zander Darby said they are hopeful they will be able to have a full season. “I’m not sure how normal of a season we’ll have, but I believe we will have the opportunity to play games,” Darby said. Assistant baseball coach Pete Colombo also hopes games will happen. “We owe it to the kids to have them prepared and ready to go,” Colombo said. “I’m pretty hopeful, but it is all out of our control.” According to CDPH guidelines, inter-team competitions are allowed in all California counties for low-contact sports including golf, track and field, swimming and tennis after Jan. 25. Moderate-contact sports such as baseball, softball and lacrosse can only compete in counties in the red tier of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s reopening plan, and high-contact sports such as basketball and soccer can only have games in counties in the orange tier of the plan. Santa Clara County has been in the purple tier, the most restrictive tier, since Nov. 16. As such, low-contact sports will not start competitions immediately, according to Gifford. “For purple tier sports, we’re only able to start if the (Santa Clara County) stay at home order is lifted, and I don’t know when that will happen,” Gifford said. In addition, Paly teams will only be allowed to compete inside the county, which will prevent them from participating in Central Coast Section and state competitions according to Track and Field Coach Michael Davidson. Davidson expressed frustration about this. “I’m very disappointed, because our girls team did very well last year, and we won CCS for the first time in 20 years,” Davidson said. “A lot of those girls are coming back, and I’m disappointed they won’t get the chance to defend their title” However, Davidson said he understands the decision, since these meets can have up to 1,500 athletes in one place. “The danger and concern is real,” he said. Junior Jeremy Peng, a libero on the boys volleyball team, said he remains cautious about starting back up too soon. “If we cannot do it safely, then I don’t think we should go back just for the sake of playing again,” Peng said. But some athletes like Cameron Toland, a sophomore and softball pitcher, aren’t that worried about the risk of outdoor practices. “I’m unconcerned, especially if we’re wearing a mask the whole time,” Toland said. ”We’re distanced pretty much the entire game.” Darby agrees. “It’s pretty easy to not get close to other players,” Darby said. “My biggest concern is the dugout, but wearing masks in the dugout is easy to do.” No indoor facility use is allowed in purple tier counties, including the gym and weight room. Indoor facilities can be used at 10% capacity when the county returns to the red tier, with 25% capacity allowed for orange-tier counties. Gifford said he is optimistic that a lot of students will want to participate in athletics this spring. “We’re seeing more people than ever. People have been trapped in the house for 10 months,” Gifford said. Colombo added that sports are an important part of many students’ school experience. “Kids need the physical and mental outlets that sports give them,” Colombo said. “It’s important for their wellbeing to be out there competing.”

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News

Bay Area residents attend Capitol insurrection

"#$%&'()#&*%*)(&+#,%)"#%-./.%012')(3% ($%41$.%5%1$,%12(61372)'6%'+18#*% (9%:&(;#$%831**%1$,%9&'8")#$#,% 2(3')'6'1$*%<#&#%*2&#1,%<(&3,<',#=%>13(% ?3)(%1$,%')*%2&'+1&'37%3':#&13%$#'8":(&'$8% 6')'#*%*##+#,%3';#%1$%@$3';#37% *(@&6#%(9%*@6"%)&(@:3#.% Within a few days, however, the local community recognized some of the insurrection’s attendees — not as distant faces in a crowd, but as local business owners and neighbors. Shortly after Jan. 6, websites including Yelp, Facebook, Nextdoor and Instagram were flooded with photos of Suzi Tinsley, the owner of Sugar Shack, a small Menlo Park candy store, posing proudly at the Capitol riot without a mask on. In the following days, local residents initiated a boycott of the store, whose website and email address were taken offline for a few weeks. Tinsley did not respond to an interview request from The Campanile, but she said in a public statement to ABC7 News that she did not participate in violence and condemned the extreme rioting that took place. “I was there for a peaceful march and shared photos via text with a few friends,” Tinsley said. “I left the rally when the crowd became unruly and I was pushed to the ground. I returned to my hotel at that point, long before the agitators stormed the building. Just like every other American, I watched in horror as the chaos unfolded on television.” Another local business owner, tennis instructor Josh Davis, received an outpouring of criticism on Yelp and other sites for his attendance and public support of the attack on the Capitol. Unlike Tinsley, Davis has not spoken out publicly about his attendance at the riot. Though he declined an interview with The Campanile, an anonymous client of his said that Davis is not typically shy about sharing his politically-charged views. “He is the most politically vocal person I have met in my lifetime,” they said. “He posts on Instagram legitimately every ten minutes, most of which are rants about politics.” Davis’ Instagram account has since been deleted, but it once contained posts delegitimizing President Biden’s electoral victory, mocking the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic and spreading messages that align with those of far-right conspiracy theories such as QAnon. The anonymous client said they will not be continuing their tennis lessons with Davis.

ART BY DECLAN GREICIUS

“Typically, I do not make decisions about who I associate with on the basis of political ideas,” the anonymous source said. “However, his actions may have crossed that line.” When it comes to such issues, some people may have reservations about boycotting or ostracizing others due to their political views. For example, Palo Alto Nextdoor user Sophie Greenberg does not see merit in the backlash Tinsley and Davis are facing. “I feel that everyone has the right to believe what they want,” Greenberg wrote in a Jan. 9 Nextdoor post. “Yes we can educate others and express our own beliefs, but we cannot force someone to value and/or believe in what we believe.” Economics teacher Grant Blackburn, however, sees boycotting Tinsley’s store as a valid means of protest. “If this woman really was there and the evidence is clear, and you disagree with the fact that she (went to the riot), then yes, you should boycott,” Blackburn said.

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Nevertheless, he acknowledged the importance of getting the facts straight before taking action. “You can’t just follow the knee-jerk reaction (and boycott),” Blackburn said. “You’ve got to think about it, talk about it, weigh the pros and cons, do the research and then act.” Though community members have already begun boycotting riot attendees’ businesses, Blackburn remains wary about the effectiveness of such protests. “A big part to consider is, what reaction will the business have? Because you can’t control that,” Blackburn said. “You can control who you boycott, but you can never control how people will react to it.”

Leo Malchin

Senior Staff Writer

ART BY ADORA ZHENG

3!456&0',))2)*&#(&1%2)*&/27#8&*%,+$%/&1,9:&2)&/0%2)* Ziggy Tummalapalli Sports Editor

PAUSD is developing a plan which would allow sixth graders to return to inperson school some time during the spring semester. However, the plan is still tentative, according to Superintendent Don Austin. “Sixth grade may be possible,” Austin said. “We don’t know yet because conditions could change.” Austin said the reasoning behind only bringing sixth and not seventh or eighth graders back to campuses is that sixth grade has the fewest class transitions during the day, making scheduling issues more minimal within the plan to return. If sixth graders do return, Austin said his plan would require all in-person teachers to be tested for COVID-19 once a week. Austin said there are no plans to test students. “I am a strong believer that students should be in school,” Austin said. “There is no longer a compelling reason for schools to be closed, with the possible exception of schedule disruptions.” Austin also said those who have argued against reopening schools to in-person instruction will likely wish they would have

supported in-person school sooner, citing athletes in person under strict guidelines, what he calls the successful reopening of so I am ready to go back when necessary to elementary schools in the district. teach PE.” “I expect that, in time, many will regret DeGeronimo also said it’s probably better not returning when it was possible,” Austin for students and their parents to get kids said. “The road blocks and resistance may be back to school. regretted. Our elementary students and staff “We all are concerned about the mental have shown it was possible to open.” health of our students, and we know that Greene Middle School’s sixth grade school will help them socially and emotionphysical education teacher David DeGeronally,” DeGeronimo said. “I think another big imo said while teachers may have mixed driving force is parents that want their kids opinions about returning to school, he is to return to school. Parents are an important ready to go stakeholder in the education process.” “I think everyone has their own comfort DeGeronimo said he is excited for inlevel with the pandemic,” DeGeronimo said. person school to return and said social inter“There are probaction is important to middle schoolers. ably some that are “I cannot wait to hear the buzz of concerned about students in the hallways again, the coming back and cheers that come from the athletic want to ensure the fields and courts during competition environment is safe first. and to just see kids happy and hangHealth is a ing out with their friends personal again,” DeGeronimo thing. I said. “Teens are very have social beings, and been need that interacworktion every day in a ing with safe environment. high That’s what makes school a school a school.” ART BY AJAY VENKATRAMAN

Friday, February 12, 2021

The Campanile

Spotlight

Art by Aaron Kim

In 1969 eight Black students graduated from Paly. Th Students experience racism efore moving to Palo Alto at the start of his sophomore year, senior Ras Kebebew lived in Rockville, Md. According to the 2010 U.S. census, both Rockville and Palo Alto have about 60,000 residents — yet 9.6% of Rockville’s population is Black, while less than 2% of Palo Alto is Black. Because of the relative diversity in Rockville, Kebebew said he only began experiencing racial stereotyping when he arrived in Palo Alto. “(In Rockville) you have a lot of contact with white people, Asian people, Black people, so people don’t have a lot of assumptions,” Kebebew said. “When I moved here, a lot of people thought my family was poor, like I don’t actually live in Palo Alto, and that I played a sport and all that, all just because I’m tall and brown.” Kebebew said he was caught off guard when, only a few months after he arrived at Paly, he heard non-Black students using the N-word. “I remember one time I was at lunch at Town and Country, it was my first semester,” Kebebew said. “And at the other table, there’s a bunch of students just throwing around the N-word carelessly. Although they weren’t saying it at me or anything, I had to walk over there and string them out, asking them why they were using such words.” Kebebew said the lack of diversity contributes to the absence of understanding the context and significance of racial slurs. “With all my Black friends in Maryland, we would use the N-word; that’s perfectly acceptable there,” Kebebew said. “But hearing Paly students just throwing around the N-word was a shock to me. It made me realize how different it is in Maryland, where everyone — everyone — knows the meaning behind the word. And everyone is aware of who’s allowed to use it.”

ask racially charged questions such as, “Do you like fried chicken?” and recalls one time where she was pressed into a difficult situation in school. “I was sitting in class, and someone said, ‘Hey, can I ask you a question?’” Mitchell said. “They said, ‘Oh, can I get an N-word pass?’ I don’t even say the N-word. Why would I give you a pass? And the thing that really irked me is that I was in a classroom setting, and my teacher just looked at us trying to see how this is all going to go down. As a teacher, and as an adult, I would expect you to interfere in that situation.” Mitchell said she wants to make it clear she doesn’t speak for all Black people — especially having grown up in Palo Alto, where the Black population is so small. “My experience is not the average Black experience at all,” Mitchell said. “Most students that live in Palo Alto that are Black do not have the stereotypical Black experience, so I always try to make sure to mention that everyone’s story is different.”

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Junior Sebastian Chancellor said he is lucky to live in a prosperous community such as Palo Alto. However he also said, as one of 46 Black students at Paly, the opportunity comes with challenges most residents are not exposed to. “Black people are proportionally suspended (at a higher rate), and teachers feel as if they need to give extra help to Black students, or that smart Black students are somehow less intelligent,” Chancellor said. “I feel as if I’m in the place where there’s extra pressure because I feel like I’m representing so many other people that aren’t being given the opportunities that I have been given.” Chancellor said he has had multiple experiences with teachers making assumptions about him because of his race. He said he was faced with an especially ugly accusation freshman year when his teacher accused him of plagiarism. “I was so confused how (the assignment) could be taken (as plagiarism), because I put a lot of effort into it,” Chancellor said. “I asked him what the plagiarism was, and there was no website that he found it on. There was nothing. He just said this doesn’t sound like your work. This isn’t something that I think that you should be able to do. And I couldn’t help but just feel as if that had some sort of thing to do with my skin color.” Chancellor said that while his teacher eventually apologized to him, the accusation left him with a sickening memory that he won’t forget soon. “It’s just a slap in the face where he has this expectation for me (which is) much lower than the other students,” Chancellor said. “So when I’m excelling, and I’m really working hard, instead of saying, ‘Wow, this is absolutely incredible work,’ he says, ‘Oh, this must be plagiarism.’ Even with an apology, it’s not the deed that you did to a kid. It’s the memory that you leave the kid (with). It’s not the deed. It’s the memory. I’m probably going to remember that for the rest of my life.” Chancellor said be-

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Junior Jaelyn Mitchell lived in Atlanta until the fourth grade. With over half a million residents, Atlanta is the biggest city in Georgia, and it is extremely diverse. “I grew up in a gated community, (and) I went to a really, really good school,” Mitchell said “I did not live in the inner cities or the urban cities, but it’s still really diverse. As a Black American, I think you can flourish a lot more in Atlanta. It’s like the real-life Wakanda.” Mitchell said the diversity in Atlanta made it a more suitable environment to learn about her Black heritage compared to Palo Alto. “I feel like when you have more Black friends, you’ll understand their experience a little bit better and (get) educated on that,” Mitchell said. “As a Black person that’s grown up in predominantly white areas after moving to the West Coast, I have to learn about Black history because I only know as much as my peers know.” While Mitchell said she has grown used to the lack of diversity in Palo Alto, she still encounters many uncomfortable scenarios surrounding her race. Mitchell said her peers often

cause of the challenges he and other Black people face, he feels more comfortable and understood by them. “With so few of us at Paly, I always feel a lot more comfort in opening up to people of color,” Chancellor said. “As a person of color, (when) you meet a stranger, we instantly refer to them as a brother, because at this point in time, it’s like, ‘Hey, I don’t really know you. You don’t really know me, but we see each other’s skin color.’ And we know that we understand the struggles each other are facing.” Senior Oluwatunwumi Ogunlade moved to the United States from Nigeria three years ago. She first attended a high school in San Jose, where she said it was easy to fit in. “In San Jose, we had a really large population of Black people,” Ogunlade said. “We had teachers who were people of color. It really did feel like you were accepted there.” But when Ogunlade moved to Palo Alto and enrolled at Paly midway through the first quarter of her junior year, she noticed a difference. “When I came to my old school the first few people who talked to me and hung out with me were Black,” Ogunlade said. “We have this sense of family (within) the Black community which gave me confidence as I made more friends with people who weren’t people of color. It took me a long time to have that at Paly since there aren’t that many people like me. To make friends, you kinda need to have something in common.” Ogunlade said the lack of shared experiences and culture between her and her white peers made it difficult to feel like a part of the larger school community. This was compounded by times when students were racist and disrespectful. “Someone in my PE class literally said the N-word and laughed,” Ogunlade said. “And I’m like, ‘What is going on? Are you gonna watch this person say that? Are you OK?’ But I didn’t say anything because I was like, ‘You know what? I’m new here. Let’s not make a fuss about it.’” Though Ogunlade found parts of Paly to be unwelcoming, she discovered her community when a friend introduced her to Black Scholars United club. “We talked about being some of the only Black people in our classes and about the issues that kind of plague the Black community,” Ogunlade said. “I just felt like I could relate (even though) I just joined Paly, and it was a crazy transition.” Ogunlade said Paly needs more representation. With more students and teachers of color, particularly ASB and publication staffs, students of color will feel less isolated and other students will have a better understanding of their experiences. “There are some students living in privilege and either don’t know or just ignore it,” Ogunlade said. “If we have more representation, we have more people talking about Black experience, which leads to more people learning about Black experience, which leads to less ignorance.”

Friday, February 12, 2021

The Campanile

Spotlight

Text & Design by Ben Antonow, Braden Leung & Ajay Venkatraman

his June eight Black students will graduate from Paly. Community has racist history

PAUSD works for change

Black residents only make up about 1.5% of Palo Alto’s population as a direct result of decades of segregationist policies and efforts to isolate populations of color in East Palo Alto. In the year 1920, the Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce passed a resolution to form a “segregated district for the Oriental and colored people of the city.” Although it didn’t come to fruition, the resolution gave housing developers in Palo Alto a basis to collectively agree to avoid selling property to Black residents. Palo Alto resident historian Steve Steiger said that after World War II, California’s population grew rapidly — and as land grew scarcer, Black immigrants were directed to less desirable places like East Palo Alto. In 1968, the town was so overwhelmingly Black that residents circulated petitions to rename it “Nairobi” after Kenya’s capital. “Many developers didn’t want (Black people) to buy houses in Palo Alto, even when they had the money,” Steiger said. “So if you had a young, Black engineer at HP, he would be told, ‘Here’s where you need to buy a house,’ and would be sent to East Palo Alto.” Along with active discouragement, title deed restrictions discriminated against Black residents in multiple neighborhoods such as Southgate until the United States Supreme Court deemed them unconstitutional in 1948. However, the racist clauses in the deeds remain unaltered to this day. Paly alumnus Greg Florant was one of the eight Black students in the graduating class of 1969. According to 2019-2020 statistics from the California Department of Education, the number of Black students will remain the same for Paly’s graduating class of 2021. “It doesn’t surprise me that Palo Alto hasn’t changed as much as I had hoped it would,” Florant said. Greg Florant’s younger brother Mark attended Paly two years behind him. While his experience was mostly positive, he said he was subject to instances of definitive racial discrimination, especially when he was applying to selective colleges as a senior. “My college counselor told me that I should apply to some other schools that weren’t so demanding,” Mark said. “So, when I got declined from UC San Diego, he was all over me about ‘OK, now you’re going to go to community college, because you’re not going to get in any of those other schools.’ And I was just distraught. I mean, he really messed me up.” Mark went on to be accepted to all the other colleges he applied to and ended up attending Stanford University. Mark Florant said, “There’s no question that the situation with my college counselor was because of my race.”

Some students of color say their experience in school is different because of their race; Black students in the district still only make up around 2.1% of the student body. One of PAUSD’s goals, outlined in the PAUSD Promise, is to improve the school experience for students of color and combat discrimination. According to Superintendent Don Austin, the district hopes to limit instances of racial discrimination in the district by addressing reports of such cases with investigations into the causes of the discrimination and implementations of new measures to prevent repeated incidents. “If an allegation comes forward, it’s immediately investigated,” Austin said. “And sometimes that requires removing a teacher or employee from contact with students during that investigation.” Assistant Superintendent of Equity and Student Affairs Yolanda Conaway said students’ experiences with discrimination and microaggressions, especially those that involve staff members, are preventable due to their systematic nature. “What I see is not at the conscious level of many educators,” Conaway said. “They are executing microaggressions on a regular basis, sometimes without even realizing it. But those are the things that we can shift in the brain. Those are the things that we have some power over.” Conaway said the district is working to educate staff and teachers about the effects of microaggressions and systemic discrimination. “The important piece is to make sure that people know what the truths are, and what the myths are around social justice and be able to understand notions about race, and where it came from, and what it really means,” Conaway said. She also said the lack of student diversity within the district is not necessarily something administrators can control. “Our students come to us based on their location in Palo Alto,” Conaway said. “So in terms of making the students more diverse, that’s a bit of a challenge for us.” She said district officials have instead been focused on making changes at the administrative level to try to improve representation. According to Conaway, the district looks at issues of race through the lens of students’ academic and school-related statistics, including the disproportionate suspension rate of Black students. “We have a very low suspension rate, and yet African Americans are suspended at a rate of 6% versus 1% for other populations, or less than 1%,” Conaway said. Conaway said this statistic shows how PAUSD is reflective of larger racial issues affecting the entire country. “What’s been found in the research consistently for for a decade now is that some of the same behaviors and same conduct that result in suspensions for African American students do not result in sus-

pensions for other groups.” Conaway said. “I want to make that clear that that’s a national problem that many people are trying to focus on. So as a district, we are looking at opportunities to increase our knowledge around restorative practices.”

No easy solutions Beyond a lack of diversity in the student body and staff, many also believe history curriculum doesn’t sufficiently cover Ethnic Studies. Justin Cronin, who has taught World History, US History and Ethnic Studies, said he thinks history is presented in a way that paints a particularly white-centric picture of past events. “History being written by the winners meant that it was often written by the white power structure of our country,” Cronin said. “And so getting voices and perspectives of others is helpful.” In order to reintroduce some of the cultural and racial education which is missing from history curriculum, many schools, including Paly, now offer an Ethnic Studies class which teaches students about topics of race. “The course has struggled to garner the attention of students in PAUSD, and the last time it was run was like 2008,” Cronin said. “For a while I was going around to US History classes trying to drum up business, and it didn’t stick.” California legislature proposed a bill in 2020 which would make Ethnic Studies a high school graduation requirement. Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed the bill in September, but Paly still offers its students the chance to take the class. While a common approach to race has been to simply ignore it, Cronin said this color-blind perspective disregards Black culture. “Sometimes you hear that, ‘Oh, I don’t see color,’” Cronin said. “But I don’t think our country’s there. What you’re saying is that you don’t see a person of color’s experience, which is definitely not the same. The thing with race in this country is people of color never get to put it down. White people can pick it up and go with it and march for Black Lives Matter and everything else, but they get to go home and still be white. As someone of color, I never get to just put that down. It’s always something that you carry with you.” A good step, Conaway said, is to “structure . . . teaching to make sure the experiences of Black and Brown students are considered in that instruction and can see themselves in an authentic way, rather than through a Eurocentric lens.” But Conaway acknowledges that doing so won’t be easy or fast. “It is not coming up with one program, or one remedial program or another initiative to fix people of color, because they don’t need fixing,” Conaway said. “What we need to do as educators and as adults is to build our capacity to meet the needs of more students of color. That’s where our focus needs to be.”

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Friday, February 12, 2021

The Campanile

Opinion

ART BY HAILEY HWANG

Millenials transform business world through ESG investing !"#$%&'%(&)&$*+#,-").+(/+&'0-12-1%$/.+&'$-+3'%'0&%)+./0&#&-'45%6&'7

Andy Wang

Managing Editor

illennials and Gen Z are poised to reshape the business world through a focus on environmental, social and corporate governance, which comprise of three central factors investors use to determine growth and risks of companies. As young investors work to align their money with their values, ESG stands to have an increasingly important role in the world of finance. The environmental factor revolves around sustainability. The social factor concerns itself with the consideration of companies’ customers and employees. The governance factor screens for matters such as corporate corruption, compensation structure and auditing. Although there is not a standardized measurement of ESG, Sustainalytics’s popular ESG Risk Rating metric measures the degree to which ESG issues put a company’s enterprise value at risk. A low score on a scale of 1-100 indicates less ESG risk. PricewaterhouseCoopers’ 2020 Annual Corporate Directors Survey revealed a stark crisis sitting at the top of the corporate ladder. Only 24% of survey respondents were women, out of which 34% of board members said diversity is important and

38% think ESG is a financial consideration for their firm. But millennials have proven to be more socially and environmentally aware than their parents. From calling out Wells Fargo’s social discrimination to investing in renewable energy, millennials are increasingly allocating their assets to investments that not only might generate a financial return but also align with their belief in the importance of social justice causes. A 2019 Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing Report surveyed active investors and found 95% of millennials are interested in sustainable investing and 67% take part in at least one sustainable investment. Furthermore, millennials are twice as likely as the overall investor population to invest in companies targeting social or environmental goals. And 90% of them say they want sustainable investing as an option in their 401(k) plans. Despite the boom in sustainability investing, some investors still think ESG investing may compromise investment return. But these concerns are also opportunities for growth.

Millennial investors, despite taking an outsized interest in sustainability, tend to agree with the theory that ESG is an opportunity cost of financial gain, that there is a tradeoff between investment return and sustainability. Morgan Stanley’s analysis titled “Sustainable Reality: Analyzing Risk and Returns of Sustainable Funds” seems to prove this idea wrong. This analysis found sustainable funds to provide an equal investment return compared to that of traditional funds. And as climate change has become the number one global issue, progressive companies that prioritize sustainability will have a competitive advantage over those who don’t. By choosing to invest with an ESG conscience, millennials will drive demand for public equities that benefit the earth and society, shifting the capitalist paradigm into a greener and more responsible place. As the great wealth transfer from baby boomers to the younger generation approaches, the role of the nearly $65 trillion expected to be transferred means ESG will become an even more significant force in the corporate and economic world.

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Staff Writer

Junior year is notorious for its rigor, and every day I’ve found myself drowning a little bit more into an ocean of homework, extracurriculars and SAT prep. Until recently, that ocean included SAT Subject Test prep. Following the College Board’s decision to cancel these subject tests and the optional SAT essay, conflicting opinions on the equity issues these exams posed as well as the effects this change will have on the college ap-

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plication process spread like wildfire. But these standardized tests only serve to build on the already excessive stress that plagues students, especially at Paly, and their cancellation was just and called for. The American Psychological Association says prolonged stress can lead to high blood pressure and a weaker immune system as well as mental health issues such as anxiety and depression. Although it is important for students to study hard and learn both in and outside of school, it is equally important they maintain their physical and mental well-being. Studying for the SAT Subject Test, a vigorous and in-depth test on a specific subject, can take months. Additionally, some students may take subject test boot camps to help them; these boot camps are often costly and create unnecessary prolonged stress for students. The tests also create an equity issue. According to College

Board, each SAT Subject Test costs $22 to take, while the language Subject Test with listening costs $26, on top of the already hefty $26 SAT registration fee. Furthermore, the current cost for The Official Guide for All SAT Subject Tests is $16.55 on Amazon. Many students apply for fee waivers, but they must meet with a school counselor to discuss eligibility. Under College Board regulations, a student can only waive two SAT Subject Test registrations. Despite the waivers, for low-income students these fees and the process of receiving a waiver make it more difficult for them to take the tests. Affluent students, though, often have access to outside resources such as test-prep classes, books and tutors to improve their performance on these Tests, putting lower-income students at an unfair disadvantage. Critics of the move argue SAT Subject Tests are a good way to objectively test a student’s understanding of a certain subject. The SAT Subject Tests

issue the same set of questions to all students who take the given test for a certain year, score on the same grading scale out of 800 points and issue tests in relatively similar environments. However, that objectivity is not necessarily a positive attribute — giving the same test to every single student disregards their unique background, personal needs, creativity and style of thinking. Holding all students to a single standard suggests all students have had the same opportunities and resources, when that is not true. These subject tests are designed to evaluate a students’ understanding and capability, but given the existence of AP tests — which cover many of the same subjects as SAT Subject Tests did in much greater detail — the purpose of subject tests is ultimately unclear and reiterative. The cancellation of SAT Subject Tests will have a positive impact on Paly students, taking one more stressor off students’ plates and moving toward a more equitable and fair college admissions process.

Friday, February 12, 2021

The Campanile

Opinion

The Associated Press should rename its Comeback Player of The Year Award after Washington Quarterback Alex Smith

hree days after cameras captured his gruesome leg injury in a 2018 week 11 matchup against the Houston Texans, Washington Redskins quarterback Alex Smith was fighting for his life.

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His broken fibula and tibia became infected with necrotizing fasciitis, more commonly known as flesh-eating bacteria. As Smith became septic, doctors feared a leg amputation was the only way to prevent lethal infection. Fast forward to Dec. 7, 2020, and Smith is again the quarterback of Washington, now called the Football Team. With a brace around his reconstructed lower right leg, Smith brought his team back from down two touchdowns to pull off the upset of the year against the previously unbeaten Pittsburgh Steelers, a win which helped Washington secure the NFC East division title. On Feb. 6, the National Football League hosted its NFL Honors ceremony, celebrating the performances of players by giving out awards like the Most Valuable Player and Defensive Player of the Year. The Associated Press awarded Smith the 2020 Comeback Player of the Year for the serious adversity he overcame to get back on the field. From a three-week hospital stay battling life-threatening sepsis to potentially never being able to walk again, then two years of intensive physical therapy and 17 reconstructive surgeries, Smith’s return to the gridiron is unlike any ever seen in the NFL’s 101 seasons. Smith did a lot more than earn a spot on his team’s 53 man roster, a feat many already considered impossible. Smith became Washington’s starter midway through the season and led them to a 5-1 record that saw the Football Team clinch its first playoff berth in five seasons. For overcoming so much adversity to lead his team into the playoffs, I believe the league should rename the honor to the Alex Smith Comeback Player of the Year Award. The same way the Walter Payton Man of the Year award remembers the Chicago Bears running back for his commitment to humanitarianism off the field, renaming the Comeback Player of the Year award in honor of Smith ensures his resilience will never be forgotten.

In a year where a global pandemic has devastated the world, NFL football provided a sense of normalcy to its hundreds of millions of fans. Rooting for my favorite players was a way for me to escape reality and unwind for a couple of hours every Sunday. Fans across the country cheered on Smith as he returned to the field for the first time in two years, in what I believe was the most exciting moment of the entire 2020 NFL season. San Francisco 49ers left tackle and Smith’s former teammate Trent Williams told NBC Sports the quarterback’s journey back to the NFL inspired him in his own fight against soft-tissue cancer. “I don’t know if there are any words in the dictionary to describe the courage and the toughness he showed over these past couple of years,” Williams told NBC Sports. “I know for me and my situation, I always kind of drew from that energy, from me seeing him in the hospital bed, from multiple surgeries, just continuing to fight for his life. When I was going through my situation, I just felt, if Alex can do it, there’s no reason I should give up.” Smith told USA Today his return was about a lot more than football. “In the bigger aspect of life, I’m 36 years old,” Smith said. “I have three little kids, and I have the rest of my life in front of me. Selfishly, I’m even doing this for them, as crazy as that sounds. I know if I can go out there and play quarterback, I can do anything else in life.” So as the NFL continues to award the player who was the biggest source of inspiration around the league its Comeback Player of the Year Award, it should do so while paying respect to the great Alex Smith.

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Will Thomas

Business Manager

!"#$%&%'#($%$)%*++%,-).%/-+*01+($%201+(3*%4-*$%566%1#7*%0(%$"+%89#:%8;<+% Maya Singer Staff Writer

President Donald Trump’s first 100 days were — well, there’s a reason they’re the only part of his presidency no one can remember. He accomplished next to nothing, visited no countries and set the stage for the worst four years in recent American history. The convention of predicting a president’s success by their first 100 days began with Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s inauguration in 1933. He set a record for the number of major legislative acts and swift actions taken within his first 100 days and set a standard for all future presidents to be measured against. Unfortunately for some presidents, the first 100 days were — a rough transition. Take William Henry Harrison, for example, who caught pneumonia at his own inauguration in March of 1841, all because he wouldn’t trim his excruciatingly long inaugural speech and couldn’t be bothered to put on a jacket. He died 31 days later. And what about James A. Garfield, who was shot in the fourth month of his term because an unemployed member of his party though he was owed a job as a civil servant? So much for the spoils system — Garfield’s main legacy now is being the only member of the House of Representatives to have served as president. Trump’s pre-presidential occupation can be construed as similarly unique: he is the only self-proclaimed real-estate tycoon to be elected president. John F. Kennedy launched the infamously ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion in his first 100 days; Trump’s issue, on the other hand, wasn’t so much action as it was inaction. And we can’t forget Gerald Ford, who used one of the first chances he ever got to exercise his power as president to pardon disgraced former President Richard Nixon. Everyone knows pardoning is Trump’s preferred course of action — within a few months in office, he began a protracted chain of pardoning racist criminals. Another notable president, Ronald Reagan, announced the release of U.S. diplomats on his first day in office. To be fair, Biden’s released a hostage too: Dr. Anthony Fauci.

In fact, one of Biden’s first actions was to allow Fauci to do his job and help our country through this seemingly endless COVID-19 pandemic. Fauci can now disclose scientific information from qualified individuals who are conducting real research. He was also selected by Biden to be the head of America’s delegation to the World Health Organization. Oh, and he’s also apparently the highest-paid federal employee. Biden has signed 42 executive orders so far, among them orders implementing significant changes for the COVID-19 response as well as many important economy, environment, equity and immigration-centered orders, some of which are specially targeted to help those left floundering by the Trump administration’s policies. Biden’s first few weeks contrast sharply even with Trump’s first few months, even though Trump inherited a strong economy and no deadly pandemic. In Trump’s first 100 days, he passed little major legislation and signed only 24 executive orders. Like most schoolyard bullies, Trump tried to ally himself with the biggest and the baddest throughout his presidency. Or rather, the greatest, the smartest and the most fantastically dictatorial and autocratic leaders. Putin and Trump were like Tweedledee and Tweedledum if both were mercurial, had access to weapons of mass destruction and were hell-bent on law and order except when it benefited them. A Confederate flag was flown in the capital for the first time ever. Let that sink in. To his credit, Trump tried his best to start World War III. But he just wasn’t good enough. The aircraft carrier in the Suez Canal wasn’t inflammatory enough — if he wanted to make a statement, he should really have sent five. And why only assassinate Qasem Souleimani when he could have gone for Ayatollah Khomeini too? Speaking of war-mongerers, Kim Jong Un and Trump were like Timon and Pumba. Their similarities went beyond their love for bombs and ridiculous posturing; they were both delusional about

the state their constituents were in. And they both loved ineffectual summits at extravagant resorts. Maybe they just spent negotiations over daiquiris by the pool. With any luck, and the whole world knows we need it, Biden will be more sensible in his choice of friends. He is known for working across the aisle and seems to have at least a baseline of respect for and from most of the senators — something we shouldn’t take for granted after the last four years.

His cabinet also isn’t made up of criminals and criminal-sympathizers, so that’s a plus. We’ll see how much of his time is spent working and how much is spent golfing and whether his family replaces the majority of his advisers. Trump’s presidency ended particularly poorly, but I think it represented most of his term pretty adequately — with violence, malice, rampant misinformation and flagrant lies.

The Campanile

Friday, February 12, 2021

Editorials

Sexual assault survivors: in their own words

67-9#$71<&(+-)$*&/#0(++&#=>#/*#$0#1&9#(+*$%&?*7"&1#=-(+&)*102$9-07 Trigger Warning: The following stories are first-hand recounts of sexual harassment and assault written by Paly survivors. Graphic language is used and may be triggering to some readers.

n the past month, we have only scratched the surface on how deeply rape culture is ingrained within the Paly community through stories shared by survivors. To all victims who have faced any form of sexual harassment, assault or abuse, we stand with you. At The Campanile, we whole-heartedly commit to sharing your stories in your own words as the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma recommends. Visit the National Sexual Violence Resource Center at 800.656.HOPE (4673) or www.nsvrc.org or contact the Paly Wellness Center team at https:// www.paly.net/wellness/wellness-centercounseling if you need support.

“It was sophomore year. The night of the Paly v. Los Gatos game, my friends and I hung out with some guys that we were friends with. I had been drinking throughout the night, so I was a bit out of it. One of my guy friends, who I thought I liked, told me to follow him because he had forgotten his backpack somewhere. I willingly went with him, and once we picked up his bag, he aggressively pushed me against the back of the shed where he had left his bag. I was in shock, but I thought I liked him so I went with it – until he started asking for me to do more with him. I remember being

sober enough to tell that I didn’t like the situation, and I wanted it to end. So I just said, ‘Maybe another time,’ but he kept prodding me and wouldn’t let go of me, until I gave him what he wanted. To this day, his friends still make fun of me, and I have no idea how to tell them what really happened.” “It was the summer after freshman year at Paly, and I never thought I could get so mentally and physically traumatized by someone who I trusted so much. I don't know how to feel because I said ‘Yes’ in the beginning, but then felt uncomfortable and said, ‘No’ and ‘Stop’ multiple times in the middle, and he did not stop. I tried to talk to him afterwards, but his argument was that I said yes in the beginning so he was allowed to continue. I tried to get comfort from him since I was his partner at the time, but all I got was silence. I tried to not think about it and move on, but seeing how I was crying uncontrollably and not able to eat properly for a few weeks proved how scarred I was from this. It’s scary to think how it's already been three years since it happened, and it still haunts me today.” “I was six years old living in my foreign country. I was living with my grandma and sister at the time. My grandpa from my mom’s side decided to bring people over to show them around the house, and they decided to spend the night. I remember like it was yesterday. I remember his face staring at me with a nasty look. At night I wanted to use the restroom. When I was (with) him in my room, he grabbed me and held his hand over my mouth

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and told me that it was OK, that he didn’t want to hurt me, but if I talked or snitched he would. I remember him pulling down my pants and his hand touching me in places I didn’t want to be touched. I didn’t know what was happening. I kept it quiet because I know no one would believe me because he was really good friends with my grandpa. Every time I saw him, I felt the world coming down, crushing me.” “As a young child, I was abducted and raped. I have now grown up to have PTSD, schizoaffective disorder, severe depression, anxiety and I have been hospitalized in a mental hospital twice. As a freshman, I got involved with the wrong guy, and I was repeatedly blackmailed into having sex with him for over a year. I am a survivor.” “I was 7. I remember I was laying down. Next thing I know, I feel a hand. I was wearing pajamas. Nothing here tells someone that ‘I wanted it.’ I pretended to be asleep. I didn't move. I waited years to tell someone, and I regretted it. Now that person has a daughter, and I'm not sure if this person has done it to someone else. It was hard going to family events and seeing them knowing what they did. Do they remember? Are they not afraid I'll say anything? Except they weren't scared. They knew I wouldn't say anything. I was a girl, and I didn't have power. Just imagine your little sister, your little brother, your little cousin, your daughter getting their innocence taken away from them, not knowing what to do or say. Don't blame them. It's never someone's fault. Please support someone you know who has gone through this, and it could be your closest friend, and you wouldn’t know.”

Editors-in-Chief Shiva Mohsenian • Kris Risano • Benjamin Stein Andrew Toteda • Adora Zheng Online Editor Ajay Venkatraman

Managing Editors Jace Purcell • Andy Wang

News & Opinion Editors Siddhartha Sahasrabuddhe • Sloan Wuttke

Lifestyle Editors Krista Robins • Gianna Brogley

Science & Tech Editor Austin Xiang

Sports Editors Evelyn Cheng Ziggy Tummalapalli

Multimedia Editor Gina Bae

Business Managers Will Thomas • Emma Todd

Board Correspondent Valerie Chu

Art & Photo Director Sasha Lehrer Staff Writers

Ben Antonow Charlotte Hallenbeck Aidan Seto Anaya Bhatt Bruno Klass Zack Silver Lauren Chung Braden Leung Maya Singer Shantanu Deshpande Leo Malchin Avantika Singh Olivia Ericsson Ali Minhas Parker Wang Jack Galetti Hyunah Roh Joy Xu Kyla Schwarzbach Declan Greicius Hailey Hwang

Illustrators

James Miller Aaron Kim Zander Leong

Isabel Toteda Astrid Wuttke

Adviser Rodney Satterthwaite Letters to the Editors: Email all letters to editors to theeds21@googlegroups.com. The Campanile prints letters on a space-available basis. We reserve the right to edit submissions. The Campanile only prints signed letters. Advertisements: Advertisements with The Campanile are printed with signed contracts. For more information regarding advertisements or sponsors in The Campanile and their size options and prices, please contact The Campanile Business Managers by email at campanile.ads@gmail.com. The Campanile would like to thank the PTSA for supporting the mailing of our newspaper to the homes of Paly students. Our Vision Statement: The Campanile has upheld the highest standard of student journalism for the last century by engaging the community through various mediums of storytelling. Our coverage of news, culture and athletics aims to represent the diverse perspectives of our student body.

ART BY GINA BAE

District must take action to create consent culture As survivors of sexual assault came forward with their stories on social media in late January, conversations of sexual misconduct were thrust into the spotlight within the Paly community. Despite past Title IX turmoil in the district and the subsequent increase in consent education, it is clear rape culture remains deeply entrenched within our student body. First and foremost, The Campanile stands with survivors. To those who have chosen to speak out about their experiences, you have displayed immense courage and strength in the face of injustice. To those who have not told others about their own experiences, The Campanile supports you and your healing process. No one deserves to experience sexual misconduct, and it was not your fault.

A RT

According to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, an American is sexually assaulted every 73 seconds. One in six American women have fallen victim to attempted or completed rape. This issue is pervasive not only within Paly, but throughout the country. The people in these statistics are not numbers on a page. Our peers are survivors. Our friends are survivors. Our family members are survivors. Many of us are survivors. It is practically impossible to know how many of your friends and loved ones have been personally impacted by sexual misconduct. Thus, The Campanile thinks it is imperative the Paly community become more supportive and sensitive to victims’ experiences — without community support for survivors, perpetrators will never be held fully accountable for their heinous actions. Making Paly a safe space for survivors is only the first step toward addressing the underlying issue — ultimately, sexual violence has no place at Paly and must be stopped

BY GIN A BAE

before it occurs. There are two central tenets to preventing sexual misconduct: education and culture. PAUSD has implemented semi-regular consent training and Title IX awareness programs, but for the most part these have proven ineffective. They occur in large groups where there is little to no audience interaction, and involve students watching as a speaker or district employee lectures about proper sexual conduct. Instead, such training needs to take place in smaller groups to ensure participants are engaged and can interact with the material in a safer environment. Through discussion and the sharing of personal opinions and experiences, clubs like Paly RISE and Bring Change To Mind have stepped up to provide students with a safe place to talk and learn from each other about issues of sexual misconduct. PAUSD ought use this example to make their training programs more personal and impactful in the long run. The content of PAUSD’s sexual misconduct education is also flawed — it often

places the burden of prevention on potential victims rather than perpetrators. For instance, a recent Title IX lecture told girls not to send nude pictures of themselves because the recipients would share them; while there is certainly merit to this cautionary advice, the speaker never addressed the recipient’s side or urged recipients not to share any images received. This type of one-sided teaching doesn’t address the role of the perpetrator in sexual misconduct, thus normalizing and enabling their actions. Through changes to both the consent education and the presentation of that information to students, PAUSD can foster a healthier culture at Paly. Beyond administrative decisions, however, students are often on the front lines of the fight against sexual assault. Students must stand up for each other. From confronting a peer about a sexist joke to breaking up a potentially dangerous situation at a party, students must do whatever we can to prevent sexual misconduct in whatever form it takes.

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Thank you to our sponsors! If you’re interested in sponsoring The Campanile, please email campanile.ads@gmail.com

The Campanile

Friday, February 12, 2021

Lifestyle

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2020 quite literally opened with a flare as more than 11,000 bushfires tore through Australia, killing an estimated 3 billion native Australian animals and 445 people, burning 47 million acres of land and displacing over 18,000 citizens. This marks the most devastating bushfire season in Australia’s history, lasting from mid 2019 to the end of March 2020. Needless to say, the havoc and catastrophe of these fires set the stage for the rest of the year.

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On Jan. 9, 2020, the World Health Organization announced the appearance of a novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China –– a virus that, in a matter of months, would spread across the globe and slam the breaks on life as we knew it, thrusting us into an unprecwedented reality of masks, social distancing, emptied grocery stores and Zoom classes. It was a reality where safety became a constant concern and a reality that highlighted the importance of essential workers. At school, it was a reality without a prom, without a graduation, without a spring sports season. For many, it was a reality without a job, without financial security and without money for food or rent. It became a reality filled with conflicts over masks, politics and vaccines, conflicts that fostered a deepened political and social divide. And all the while, it was a reality led by a figure who incited racism and xenophobia by labelling COVID-19 the “Chinese Virus” and the “Kung Flu,” a man who ignored health officials and instead suggested injecting bleach, a president who all but stood by and watched. After more than a year since the first case was diagnosed, COVID-19 continues to be the new reality with more than 25.2 million cases and 419,000 deaths and counting in the U.S. In California, December saw numerous record-breaking days both for the number of new cases and the number of deaths from COVID-19, and ICUs across the state reached full capacity, prompting a second state-wide shut down.

On Jan. 26, Kobe Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and seven other people died after their helicopter crashed into a hillside in Calabasas, Calif. Bryant, an 18-time All Star, 15-time member of the All-NBA Team, 2008 NBA MVP and twotime NBA Finals MVP, is considered one of the greatest basketball players of all time. His sudden death shocked the world and sparked tributes across the globe, including one at Staples Center where Bryant spent the entirety of his 20-year career playing for the Los Angeles Lakers.

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March 9 saw one of the worst stock market crashes in history. The Dow Jones industrial average experienced its worst single-point day drop ever, falling 7.8% to 23,851.02. The Nasdaq dropped 7.3% to 7,950.68, and the S&P 500 index dropped 7.6% to 2,746.56. For reference, the 500 richest people in the world lost a combined $239 billion as the stocks in said index funds plummeted following the initial economic shut down caused by the novel coronavirus pandemic.

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After then-President Donald Trump was impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives on Dec. 18, 2019 for charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, the U.S. Senate began its trial on Jan. 16. The two and a half-week trial ended on Feb. 5 with Trump being acquitted of both charges by 52-48 and 53-47 votes for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, respectively. The only Republican in the Senate to vote against Trump, on the charge of abuse of power, was Utah senator Mitt Romney.

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May and June were filled with Black Lives Matter protests across the nation following the deaths of George Floyd on May 25 and Breonna Taylor on March13, both caused by on-duty police officers. The protests confronted police brutality, specifically against Black people, and systemic racism.

An average of 140 protests per day occurred following the first one in Minneapolis on May 26, with an estimated 15 to 26 million people participating nationwide. The largest protests occurred on June 6, where approximately half a million people participated in rallies at more than 500 locations across the country. In Palo Alto, two rallies occurred on June 19, or Juneteenth. The first was to construct a BLM mural in front of city hall, the letters filled with phrases like “Justice Now,” “George Floyd” and “White Silence is Violence.” The second protest occurred later in the day where about 500 people protested throughout Palo Alto. Though not in Palo Alto, throughout the nation protesters were met with police forces that oftentimes shot rubber bullets or tear gas. In some cases, the National Guard was called in despite the vast majority of the protests being peaceful.

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A large fire in Beirut, Lebanon resulted in two major explosions, killing at least 200 people and injuring another 6,000. The fire originated in a warehouse in the Port of Beirut and eventually ignited more than 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate. The explosion sent a supersonic blast wave through the city and left an initial crater 140 meters wide. The crater immediately filled with seawater and flooded the port. Accounts say the explosion was heard as far away as Cyprus, 200 kilometers across the Meditteranean Sea, and government officials say the blast displaced more than 300,000 people with many others remaining unaccounted for.

California and Oregon experienced the worst wildfires in their history throughout September. Record-breaking heat waves and strong Diablo and Santa-Ana winds, as well as a gender reveal party gone wrong, started and spread 4,332 fires across the coast, burning more than 3.5 million acres –– the most on record for a wildfire. The fires resulted in weeks of poor air quality and California issued a state-wide recommendation to stay indoors. To add to the already ominous smoky sky and empty streets, the sky turned an apocalyptic orange because of the high concentration of smoke particles in the air filtering out blue light.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in September of complications from metastatic pancreas cancers. Ginsburg was a pioneer and icon in the fight for women’s rights since the 1970s and remained a strong advocate during her time as a Supreme Court justice. She was the second woman ever to be appointed to the Supreme Court and spent 27 years serving on it. She was involved in a number of influential Supreme Court decisions in that time. Her death came 46 days prior to the presidential election, sparking debate as to which president would appoint a justice to replace her. Despite Ginsburg saying her “most fervent wish” was to not be replaced until after the election, then-President Donald Trump appointed Amy Coney Barrett as her replacement, which the senate swiftly confirmed.

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Former Vice President Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in the US presidential race on Nov. 6 winning 306 electoral votes following three days of counting (and recounting) ballots. Biden’s victory was not confirmed until Jan. 6, 2021, when former Vice President Mike Pence counted and verified the electoral votes. With this victory, Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris, made history as the first female Vice President, the first VP of color and the first VP of east-Asian descent. Biden and Harris’ victory did not come without fierce opposition, however. Trump’s legal team, headed by Rudy Giuliani, filed more than 60 lawsuits contesting the results of the election in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, losing all of them. Since then, Giuliani was sued for $1.3 billion by Dominion Voting Systems, the company whose technology was used to count the votes on election night.

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The persistent effort to find a vaccine for COVID-19 yielded two separate vaccines in less than a year. On Dec. 11, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine for emergency use, with administration beginning on Dec. 14. Moderna had its vaccine approved for emergency use by the FDA on Dec. 18, with distribution beginning on Dec. 21. This marks the fastest a viral vaccine has been both developed and distributed.

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BIDEN VERBATIM

Paly students and teachers give their opinions on newly elected President Joe Biden and what they are hoping to see during his presidency.

CC BY 2.0

PAGE B3

ART BY AARON KIM

Mandalorian

The new series The Mandalorian has gained popularity among students and teachers. PAGE B4

ART BY BRADEN LEUNG

Mental Health

ART BY JIMMY MILLER

Pet Adoption

Teens struggle with doomscrolling, activsm, and overall mental health.

Bay area adoption rates rise as shelter in place continues.

PAGE B3

The Campanile

Friday, February 12, 2021

Lifestyle

B2 !"#$%&'()*+,((-.'&/* ("($"#0*#"12"3&*,.* 4'5".60*'.%-7-#%&',. Ali Minhas Staff Writer

“I am pleased to see that he has already put out a nation's plan for combatting COVID. The fact that we now have a unified plan is extraordinary. There is no longer any clickbait or fake news. Everything is toned down a bit, the way things used to be. I am concerned about his age, but the biggest concern I really have is that there is a large population of America that is marginalized as second-class citizens. Many in Joe Biden’s party don’t see this as a real issue.” - Jennifer DiBrienza, PAUSD School Board Member “I hope for Biden to (create) unity, reverse the trend and make a change. I am pretty hopeful in general in what Biden is going to do — I think he has a good team around and has good morals. The main concern I have is his ability to get legislation and acts passed because there is a division in the Senate. - junior Zach Hayward “My hope for Joe Biden’s administration is that they will be able to (reach) across the aisle, to achieve some progress that we have not been able to achieve in the last four years. I hope he focuses on social inequality and the environment. I hope he tries to help women’s rights. I am hopeful that he will be able to bring back a sense of normalcy to the way that government is run. The adults are back in charge. I am concerned about Mitch McConnell and his philosophy and what we will do with healing the divide in this country.” - Stephanie Compton, PAUSD classroom aide “My hopes for Joe Biden are addressing climate change and climate disasters. I would like a president to take very drastic steps to bring fossil fuel and greenhouse gas (emissions) down. I hope he divests from the fossil fuels industry in general. Stop subsidizing fossil fuels and stop making more fossil fuels. California this year saw very drastic wildfires. We have one earth, and we need to protect that.” - Sima Thomas, Paly librarian “My hope is that he can rise admirably to the staggering challenges that he has ahead of him, in terms of the pandemic and injustice with a very divided political system. It is going to be a lot of work. There is a lot to clean up, and then there’s just this pandemic. The pandemic adds a mountain of challenges, and he has a lot on his plate. I think expertise is important, and I think he needs to work on bringing people together but not at the cost of not doing the right thing.” - Kelda Jamison, Stanford Anthropology, fellowship program manager at Stanford Humanities Center “My hope for Joe Biden is that he will bring back policies that will be helpful to all Americans. Economic polices and as well as just general policies that will help with the wealth gap in this country that seems to have gotten worse, especially in the past four years. I hope that he will address COVID-19. I hope that he will help bring Americans together. We used to be a place that people wanted to come and work, and that hasn’t done well in the past four years. I am concerned that he is going to bend over backward to make the Republicans feel better. I’m concerned he won’t (follow) bold policy agendas.” - Tida Violante, Paly parent, Paly '89 graduate and volunteer for Paly Rise Together Education “I have a renewed optimism that the U.S. can get the pandemic under control and return to a normal life. My primary concern is this honeymoon of unity and that Congress will stop real legislation to support struggling families and local businesses.” - Jesse Ladomirak, PAUSD Board member “I’m hoping that President Biden follows through on his commitments to environmental sustainability, fighting systematic racism, bridging the divide within our country and providing relief to those suffering as a result of the pandemic. I’m optimistic, but as politics goes, there’s always a concern that leaders either won’t have the ability or never intended to deliver on their promises. I think it’s just up to us to hold him accountable, and not let our attention drift away from the president’s actions with the change in leadership.” - senior Sam Mutz

ART BY AA RON KIM

Oversimplifying or making room for change?

Valerie Chu

Board Correspondent

hen Youth Community Service club asked Noelle Burwell and Wumi Ogunlade, co-presidents of Black Scholars United club, whether they wanted to work together to create an event to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr., they said yes. Several weeks later, six youth panelists from different races and cultures turned on their cameras and dove into a discussion about the implications of race and social justice in today’s world. In the 1960s, the term “people of color” became a way to avoid use of the derogatory term “colored people." Shortly after that, the term “women of color” became more widely used. Now, forged through recent social movements, a new term has emerged: “BIPOC.” Standing for Black, Indigenous and people of color, BIPOC has come to represent a catch-all term for everyone who is not white. Neil Rathi, president of the Paly Linguistics Club, said the increasingly generalized use of BIPOC is what many sociolinguists describe as linguistic violence. “I think it arose as kind of a way to specifically mention Black, indigenous people as part of people of color, but it's still being used as a term just to refer to all people of color,” Rathi said. “(But) the struggles that Black people are facing because of their race aren't going to be the same as those that Asian or Latinx or indigenous people are going to face. And using the term ‘BIPOC’ pretty much ignores that.” PAUSD Assistant Superintendent of Equity and Student Affairs Yolanda Conaway, though, said the word “BIPOC” is an improvement from other terms such as “marginalized” or “minority groups” which have also been used to describe people of color. She said BIPOC is a convenient term to encompass a diverse group of people who are non-white.

“Everything depends on the context in which it's used,” Conaway said. “I can't say I see it as a term of empowerment — I see it as a term of convenience. So it can be empowering in the sense that it moves away from terms like ‘minority’ and ‘marginalized group.’ But anything that reduces groups of people to five letters that is an acronym — I don't necessarily believe that there's any empowerment in that.” Like Rathi, Burwell thinks the word “BIPOC” has the potential to blur the lines between the different communities represented by the word. She said that while there is a tie between the Black community, the indigenous community and other racial groups or cultures, each group still has different experiences — something BIPOC fails to encompass. “I think it's important to have each culture and each community defined, and I think it's important to see color and to acknowledge people's cultures because there's a whole history tied to it,” Burwell said. “It's important to embrace all of the differences between each community because I think that's what makes us a more empathetic society.” This shift toward empathy and inclusion is perhaps one of the factors that made the use of the word “BIPOC” increase in popularity over the last few years. Google Trends, which tracks the frequency of Google searches over a period of time, shows a steady increase in the use of the word “BIPOC” since June 2018, with a large spike in June 2020.

“People will talk to people within their own community — especially their ethnicity or their race — in kind of a different register; they'll use terms that are unique to their group, and they'll maybe use their own vernacular,” Rathi said. “So, I think what happens is, this is actually how these terms kind of are taken out of context. So people might have started using the term ‘people of color,’ within their own communities, and people from outside those communities saw this happening and were like, ‘Oh, I can use that term,’ without really understanding the nuances behind it.” Part of acknowledging the unique experiences of different communities lies in interacting with people of different backgrounds and building the capacity for discussion. As part of her job, Conaway said she strives to foster equity, inclusion and belonging for all of the students and families in PAUSD. To do so, she encourages people to communicate and interact with people who come from different races and backgrounds to see beyond the racial stereotypes perpetuated in the media and popular culture. “I think that it's going to be extremely important, if there is going to be any change, for us to recognize and accept differences,” Conaway said. “Part of our growth as a society, and as a community, is about recognizing that there are differences and being able to embrace those differences and look at it as a source of strength rather than something that we have to be fearful of.”

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The doors of San Mateo’s Antoine’s Cookie Shop have opened at its second location in Town and Country Village, replacing Babka by Ayelet, which closed earlier this year. PHOTO FROM ANTOINE TANG Owner Antoine Tang started his cookie business eight years ago, baking chocolate chip cookies at night and selling them online or at food truck events before opening his first store in San Mateo in 2015. “We had to shut down the ordering part of our website because we were so swamped with orders and I knew I couldn’t keep up,” Tang said. “A lot of angry customers came and said, ‘Oh I wish you were open,’ so I knew we had to open a shop soon.” Over the years, Tang said the prospect of a second storefront had been on his mind, although he didn’t have a location in mind until

the Palo Alto one became available for lease. “The opportunity to open in Palo Alto Town and Country was a great opportunity, and I really wanted to seize upon it, especially opening in a spot where it was already suited for a bakery,” Tang said. “(Babka by Ayelet) spent a ton of money making that spot really nice; the marble table you see, the quartz granite at the back, the nice cabinets.” Tang said Antoine’s Cookie Shop had a successful opening weekend at Town and Country, selling 2106 cookies on its opening day and about 4000 cookies over the entire weekend. Employee Mendel Greene said he was not expecting so many orders. “It was crazy,” Greene said. “I trained at the other location to get ready for the opening of this location, and the process of baking on time to make sure all the cookies were ready to go was very helpful because we had a lot of people coming in and ordering online.” Tang said sales have slowed since opening weekend. However, he said he is hopeful business will grow as the word about his cookie shop spreads throughout Palo Alto. “Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday (of opening week) were pretty slow which is a little concerning,” Tang said. “But I think it just takes time for the greater part of the neighborhood to find out about us.”

Tang said he is optimistic because his San Mateo location was a late bloomer — its sales were better in 2020 than in 2019. He said the success of his business has a lot to do with the community members becoming familiar with the store. “It is going to take time for the folks in Palo Alto to find out about us and to make us a part of their routine,” Tang said. “I think what we have in San Mateo is that we became a part of the routine for a lot of folks. A lot of people that would come would be customers that would come in every day just to get one cookie.” Tang isn’t the only one who said his customer base will grow. Employee Lauryn Heath, who works at both the San Mateo and Palo Alto locations, said it would as well. “Not too many people know about this location,” Heath said. “I think within the next two weeks, we are definitely going to be gaining more traction with more customers coming in.” And as for the customers? They’re loving the addition of Antoine’s Cookie Shop to Town and Country Village. Cindy Kwon, a loyal customer of Antione’s San Mateo storefront and now Palo Alto’s, said, “I think their flavors are pretty unique, and I think the quality is really well done.”

The Campanile

Friday, February 12, 2021

Lifestyle

Pandemic affects part-time jobs

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"#$%&#$'()%*#$$+%,#-./+0%(1#$#2%+$%#3+'/%4)(3% "#)%5(&&%'$%*+$6+)7%-"+-%)#+28%9!#%+)#%2'&:($; -'$6'$<%-"#%1(&'-'($%+-%-"#%#$2%(4%-"#%3($-"8=% &"#%>+&%'$%&"(:?%-"+-%&"#%>+&%+5(6-%-(%/(&#%"#)%@(5A% Tetzlaff said she has been a lifethe long wait,” Baker guard at the University Club in Palo said. “Wearing masks Alto for the past three summers, but only made it harder her part-time job during the summer to handle complaints of 2020 was canceled due to social since it was hard to hear distancing requirements that reduced (behind the plexiglass the number of swimmers who could dividers).” be in the pool at one time. Alongside chal“(The) pool monitor (position) lenges with customer was created specifically for COVID,” interactions, Baker said Tetzlaff said. “But seeing how the she experienced other UC started cutting down these shifts difficulties such as not at the end of November, I could tell being able to take off her their business was not going well.” mask for a snack break While Teztlaff said she was upset and receiving fewer tips about losing her job, she was even since Peet’s Coffee went more upset about losing her only cashless. way to escape the repetition of her When looking at the home life. Commuting to work and impact COVID-19 has switching up her environment was her brought to the part-time method of mentally refreshing and job section. Work Exgetting off her electronics. perience on Employers’ “When I get overwhelmed from Premises teacher Rachel being on Zoom all day at home and Kaci said she has received being around my family, going to a lot fewer requests for work would be the highlight of my work permits over the day, but now I feel stressed since I last five months. need to find an alternative,” Teztlaff “We process roughly 500 said. permits (in a normal year), Retail store employees like senior and even though most of Jasmine Baker were also negatively them are during the summer, impacted by COVID-19 restrictions we’re only at close to 200 right now,” and had to be flexible with adjustKaci said. “(But) I have seen an inments. Baker said she first got hired at crease in students reaching out to me Peet’s Coffee on San for help with getting Antonio before the a job this year compandemic, but because pared to last year.” of COVID-19 outKaci said she has A!/(.#"6/++(#"*')21(BCC( breaks and store closbeen receiving emails ings, she said she was students asking ./#5%-+(D%&(3(&"#532( from relocated to a Peet’s for advice on how to in Mountain View resumes, getting 1/3#E,(3&4(/?/&(-)"*')( write and then to the one in letters of recomPalo Alto on Homer 5"+-("@(-)/5(3#/(4*#%&'( mendations for the Avenue. resumes and help “At the beginning -)/(+*55/#,(F/G#/("&21( with finding paid job of the pandemic, many opportunities. While employees got laid off, 3-(62"+/(-"(HCC(#%')-( filing the work perbut luckily I was only mits, Kaci said she &"FIJ unable to work for noticed Paly students three months before were getting more returning,” Baker said. involved in research !"#$%&'("#) After she returned internships during to work in April, the pandemic. Baker said she noticed “Due to COVID drastic changes, such as the increasin particular, students are working ing number of online drink orders with professors as close as Stanford she receives. Accustomed to working and as far away as the Netherlands,” with at least 2-3 coworkers, Baker Kaci said. “It is a safer alternative was overwhelmed with high customer where students can earn money and demand when working with just one get insight into their possible future other co-worker. studies and career.” “When I had to prepare 20+ drinks Although the pandemic has made at once, I got many complaints about it difficult for students to get involved

ART BY SASHA LEHRER

in part-time jobs, Kaci said she and other staff members are trying to help students by organizing the annual PAUSD Career Month in March, which will be virtual this year. Kaci said, “We are planning to launch a library of (prerecorded) videos and then host live Q&A sessions during lunch so that students can interact with the speaker.”

By Hyunah Roh Senior Staff Writer

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Senior Madeline Lohse’s family has gotten bigger over quarantine as they adopted two cats. These new pets have brought lots of joy to the family and she could not imagine life without them. In addition to her two cats adopted from the Pets In Need shelter, Lohse also adopted a dog named Miko from the Bay Area Siberian Husky Rescue in 2016. Lohse said her experi-

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ence with these pets became a new source of happiness in her family’s life. “As time went on I loved my cats more and more because we practically raised them from three weeks old. It’s almost a little scavenger hunt to find the cats and they bring me and my family lots of happiness, they are great de-stressors, and they are fun and energetic.” Raising these pets also brought along challenges. “When the cats were little, the biggest challenge was getting them comfortable around Miko and Miko comfortable around them,” Lohse said. “This work paid off, since now they get along better than I would have ever expected.”

Lohse added, “Foster from when (the pets) are

little. I think it will make you appreciate them more since you practically raised them through kittenhood or puppyhood.” Animal shelters across the world are all facing a unique situation. Because people are forced to stay home during the pandemic, the demand for a furry companion has increased to the extent where some shelters are empty. Local organizations such as Doggie Protection Services have seen a large influx of people interested in adoption. DPS Executive Director Tera McCurry said people who are forced to stay at home more than ever are driving the increased interest in getting a pet.“The greatest change for us is that we get hundreds of applications daily for our dogs,” McCurry said. “We received over 25,000 applications (in 2020) compared to maybe 5,000 total the year before.” Journalism teacher Paul Kandell said he and his wife have fostered eight dogs since the beginning of the pandemic. “As soon as this started,

my wife put us on the list, and (now) we take dogs in for a few weeks at a time until they got adopted,” Kandell said. Kandell said he and his wife realized just how many pets needed help and knew they could use a distraction from the pandemic. “We thought about getting a dog for a long time but we are in a townhouse so the space is not ideal. However, we knew we would be home which was the big thing, unlike our normal jobs. We now have the ability to be with a pet for the whole day,” Kandell said. With so many people demonstrating interest in adoption in a pandemic, the process of adopting a pet has also changed in many cases. “What is different is that we used to have bi-weekly adoption events, and we haven’t had any adoption events since Covid. Instead, we meet with each individual adopter as they are approved for adoption,” she said. For Kandell the process of adoption has also changed. “During the drop off process, it is important to make sure that you’re not shaking

people’s hands and keeping it contactless,” Kandell said. For those who are interested in adopting a pet, Kandell said, “Each dog takes a little while to relax in your home and to reveal its various personality quirks. For example, they might not play a lot initially but over the course of some weeks they loosen up and become more playful.” McCurry said she and her co-workers at DPS appreciate people, like the Kandells, who are able to handle several different types of dogs. “The folks who come in and are willing to foster a dog who needs a foster regardless of breed, age, etc are the ones who are most needed by any organization,” she said. Even though the adoption process can be complicated, Kandell said he has found it is also gratifying. “It has been a very rewarding experience,” Kandell said. “My whole family has participated, and we tend to go on more walks individually and as a group. This has brought people together just to play with the pets, and it’s been fun.”

,((%36:"%$#>&%:+$% 5#%(B#)>"#/3'$< By Kyla Schwarzbach Staff Writer

If there’s one thing almost every teen vowed to leave behind in 2020, it’s doom scrolling — a phrase used to describe a feeling of being trapped in a constant consumption of often-negative news that can have a detrimental effect on people’s mental health. For junior Sophia Baginskis, finding a balance between being vocal on social media and becoming overwhelmed by news was a 2020 struggle. “I do feel overwhelmed by the news quite often,” Baginskis said. “It’s difficult to be a teenager during such a constantly changing time, and it feels like every day for the past year I wake up to a new tragedy or monstrous change. It’s a weird contrast because I am happy to see youth advocating for things they believe in on social media, but it can also feel overwhelming.” Baginskis, who co-founded a program called “Teens Create Change” to get out the vote for senate races over the summer, is not alone in feeling this way. Many students say they are experiencing similar levels of exhaustion while constantly refreshing news broadcasts and social media feeds. The news cycle — which never sleeps — combined with the pressure to stay active on social media and to stay up-to-date on news can be suffocating. “Many days I wake up and feel that I am not doing enough, no matter if I spend my entire day helping others,” Baginskis said. “There is also a negative side of social media in which high schoolers shame others for not speaking out about different issues. This creates a problem because many people have 1,000 other reasons for not posting on social media, besides not believing in the cause.” The vortex of Instagram reposts has the potential to be powerful and help give a voice to good causes. But it can also pile onto an already inundated timeline. “There has been a lot of overwhelming news in general,” Aquino said. “There’s a lot of different layers about someone wanting to stay informed, feeling a responsibility to stay informed and constantly getting the news updates because the 24 hour news cycle doesn’t sleep. I definitely have experienced that every time I download a new news app.” Aquino also recommends students silence notifications on news apps so that rather than remaining constantly distracted by updates from multiple apps every few minutes, users only read the news when they have the time to absorb it. Baginskis said she already opts for this approach which allows her to avoid cycles of doom scrolling. “We’re bombarded by these news notifications, so it’s normal to feel overwhelmed by this information, so it’s good to take a step back,” said Kate Minutillo, lead therapist of Paly’s Counseling and Support Services for Youth. “We all have stuff we need to do throughout the day … so it’s good to keep a schedule and schedule in the things we need to do … and to also schedule in self care.” Senior Dani Colman said “(Especially) when it comes to social media, it’s important to ask ourselves why we are posting, and what it means. Social media can be extraordinarily overwhelming and even emotionally harmful. However, as we’ve seen in the past few days, coming together through social media and using your online presence to speak up can drive significant change within a community.”

Friday, February 12, 2021

The Campanile

Lifestyle

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S History teacher Greer Stone has been a Star Wars fan since he was a child and remembers discussing Star Wars with his friends in school. With “The Mandalorian” becoming instantly popular after its release a year ago, many loyal Star Wars fans like him have been ecstatic with the new television series. Star Wars is probably best known as a film franchise, but its most recent incarnation “The Mandalorian” shows the story translates to television as well. The series concluded its second season, building on the impact the franchise has already had on the entertainment industry. Fans of the “The Mandalorian’’ are present all over the world, including at Paly. Senior Jett Ng is an avid Star Wars fan, and said he has been captivated by “The Mandalorian’’ for the past year. “The Mandalorian has definitely been one of the most popular TV shows. Everyone was obsessed with Baby Yoda and each episode was highly anticipated,” Ng said. Junior James Churchley said he loved the original Star Wars movies when he was younger, and recently picked up “The Mandalorian.” He credits the majority of the show’s success to Baby Yoda: a miniature of the original Yoda who attracted troves of fans in the original trilogy. “Baby Yoda currently has got a lot of people hooked to the show,” Churchley said. “This is great for Star Wars because some people who are now watching did not grow up with Star Wars.”

While the presence of an iconic character certainly helps rope in new supporters, “The Mandalorian” also provides a side of Star Wars that appeals to loyal fans, Ng said. “It was really refreshing that they let us see a side of Star Wars that’s never shown in the movies, one without Jedi, instead focusing on the more forgotten aspects of Star Wars,” Ng said. Stone has been a lifetime Star Wars fan and said he loved how Season 2 of “The Mandalorian” ended. “I thought it was a great finale,” Stone said. “The

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Aidan Seto

epic finish that the season deserved. People seem to really like the finale, from what I see on social media and from talking with friends.” Ng also gives the Season 2 finale high praise. “I personally really liked the finale and thought it was a great way to end the season,” Ng said. “I like it so much that I would honestly be satisfied if they ended the show right then and there.” The success of “The Mandalorian” could not have come at a more opportune time for Disney. The reception of the Star Wars sequels released by Disney from 2015 to 2019 were mixed and left many Star Wars fans like Stone questioning Disney’s ability to tell a good Star Wars story. “I was a little disappointed in the direction Disney took with Star Wars after the release of the sequels,” Stone said. “I think the Mandalorian is a great recovery and brings back the fun and energy that has been lacking a bit.” The success of the show has also dramatically increased subscriptions to its Disney+ service. According to Churchley, with just the addition of “The Mandalorian” to the franchise, Star Wars has reversed the negative opinions and erased the doubt that arose following the sequels. “With everyone supporting the show and making it as popular as it is, Disney has definitely made a great decision with the Mandalorian and is definitely on track for big things,” Churchley said. In the wake of the success of “The Mandalorian,” Star Wars is seeing a new group of younger fans. And Stone said Disney has crafted precisely what it needs to preserve the Star Wars legacy for decades. “I’m glad that Disney is finally handling Star Wars better,” Stone said. “The Mandalorian creates a new generation of Star Wars fans, which is great for the entire Star Wars community.”

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Scrutinizing Pinterest for a burst of inspiration, junior Hannah Yau chooses from a vibrant palette of stationery and opens her bullet journal, laying out her intricate design for next month’s spread. Bullet journaling, an artistic way of planning and tracking events through the use of monthly spreads and to-do lists helps many people like Yau stay on top of their schedules in an artistic way. “I bullet journal to keep myself organized, but I also use it as a creative outlet,” Yau said. “Even though it’s pretty systematic, I get to experiment with lettering, layouts, themes and drawings which is fun.” While typical journals might consist of a monthly calendar spread with an overview of the events for the month and are often designed to match a theme, bullet journals can include drawings and features such as mood, sleep and habit trackers. “I did a lavender theme in April this

year,” Yau said. “Even though the theme was pretty simple, I made a mood tracker and playlist spread which I was proud of. One spread that I want to make is kind of a vision board for the rest of junior year. I’ll probably include things that I want to try, some goals I have and some photos and quotes that inspire me.” Junior Grace Choi said she makes some of her bullet journal spreads about her favorite music, featuring songs she likes. “I make spreads about K-pop, like recent comebacks,” Choi said. “I also have made spreads just for a daily log if I feel like I need to let out my feelings.” To accessorize journals, bullet journalists often uses stationery and highlighters known as Mildliners — colorful pens and watercolor. Gandhi said she also uses Tombow brush pens for calligraphic lettering. Since pages in a bullet journal are primarily hand-drawn, Gandhi said it’s an especially

time-consuming hobby, but the long hours are well-spent and bring her many benefits. “Instead of spending my time on a phone or other device, I can bullet journal instead,” Gandhi said. “It definitely helps me reduce my screen time.” Choi said she enjoys the freedom to customize her journal to accommodate her needs and tastes. “It can be as simple as you want or super decorative and complex,” Choi said. “It’s a really good way to let out your creativity and have fun because, for me, journaling is how I was able to use my lettering for something actually useful and also just a way to relax after a stressful school day.” Yau agrees and said traditional planners and journals are more constrictive. “I tried to use a store-bought planner before I found bullet journaling, and I always ended up not using them after a semester or so because each page was already set in stone, and it got boring and mundane,” Yau said. “With bullet journaling, it’s so personalized that I can just make a spread that I need at that specific moment and try new things when I find I’m not liking a certain layout or theme anymore.” Paly alumna Ellen Chung started teach-

ing bullet journaling classes at the Mitchell Park Teen Center in the spring of 2019. During these classes, she said she taught skills such as calligraphy, organization and doodling as well as how to make journal plans for academic life or for fun. “The workshop is a safe space for creativity, relaxation and for teens in the local area to make new friends,” Chung said. “It’s a space for teens to learn about this creative craft and about how to bullet journal and apply it to their daily lives and also just to have a space where they can de-stress from school.” While Chung said she primarily uses her journal for academic planning, she said she enjoys making spreads for daily reflections, commemorating memories and playlists where she would draw various album covers. “I wanted an avenue through which I could be creative and also be more introspective and reflect while also being organized through my daily life and academic life,” Chung said. “I A ED OT LT found that bullet journaling BE ISA Y really helped me to TB AR de-stress while reflecting, so I think it’s a very valuable tool.”

The Campanile

Friday, February 12, 2021

Sports

Pandemic Practicing

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Multimedia Editor & Staff Writer

s she was beginning to think she’d run every last trail in Palo Alto, senior Hana Erickson, the varsity swim and water polo team captain, was finally able to get back in the water last week after the Athletics Department announced the resumption of athletic training on Jan. 20. “At first I was like, ‘I don't want swim to start, that does not sound fun right now, I finally have a good routine going with online school and working out on my own,’” Erickson said. “But after just two practices, I could feel myself having a way more positive outlook on life.” The Athletics Department officially adopted the Santa Clara Valley Athletic League’s three-season sports schedule on Jan. 21 for the start of official practices and competitions, approving the immediate start of voluntary conditioning for all sports. In this schedule, various scholastic sports are split between three competition seasons, each lasting up to six weeks. Each sport is sorted into one of the four color levels of the California Department of Public Health and the California Interscholastic Federation’s COVID-19 safety tier system based on their level of physical contact. The possibility of a sport being cancelled is still realizable and depends on the spread of COVID-19 around the seasons’ cancellation dates. “I think the three season schedule gives wrestling and all sports a chance to compete,” wrestling coach Jonathan Kessler said. “Wrestling is now in the third season and the practice start date is April 5, so this gives our sport some time to get to the yellow tier.” Erickson said she has noticed possible issues with this schedule, including the incredibly short break in between her season one and three sports. “It definitely seems like the schedule that they put out with the three seasons doesn't really take into account various schools’ spring break or the winter break in February that a lot of the schools have,” Erickson said. “It definitely feels like season two is going to get blown over. But them putting a schedule out there that seems like it might work definitely makes me feel a little bit more comfortable with the whole situation and it makes me very happy to know that they're really trying to give us some sort of season.” Though these three competition seasons do overlap, Paly Athletic Director Nelson Gifford said students can still participate in consecutive seasons as long as they don’t violate the California Department of Health’s regulation that students can only be part of one team at a time. For the actual competitions, Gifford said though he doesn’t have a clear idea of how competitions will work as of now, all the coaches are getting together with the representative commissioners for each of their respective sports to work on new league-only schedules, starting with the season one sports. “I imagined they may be kind of a rolling release, maybe sometime around Thursday or Friday, we might start receiving them,” Gifford said. “It's a very different year for athletics, a very different year for life … we usually know who we're playing eight months in advance, but we're not going to know what the next seven weeks look like until two weeks before we're supposed to start. And at this point, though, I'll take it, something is better than nothing.” As for practices, Gifford said that Paly is taking COVID-19 safety precautions that were successful in the fall and summer: masks, social distancing, having kids fill out a questionnaire when they show up, hand sanitation and spraying and wiping down any equipment that might be shared. Also, though voluntary conditioning has begun for earlier scheduled sports, Gifford said that a large number of Paly coaches are off-campus and therefore not always available to organize out-of-season conditioning. “Now that we have a three season schedule, it gives us a very concrete idea about when sports should probably start doing their voluntary training,” Gifford said. “We have played around with the idea of having just a general athletic conditioning period for students who want to participate in

sports but the coach is unavailable, but we haven't gotten there yet. Right now, we're just trying to get season one ready to go and then we'll address the rest little by little.” After the brief revival of Paly’s athletics in the fall, many student athletes have taken to training on their own. “I was going on a lot of runs and I was doing a little bit of dryland exercise at my house with whatever weights I could find around the house,” Erickson said. “When my brother was coming home from college, he showed me a bunch of cool at-home workout techniques that he had picked up on such as jump roping.” Varsity basketball player and junior Lucus Sung has been working on improving his skills individually as well since practices first got cancelled in the spring. “With a couple of exceptions, I can confidently say that I have practiced at least five times a week since quarantine started, whether it is by myself doing ball-handling, shooting or finishing,” Sung said. Junior Riley Herron said her experience is similar. The dance team, even in light of in-person practice reopenings, chose to continue practicing on Zoom. While online practice allows the team to work with one another, Herron said online training hasn’t helped her in the skill department. “Not being able to practice in person or as often has definitely affected my dance skills a lot especially since I don’t have the capabilities of practicing some of the skills I would be able to do in the studio,” Herron said. There’s just no way for me to improve the same way if I don’t have the right resources.” Self-discipline, it seems to Sung, is now a requirement for athletes who are serious about their sport, since it is harder for coaches and teammates to hold each other accountable during practices. “I think that since everything is up in the air, people think that it’s OK to stop being committed to the sport and show up to practices when they want to, rather than doing it for the greater good of the team,” Sung said. In anticipation of drop in commitment, teams are looking for new ways to hold players accountable. The dance team, for instance, has come up with methods that allow them to exercise together, ensuring their commitment to the sport stays on track. “What we do is plan specific workouts that we do together as a team over Zoom,” Herron said. “That way people are forced to do the workout which helps us stay fit. We also have workout buddies who we plan different sets of exercises with and do them together over Zoom.”

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!"#$%&'()*+,(*,!"%$'($# Recently, other student athletes such as junior varsity swimmer Ethan Chien and senior Vienna Liu, a varsity field hockey player and club soccer player, have been doing a combination of individual practices and club practices, which have started earlier than their respective Paly sports practices. “The practices are incredibly limited, with only one person per lane allowed to swim for only 45 minutes maximum a day,” Chien said. “It's disappointing that we don't get to train like we normally do, but it's for everyone's safety. Our school team coach has offered some training during the summer and winter of 2020, but like our club practices, they are pretty limited. I'm really excited to start athletic training again, because I know that high school practices will be a lot less limited compared to our club practices (since) less people means more time in the pool.” Erickson, who has already started training with the Paly swim team, said they have been taking similar COVID-19 safety measures. “We've been split up into three groups,” Erickson said. “We're going an hour and a half for each group. We all bring our own equipment, no sharing of anything, we have to stay six feet apart, we're wearing our masks when we're on the deck, and the group that ends at seven o'clock gets out at a different side of the pool than the side of the pool that we come in on so we're still able to maintain our distance.” Liu said that though her hockey field team has yet to start conditioning or practices, her club soccer team has also taken COVID-19 into account during practices; they separate the team into cohorts so their exposure is limited, and enforce basic mask and social distancing policies. She also said Paly practices can be 100% safe as long as everyone takes the correct precautions.

SCIENCE & TECH

VACCINE UPDATE

Learn more about the recent news regarding the vaccine's side effects, distribution process, and its potential implications for reopening.

Science & Tech

UNSPLASH / CLAY BANKS

Gamestop

UNSPLASH / HAKAN NURAL

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“Especially because field hockey is a fairly new sport, we want more people to join and learn about the sport and it's kind of hard for people to learn about the sport if you're not having practices,” Lui said. With ongoing voluntary conditioning and the turf field on El Camino reserved for the wrestling team two days a week, Kessler said the team is making sure to always stay six feet apart, wear masks during workouts, utilize hand washing stations and never share any equipment or water bottles. “One of the biggest challenges is not being able to practice in the wrestling room,” Kessler said. “Prior to COVID-19, we were in the wrestling room year-round and some of our individuals' biggest gains were from practicing and competing in the off seasons. Other challenges are lack of competitions and face-to-face interactions with wrestlers.”

0&'&"#,2&'3))4 In addition to the challenges the pandemic has posed to their performance, upperclassmen athletes face difficulties in college recruitment given that recruiters are unable to scout players in person. According to Erickson, one of the most important water polo scouting opportunities is the Junior Olympics, which was canceled last summer due to the pandemic. In addition, Erickson said it was very difficult not to have the times she would have sent to coaches from her junior swim season, which was cancelled last spring. “It was weird talking to coaches who were interested in me and having to send either really old clips for water polo or really old times,” Erickson said. “My friend had to film her practice the other day, just because she had nothing to send to the recruiter and she just wanted her recruiter to see what she looks like in the water right now.” Despite these difficult obstacles and SCVAL’s decision to not participate in CCS or State playoffs, Kessler still has high hopes for the season, with the team’s goal set on being SCVAL champions. “It's tough on the wrestlers to not be allowed to participate in CCS or CIF because we have wrestlers that have goals of being state champions, state place-winners, CCS champions, CCS medalists and CIF state qualifiers,” Kessler said. “These student athletes work their tails off to get to these levels and it gets taken from them. It's a tough pill to swallow. Even though this is a tough time especially for our seniors, our number one priority is the health and safety of our student athletes.” Meanwhile, Gifford just wants his team to fulfill his yearly expectation: to have fun. “I want every kid to enjoy being with their friends, to feel like they're getting something out of this experience,” Gifford said. “It's great to win, championships are awesome, we have a lot of really awesome competitors who are high achievers in their respective sports, but I think everyone, you ask them, what do they miss most? It's playing and being good friends doing it. So if I can get that for as many students as possible, then I'm going to take that one.”

Sports

PHOTO BY MAYA SINGER

Hiking Trails Review

Redditors and experts share their thoughts on GME's rise and fall.

Interested in hikes? Here are the top four local trails.

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Sports

UNSPLASH/ DYLAN NOLTE

Importance of Recovery

Athletes, coaches, and trainers find positivity during the pandemic. PAGE C2

The Campanile

Friday, February 12, 2021

Review of Bay Area hiking trails

Sports

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ooking for somewhere to hike and enjoy nature, tire your dog out, or safely hang out with friends? Here’s a list of my favorite hyper-local hikes within 15 miles of Paly campus.

!"#$%&'"(()*&+,-."(/0 My favorite in Windy Hill, the so-called 12-miler is a less trafficked, more challenging trail loop for the adventurous. Starting at WHO5, the trail cuts across segments of the Spring Ridge, Sequoias and Hamms Gulch Trails to reach Eagle Trail, a flat and narrow mile-long path adjacent to a creek. There, you can hop from stoneto-stone and partake in a creek hike with your dog or walk alongside the picturesque stream. Once you reach the end of the trail, you will follow signs along a residential road for Razorback Ridge Trail, which will entail three miles of wooded, steep switchbacks on the edge of the mountain. There have been sightings of mountain lions on this trail, so keep an eye out. In my experience at Windy Hill, however, I’ve only seen snakes. After Razorback Ridge, the trail loops onto the Lost Trail, a beautiful segment with chest-high grasses and bushes. Be careful to watch for stinging nettle in this section, it’s nasty if you get caught up in it.

Finally, at an intersection that marks the end of the Lost Trail, head down Hamms Gulch and then back across Sequoias Trail and Spring Ridge Trail to get back to WHO5. The majority of the trails on this hike are dog-friendly, and pups love the creek and all the curious smells and along this trail. I have, however, seen multiple garden snakes and one larger snake on the Lost Trail, so I would recommend watching your dog more carefully in that section. For this more challenging trek, wear sturdy hiking shoes or thick sneakers and bring bug repellent, plenty of water and a snack.

123(&."#/&4"$5/& 67"#5&'"8/ Adjacent to Windy Hill Open Space Preserve, Coal Mine Ridge is a small park dedicated solely to equestrians and hikers. The trailhead, which is located at the crossing of Willowbrook Road and Alpine Road, leads upward to an intersection between Toyon Trail and Old Spanish Trail and into the beginning of this 3.5 mile hike. Turning onto either the Toyon or Old Spanish trail will bring you on a lovely loop with narrow, isolated trails replete with wildlife. While moderate and low-elevation, the trails in Coal Mine Ridge are special in their own right, with breathtakingly large, mossy trees interspersed with dusty, beaten down

ART BY ISABEL TOTEDA

trails and horseshoe imprints. Also along the switchbacks of Toyon and Old Spanish Trail are rustic benches scattered along the side of the mountain with great views and rudimentary bridges. Another highlight is the rope swing tied to a massive tree off Toyon Trail. With a rope long enough to dangle you momentarily over the cliff the swing is located above, the beautiful valleys of Portola Valley are in full view as you swing back and forth. It is a fantastic location for pictures too! This easy hike is perfect for a big group and will take under an hour to complete. It is not dog friendly or accessible by mountain bike.

'20*/*92/&:38/&-&;(<"#/& =2#$&-&>20/(&'"(( This hike, which is located in

Skyline Ridge Preserve, is a 6.3mile combination of a there-andback hike and a loop that features breathtaking views. Starting in the main parking lot, the trail heads off toward Horseshoe Lake along a shaded and wooded path and opens into a plain-like grassy plateau with plenty of deer trails and areas for exploration. Alpine Pond is less visible and accessible than Horseshoe Lake, but it is still beautiful from above; the trail leads toward steeper inclines, madrono trees and a rocky path. Passing juniper bushes, the side of the mountain drops away quickly and stunning views of the nearby mountaintops and range surrounding the preserve stretch as far as the eye can see. If you’re feeling particularly energetic, take the mile-long detour to Gene Sheehan Overlook, which

loops around to a rocky cliff with cables across the edges and a short, climbable rock wall behind. It’s well worth the extra time — standing next to the cables provides one of the best forest views in the Bay Area, and scaling the rock wall extends that view of the verdant valleys and ridges almost all the way to the sea. The summit of Borel Hill is the hardest part of the hike, but offers a gorgeous view of Silicon Valley which rivals that of Windy Hill Summit as well as a panoramic view of the gently rolling hillside opposite the overlook. This lengthy hike is dogfriendly and partially accessible for mountain biking. While in mapped length it is not particularly extensive, the second part of the hike is challenging, especially the summits. I recommend bringing plenty of water and sturdy hiking shoes.

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Senior Annika Shah walks through the back door of the Perry Family Center Gym. She stands in silence, overlooking a sea of empty bleachers — the bleachers that were once filled with crowds cheering her on as she made the game-winning shot. Despite having a longer recovery period, she is left with the difficulty of having a training space and available trainers due to the COVID restrictions. Shah said the COVID-19 shelter-inplace has both helped and hurt her recovery. “Coming off an injury my junior year, it was nice to have extra time to do physical therapy and not have to rush into playing again for recruitment purposes,” Shah said. “Extra time has helped me gain strength back in the area I got injured, and it also helped me work on injury prevention for my entire body. But because the shutdown cancelled tournaments, I haven’t been able to

feel that game-like performance that I need to get back to.” The pandemic hasn’t just affected Shah’s physical strength, though. Missing out on playing games this season has also put a strain on her mental health. “Feeling physically healthy is one thing, but feeling game-ready healthy is another level,” Shah said. “I haven’t got to play a regular basketball game in almost a year and a half with the time out being mostly from my injury and the rest from COVID-19, so it’s hard to know if I have gotten back into the mental and physical aspect of the game.” Head Athletic Trainer Justine Iongi said the hardship in not being able to train normally can affect students’ ability to perform. “I believe the unavailability of having training facilities and having an athletic trainer available has changed the progression of sport-specific preparedness,” Iongi said. “Due to these uncertain times and drastic change in guidelines for physical contact with others, it created huge challenges for the athletes.” Iongi added that training individually while following COVID-19 protocol affects athletes’ performance. “Athletes can train individually and to

ART BY ZANDER LEONG

some extent with their team while maintaining CDC guidelines (social distancing, masks, etc),” Iongi said. “So with limited means and many restrictions, it challenges athletes to change the way they have to train and condition and cannot rely on previous methods used when there were no guidelines.” Iongi said she is limited in what she can do to help athletes because of COVID-19 safety guidelines. “As for my role, I cannot help them individually to the extent I did before and help them through any injury if they have sustained one during these limited trainings,” Iongi said. Head of Basketball and Varsity Baseball assistant coach Pete Colombo also acknowledges the new physical and mental hardships COVID-19 has introduced for athletes. “Not having the training room open along with not having trainers being available during COVID-19 has been tough on the athletes because now they have to be personally responsible to take care of themselves if injured,” Colombo said. “I don’t think performance levels have gone down much because a lot of the workouts are cardio skills, but just knowing that the training room is closed is an unsettling feeling for the players and coaches at times.” Colombo said the training room and trainers are an integral part of the Paly Athletic program, and not having them there has been hard on everyone. “(Iongi), because she cares so much, does come in at times but is not allowed to be on campus too much because of (COVID-19),” Colombo said. “The training room is a vital part of the Paly Athletic program because the training room not only takes care of existing injuries but also is hugely important to injury

prevention: from icing to just complete body care along with Iongi and her staff ’s very caring, safe and thoughtful atmosphere that the training room provides for Paly athletes.” Colombo added that with the training room opening up, athletes and coaches will have more peace of mind knowing injuries will be cared for immediately. “I think performance will get better overall because it means we are getting one step closer on the long road back to ‘normal’ and kids will feed off of the energy of the training room,” Colombo said. “The camaraderie among Paly athletes in the training room is huge not only for physical wellbeing but also mental. Often before basketball or baseball practice we’ll stop in the training room just to see the players or former students.” Colombo acknowledges the stress that has been put on athletes mentally because of the uncertainty surrounding seasons and competitions. He said the ever-changing news about whether athletes will be competing this year is frustrating and stressful. However, Colombo made clear that the best thing to lean on to stay mentally healthy during this time is each other. “The players help the coaches stay positive and the coaches try and help the kids stay positive by showing up for the kids, being there for them!” Colombo said. “I could not imagine being a senior and possibly not being able to compete this year. What I have been so impressed with is the seniors that have consistently shown up to basketball and baseball workouts, very impressive and motivating for us coaches to hang in there mentally with the kids and not throw in the towel.”

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Friday, February 12, 2021

The Campanile

Science & Tech

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STATISTICS FROM JLL RESEARCH

Lauren Chung Staff Writer

s the initial panic hoarding of toilet paper, masks and hand sanitizer begins to subside, COVID-19 still has a profound impact on the average shopping experience. Lockdowns and social distancing measures have discouraged shoppers from going out and shopping in person, and as a result, many have turned exclusively to online shopping. A study conducted by JLL research in Aug. 2020 showed that the percentage of retail sales through online channels had grown 11% annually for the past 10 years. However, in just the past year, this rate soared to 118%, and the weight of this dramatic and sudden increase in online shopping has been placed squarely on the backs of drivers and couriers nationwide. UPS driver Greg Matson said he was surprised by the increase of packages he delivered this year compared to previous years, especially during the holiday season. “It was very busy … everyone was working six days a week delivering about 250 to 500 packages a day,” Matson said. “In terms of volume of packages, this year was headed above anything that anyone has ever experienced in terms of delivery.” This holiday season, however, UPS was prepared for the sharp increase in demand for packages and hired additional help, something they have struggled to manage in past years, Matson said. “This is the first year UPS really hired enough drivers,” Matson said. “I think they hired about 300 seasonal drivers and ride-along helpers at the Sunnyvale office. In the past, I heard

that drivers used to work 16 or 17 hours a day because there was very limited help, so I’m glad UPS hired more people.” This shift to online shopping hasn’t had an equal effect on shoppers across generations, though. The younger generations — Generations X and Z — had an easier time adapting to it, junior Khushi Agarwal and parent Lisa Berens said. But Paly grandmother Maria Jeon, said older generations who aren’t as familiar with digital commerce have struggled to navigate through online shopping. Jeon said her complex journey of transitioning to online shopping included countless YouTube tutorials and a tutoring session offered by her granddaughter. ““It took me about two months to be able to navigate through the Whole Foods website and purchase what I want," Jeons said. "I still get stuck sometimes.” Born in 1948, Jeon had virtually no experience using technology until 2010, when she purchased her first Apple smartphone. However, even with a phone, Jeon said she prefers to write letters instead of emails and talk in person rather than on a call. Jeon’s stance on online shopping is no different. “After the pandemic is over, I would love to go back to the grocery store,” Jeon said. “Online shopping is not something that I particularly enjoy.”

Contrary to Jeon’s difficult experience adapting to online shopping, Berens and Agarwal of Generation X and Z, respectively, say they had no issues transitioning. Berens said she enjoyed the process of purchasing items from her favorite grocery stores, all from the comfort of her home. “It is really convenient to be able to order groceries online and have them delivered to your house on the same day,” Berens said. “Before COVID-19, I didn’t even know these services were available.” Similarly to Berens, Agarwal, too, said she experienced no difficulties as she was already accustomed to online clothes shopping before COVID-19 hit. In fact, she said she prefers online over in-person shopping because of the larger variety of clothes and added convenience. “I feel like it’s harder to shop inperson because you can’t always find the right size or color," Agarwal said. But when you shop online, you see all of your options right away.” So while the adaptations to online shopping have been a different experience for all three generations, it is unclear whether people will continue to shop online at the same rate after the pandemic ends. “I look forward to the future of online shopping,” Berens said. “I think it will be interesting to see how shopping in general will be impacted by the pandemic.”

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23456789*:#;;&$, "(++(<'*&$*=#>*?",#*/,)&$% According to Santa Clara Public Health Department Director Sara Cody, the County hopes to continue Stanford Medical Resident with its goal of allocating the Maanvi Mittal was among the vaccine to organizations that first healthcare professionals can vaccinate the highest risk in the Bay Area to receive the groups the fastest. COVID-19 vaccine. Mittal “Our real limiting factors has received both doses of the are actually vaccine supply. Moderna vaccine and said the We feel like we could disprocess was straightforward tribute and administer much both times. much more vaccine than we're “For the first dose, you fill getting,” Cody said. out a questionnaire beforeCody said the county has hand which asks you basic done the math to figure out things like, ‘Have you gotten how many vaccines it should any vaccines recently? Do you be administering to reach its have any known allergies to goal of an 85% vaccination the COVID vaccine? Have rate by Aug. 1, but it doesn't you had any reactions in the have enough of the vaccine to past to vaccines?’” Mittal said. meet this goal. “After filling that out, we got “We will be having to give our vaccines at little tents 91,000 doses a week,” Cody outside a clinic.” said. “That's a lot, which With COVID-19 domimeans that across the county nating what seems to be every we’d be needing to give aspect of society, a vaccine 13,000 doses a day for seven against the virus offers some days a week. We don't have hope. Biotech companies that many vaccines coming such as Moderna and Pfizer into the county. ” quickly produced vaccines Senior Sophia Krugler that Mittal said have few side says as soon as the vaccine is effects and could lead to stateavailable to her age group, she wide lockdown and shelterwill get it. in-place measures. “I think anyone with the Mittal said after getting opportunity to protect themher first vaccine, she waited selves and those around them for 10 to 15 minfrom COVID-19 would be utes in order irresponsible not to take it,” to ensure Krugler said. no reaction As the daughter of a occurred in teacher, Krugler said her mom response to expects to get the vaccine by the vaccine. the end of February. After those 15 “I think minutes, she it’s great was good to that she go. will be “Three able to weeks later, we keep got the second herself NG LEO R E dose, and it safe at work AND lLEX BY A was basically and that she can ART the same procontinue to do her job and cess,” Mittal help younger kids even during said. this turbulent time,” Krugler Mittal had said. few to no side Krugler also said she effects after both hopes the vaccine will come doses. alongside more opportunity “After the first for society reopening and dose, I just had a in-person activities, such as little bit of arm school. soreness “I’m hoping to be vacciat the site where nated before I go to colI got the lege,” Krugler said. “I’m not injection,” Mittal said. “After sure what fall of 2021 will the second one, like 24 hours look like, but I hope to be later, I did feel very fatigued in-person whether or not I and had chills and a little bit am vaccinated. If I’m not, of muscle ache. I know that hopefully there will be safety some of my co-residents and precautions in place for all some of my friends from students.” medical school did even spike However, in terms of how fevers. My sites had epi-pens vaccine distribution will affect and all sites should have an reopening goals, Cody says epi-pen." it’s hard to say, especially Stanford did have a brief now with new COVID-19 mixup in terms of prioritizvariants. ing which cohorts would “It's really hard to know receive the vaccine first, but and to have a set, ‘OK, when this did not affect Mittal. As a we get to this many people Stanford resident working at vaccinated then we'll be able a separate clinic, Mittal said to open, a, b and c,’ because she had access to the vaccine nobody knows,” Cody said. right away, and they’ve already “Nobody has a set number, begun administering it to because there's too many patients. unknown variables."

Avantika Singh Senior Staff Writer

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The Campanile

Friday, February 12, 2021

Science & Tech

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INFORMATION FROM REDDIT.COM

Krista Robins

Lifestyle Editor

ast week the finance world was in

disorder. Stocks rocketed, plummeted and rocketed again with Reddit users, the company GameStop and the investment app Robinhood at the center of all the commotion. A Reddit page called “WallStreetBets” encouraged individual sellers — dubbed “dumb money” — to buy the stocks of seemingly dying companies such as GameStop, AMC and Dodge Motor Vehicles. Not only were these companies tanking financially, but hedge funds were short selling and betting against them. The recent events triggered a heightened interest in stocks from Paly students, Economics teacher Debbie Whitson said. “Many of my students ask, ‘How is it that we can buy stock as regular people, like you and me?’” Whitson said. “My common analogy is of a grocery store: the stock market as an institution was set up to be like a grocery store, except it’s for buying and selling public companies stock instead of buying your groceries. And it is a regulated industry.” Within the regulated industry lies the trading app Robinhood which offers commission-free stock trading and exchange-traded funds. This app was used by individual investors — many of whom purchased GameStop stock through the app. Whitson said Robinhood does not charge users to trade stocks but it does allow investors to open individual accounts. Robinhood has access to borrowing or buying on margin; in other words, if a user wants to buy 100 shares of Robinhood, and they only have enough money for 20% of that, they can borrow the rest of that from Robinhood and make the purchase.

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Because of this, Robinhood is regulated by the federal government — they have to keep a certain amount of capital on hand in order to back up retailers’ purchases. If a trade goes bad and a user can’t pay for it, Robinhood gets in trouble, Whitson said. “My understanding now is that there is a little bit of finger-pointing at Robinhood for not being prepared for the volume of transactions that it was dealing with,” Whitson said. “There were so many transactions, they did not have the capital to back it. So, by regulation, they had to shut things down. Senior Chris Chen said he used the “WallStreetBets’’ Reddit page for advice when purchasing GameStop stock. “I bought a couple of shares at $318 and sold at $380,” Chen said. “The issue with buying into these stocks is once they’ve already been played out/had parabolic growth.” And Chen said instances like the GameStop stock buy-up don’t really benefit the the majority of individual investors. “It is predominantly the people who are organizing the movements that are making the money,” Chen said. “They know when to exit and are able to do so without the others knowing which ultimately results in a bunch of people getting fear-of-missing-out and chasing the money/buying at the peak.” Many are calling this financial event a David and Goliath story, with David being Reddit users and individual retailers and billion-dollar hedge funds being Goliath. “Major hedge funds will definitely need to be cautious and will likely be very cautious when over shorting certain positions,” Chen said. “I don’t really think this is going to end up as a win for the average retail investor because I see a lot of people who are buying in and refusing to take a loss.”

ART BY SASHA LEHRER & ADORA ZHENG

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INFORMATION FROM MACROTRENDS.NET