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ELECTIONS PEOPLE
Gamers find community in Davis Cards & Games page 5
Meet the candidates page 4
Davis, CA | Vol. 94 | Issue 6| 25 JANUARY 2019
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HUB BlueDevilHUB.com | Davis Senior High School
CRIME
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SPORTS
Swim team hopes to continue winning streak page 15
P-wing vandalism displaces classes
English teacher Carrie Pilon is back in her P-building classroom. A little dust in nooks and crannies is the only remaining sign of a breakin that disrupted classes. An unknown vandal broke into Pilon’s classroom, as well as the next door room shared by English teachers Jennifer Ramsey and Eileen Guerard on the afternoon of Dec. 27. In Pilon’s classroom, the vandals broke into the fire extinguisher case and activated the fire extinguisher, spraying down the whole classroom. This left a layer of powdery light yellow residue that coated the whole room. “It looked like the early snows of winter where you can kind of still see the blades of grass beneath but everything— everything is covered,” Pilon said. In the adjacent room where Ramsey and Guerard teach, many items were stolen and a laptop was broken; police believe someone jumped on it. The items stolen include the projector, multiple chromebooks, as well as more than $400 of personal equipment belonging to Ramsey, including an Apple TV that she uses for teaching. This incident caused Pilon’s whole grading schedule to be thrown off. The irony for her is that she cleaned up her whole room right before break, to be able to spend time with her family over the holidays. “I was looking forward to coming back on January 2nd and just leisurely grading the finals,” Pilon said. But, with the room and the final papers covered with residue, she had to spend time cleaning and take the finals home later. The clean-up process was long and extensive, and custodian Fred Marania spent two straight days vacuuming, wiping and cleaning everything that he could get to. However, the residue is still left in places and the administration will be giving Pilon financial support for cleaning. “[The administration] recognize that it will take several hours for me to do deeper cleaning,” Pilon said. The break-in also affected Pilon’s students as they recieved their finals later, and had to move the class to the library on the Tuesday after break. “That one 10-minute act of vandalism, that was probably fun, for some people, [but] it has a real cost, both financial and personal,” Pilon said. On Dec. 27, the fire alarms went off due to the particles from the fire extinguisher. Math teacher Daniel Gonzalez was on campus when this happened and called the police, according to Pilon. According to Principal Tom McHale, the situation is “under investigation currently by the District and Davis Police Department.” A similar break in occurred in the P-Wing over the summer. Ramsey and Guerrard speculated that the location may be an easy target because of its proximity and accessibility from the roof. THE HUB 315 W. 14th ST Davis, CA 95616
HUB PHOTOS/ Adam Dapkewicz
By ALEENA YAROVAYA HUB Staff
Junior Jonathan Lopez, center in red, maneuvers his team's robot around the arena, accomplishing tasks like block stacking.
ACADEMICS
Competition lets robotics students see how they stack up By TESS MCINTYRE HUB Staff
The goal of this competition is to stack the blue and green blocks on top of each other in red area and balance on a bridge.
The class competition gives students like sophomore Kade Gehringer a chance to fine tune their robots.
PRE- Std U.S. Postage PAID Davis, CA 95616 Permit. No 5
Sophomores Joshua Faith and senior Dan Tieu check their robot in between tasks.
Four green and silver robots zoom around a makeshift ring in the robotics classroom, stacking green, blue and red blocks as a two-minute timer approaches its end. The goal: to balance on a bridge and collect as many blocks as possible. The competitors count down five, four, three, two, one—and the crowd erupts as two opposing robots balance on a bridge at the last second. Introduction and intermediate robotics classes are competing in an in-class Stack and Roll competition this week. The competition is one of three in-class competitions led by teacher Steve Harvey to prepare for the official competition that the robotics team participates in in the spring. For Stack and Roll, students were divided up into teams of two, and each team had to design a robot for the competition. They had eight months to work on programming their robots and prepare for the event. “There’s no specific organized training, it’s more that students are given an opportunity to use what resources they have [...] and they decide how they want to compete,” Harvey said. While Harvey does give the students workshops to teach them about coding their robots, the students are allowed to be creative with their building design and coding. “We were also allowed to customize this time, so we added a lightup sensor,” sophomore Eva De La Peña said, displaying the feature on her robot. One pair, senior Ishan Meher and junior Jenna Spann, faced last minute problems with their robot—named Dot—on the second day of the competition, but did not let the issue bother them. “[Our robot] has been acting up. We had it going really well, but the mechanism broke,” Spann said as she and Meher tinkered with a flat metal piece and screws. “Part of this is just about adapting.” Aside from unexpected malfunctions, Spann and Meher cited learning the coding language, called ROBOTC, as one of the most difficult parts of preparing for the matches. However, they both agreed that the programming was enjoyable. ‘It’s just talking to the robot in its language,” Spann said. Despite Dot’s sudden defect, Meher was enthused by the opportunity and challenge of building the robot and participating in the contest. “It’s like a miniature sporting event,” Meher said. Another duo, senior Dan Tieu and sophomore Joshua Faith, was very confident in its robot. “We had some problems with design, but we haven’t lost yet,” Tieu said. “We’re just trying to get as many cubes as possible” “We don’t lose,” Faith added on. However, both teams’ fates will be determined today, when the final elimination matches take place. Aside from learning how to code, students learned skills like time management, organization, communication and problem-solving. “From my perspective as an educator, when students are given an open ended challenge and given the opportunity to approach it in the way they feel is best for them, I think that’s more inspiring for them as students," Harvey said. "It's more fun, it’s more engaging, and I think the results speak for themselves. When you see kids excited about the end product here, and getting to compete and being willing to stay even into the lunch period to finish, I think you can see the results working."