E D I TO R I A L S 4
UN I N
O PI N I O N S 5
NOVEMBER 2015 Volume XXVII Issue II
FE AT U R E S 6
S PR E A D 8 - 9
T HE
L I F E S T Y L E 11
E N T E R TA I N M E N T 12
S P O R T S 15
MHSTHEUNION.COM For the latest updates
STUDENT VOICE OF MILPITAS HIGH SCHOOL
Student bicyclist hit by vehicle on Escuela Parkway, recovers
N EWS IN BR IEF Marching Band Competitions There will be marching band competitions on Nov. 14 at Golden Valley High School and on Nov. 21 at Fresno State University.
BY ABIGAIL ECAL
Jack Emery Food Drive The Jack Emery Food Drive starts on Nov. 18 and ends on Dec. 10.
“[The car] smacked my body on its windshield. The next thing [I] know, it was complete darkness.” Senior Edgar Sipat
Fall play premieres The fall play, “Almost There”, will premiere on Nov. 20. Students may also watch it on Nov. 21 and Nov. 22. Tickets are on sale for $8 starting on Monday, Nov. 16. Buy yours at room P-10! Stanford Blood Drive California Scholarship Federation (CSF) and National Honor Society (NHS) are hosting the Stanford Blood Drive on Nov. 23 at the MHS Library. Students may either sign-up with a club officer to donate and can only do last minutes sign ups at the library if you are 18. CSU and UC college deadline College applications for CSUs and UCs are both on Nov. 30. Start perfecting your applications and submit them soon! Thanksgiving Break is finally here! Thanksgiving Break starts on Nov. 25. There will no school until Nov. 30. Girls soccer season start The first girls soccer game is a home game on Dec. 1 vs. Prospect High School. Their season continues with an away game vs. Pioneer High School on Dec. 3, home game vs. Washington High School on Dec. 5, and away at Piedmont High School on Dec. 8.
Terra Walls | The Union
Team rooms, currently used by the football team, include a flat screen television set, shoulder pad and helmet drier, and removable name tags for each athlete.
$67,000 spent on team rooms may engender Title IX lawsuit BY ANNEALICE DESCAMPS KRUPA PATEL TERRA WALLS
Renovations to the MHS locker rooms completed over the summer may constitute a Title IX violation, according to Deputy Superintendent Cheryl Jordan. The boys’ team room was upgraded while the girls’ side of the locker room had no athletic room to begin with, Jordan said. On Aug. 25th, MUSD School board authorized the MHS Modernization Project by spending $17,856 from Bond Fund 211 for the JV Football Lockers at Milpitas High School. For the Team locker rooms, $49,627.60 was approved previously in May, along with the JV lockers for a total of $67,483.60.
According to the US Department of Justice website, “Title IX is a comprehensive federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program or activity.” Because the team room is possibly out of compliance with Title IX, P.E. Teacher Deirdre Wyness as well as others are trying to work out a solution with the district. If they are not satisfied, Wyness indicated that she would file a Title IX complaint. “We met with Cheryl Jordan a month ago regarding the equity of the locker rooms and discussing solutions to remedy the inequity,” Wyness SEE LOCKERS ON PAGE 16
An MHS student was hit by a car while riding his bicycle to school on Escuela Parkway, according to Principal Cheryl Lawton. The incident occurred on Friday, Oct. 23 at around 7 a.m., Lawton said. According to Lawton, she cannot disclose the identity of the student nor the driver involved in the accident. The accident occurred before the crossing guards were on duty, Lawton said. “Fortunately, [the student] was OK,” Lawton said. “He got up and sat on the side to get ahold of a parent or guardian.” According to Traffic Safety Unit Officer Sergeant Sean Heneghan, the student is found at fault for not yielding to a vehicle close enough to be a hazard. Neither the student nor the driver’s identity can be disclosed other than the fact that the driver was a parent of a student in a nearby school, Heneghan said. The student identified himself to be Senior Edgar Sipat. Sipat’s perspective, however, contradicts the police’s account of the incident. According to Sipat, he was not
found at fault for the incident. Since the crosswalk light blinked yellow, it signaled that it was his right of way, Sipat said. “As I cross, there was this lady approaching, and she was 30 meters away,” Sipat said. “I was waving at that lady before I crossed that crosswalk. I crossed it and somehow the lady ran me over. [The car] smacked my body on [its] windshield. The next thing [I] know, it was complete darkness.” According to Sipat, the driver who had hit him did not flee the scene. The driver appeared to be in panic after she had hit him and also offered to call the police, Sipat said. “The lady was running towards me and crying and all shocked,” Sipat said. According to Sipat, his injuries include muscle strains on his left leg and grazes on both hands. He confirmed that he was not wearing a helmet. “Your parents say ‘make eye contact before you cross the street,’ but that didn’t happen obviously,” Assistant Principal Ethan Stocks said. “So it was a case of maybe the driver didn’t see him coming, and [the student] didn’t use the amount of caution while crossing the street.” It was easy to tell if he was crossing the street, Sipat said. “I was riding a yellow bike,” Sipat said. “If you were driving, you can see me.” [Sipat] was very lucky because he was not wearing a helmet, Lawton said.
Sewage back ups P.E. locker rooms, causes staff injury in G building BY DAVID NGO STELLA XU
The drains in the P.E. locker rooms have overflown with sewage three times during August and September due to tree roots in the plumbing, according to Physical Education Teacher Celina Reyes. Since then, the sewage pipes have been fixed, Reyes said. The sewage first came up in the boys’ locker room in the beginning of the school year, according to Reyes. At the time, students were not dressing out yet, so the school closed the locker room while it was being cleaned up, Reyes said. “You remember what the first week of school was like in P.E.? You’re sitting in the gym, taking role, getting clothes, and getting lockers,” Reyes said. “Some of the boys were going to put their stuff in the locker room, and they came out and told [Physical Education Teacher] Ms. Osborne, ‘There’s water coming up from the floor, and it stinks so bad.’” According to Reyes, at the second time, the same thing happened to the girls’ locker room. The third time, the boys’ locker room overflowed again. “The second time was on the girls’ side, where we made an executive decision to close it down and not have the girls dress in there,” Reyes said. “And the third time, the same thing.” This resulted in a large inconvenience for the P.E. classes, according to Reyes. The water was coming out and into the locker room, so students
had to get their things out from the lockers. P.E. was stopped for the day since students could not dress., Reyes said. “I flushed the toilet, and when I walked over to the showers, there was black water coming from the floor,” Freshman Taylor Tran said. The locker rooms, being newly renovated last school year and in the summer, have not been released to the school district yet, Reyes said. The contractor company, Kitchell, is still in charge of it, Reyes continued. “[Kitchell] called out Roto-Rooter, which is a plumbing company, and they came and fixed it,” Reyes said. “They said there were tree roots in the plumbing.” According to Assistant Principal Hilary Brittan, entirely renovating the sewage system was not part of the renovation plan that had taken place for the locker rooms last year. The old sewer is still there, Brittan said. “The things that are below the ground, that stuff wasn’t replaced, it was added onto,” Brittan said. “They added a second set of bathrooms so the pipes that went from that sewage we connected to the existing sewer, that is new, but the regular sewage system, that’s all the stuff that’s there from prior, that wasn’t part of the original plan.” There had been maintenance done to fix this problem, according to Brittan. In the future the pipes will be furSEE SEWAGE ON PAGE 2
Abigail Ecal | THE UNION
Superintendent Cary Matsuoka (right) addresses his plans for a new high school. Science Teacher Kathleen Downum (left), along with other MHS teachers write down their ideas, concerns, and questions for Matsuoka to answer.
Matsuoka plans for second high school
BY BROOKE TRAN
Discussion about building a second high school in Milpitas occurred Oct. 14 at a staff meeting led by Superintendent Cary Matsuoka. According to Matsuoka, the projected population growth for Milpitas is so overwhelming that the decision on whether to build another high school needs to take place. At the meeting, Matsuoka showed calculations of how the population was going to grow in the next decades and then provided a breakdown of how the population would increase enrollment in schools. The meeting was simply to bring up discussion on
the topic since creating and presenting a plan to the district will take time, Matsuoka said. “The largest number we should plan for is 115,000 people,” Matsuoka said. “We could have [a growth to] 5300 high school students in Milpitas,” Matsuoka continued. 5,000 students is such a big number and we can already feel the impact of having more than 3,000 students, Matsuoka explained. Eventually we are going to reach a point where we can’t put any more kids into one physical campus, Matsuoka added. “The pipeline of housing [in Milpitas] is dramatic,” Matsuoka continued. “Milpitas is the hottest housing market in Northern Califor-
nia from a developer’s perspective.” According to Matsuoka, 4,000 housing units are in the pipeline for Milpitas. Because of that, the district has to start planning for the future now, and the four scenarios that were brought up have a price range from 61 million up to 116 million, Matsuoka said. “These dollar numbers are big numbers,” Matsuoka explained. “When we start asking [the community] for something in the hundreds of millions of dollars, we have to be thoughtful about that.” Biology Teacher Lisa Brizuela expressed some concerns with the curSEE MATSUOKA ON PAGE 2