Octagon 2022-23 Issue 8

Reparations Task Force uncovers significant damages

BY ADAM AKINS & IRENE JUNG

The scars of slavery and Jim Crow are visible everywhere in the United States. California, however, is the first state to take concrete steps to provide restitution to the African American communities impacted by centuries of structural racism. Restitution will take many forms, ranging from making monetary payments to repealing outdated laws to vitalizing communities.

The California State Assembly took action in the aftermath of the police murder of George Floyd and the ensuing racial injustice protests by passing Assembly Bill 3121 on

Sept. 30, 2020, creating the “Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans.” The Task Force’s final reparations report to the state legislature is scheduled to be released before June 1, 2023.

In March, the Task Force’s expert team outlined five key categories of ongoing harm from structural racism for African Americans in California:

• Health Harms: 1850-present

• Housing Discrimination: 1933-1977 or 1850-present

• Mass Incarceration & Over-policing:

• 1971-present

• Unjust Property Takings:

• 1850-present

• Devaluation of African American Businesses: 1850-present

These five categories have been linked to pervasive damage within African American communities in the state, with effects ranging from the personal to the financial.

Health Harms

Redlining is a pervasive policy practice that started during the Jim Crow era that uses eminent domain and malicious city planning to withhold services from minority commu-

nities. The pervasive effects of redlining can be seen in many areas, including in the health of marginalized communities.

A 2020 study by Anthony Nardone, Joan Casey and others published in The Lancet found that historically redlined areas have “significantly higher rates of emergency department visits due to asthma.” As historical risk ratings for African American communities rose, the prevalence of asthma also increased, illustrating direct correlation.

Asthma is not the only issue; an earlier study by Nardone also found that adverse REPARATIONS page 3 >>

Country Day community recovers from Davis stabbings

BY GARMAN XU, EESHA DHAWAN & SOPHIA MONASA

Two April homicides and one attempted homicide in May near the University of California, Davis campus left members of the SCDS community on edge.

High school French teacher Richard Day, who lives near the location of the first stabbing, was shocked when he heard the news on

the radio.

“Davis tends to be thought of as this quiet, sleepy little town. This was totally out of the ordinary,” Day said.

On the day of the first stabbing, he felt as though the town was on lockdown. Many shops were empty or closing early, and the town was eerily quiet, Day said.

Hearing about the stabbings has made him remain vigilant around his neighborhood, Day said.

CAMPUSCORNER

FINALS WEEK

On June 1 and June 2, high schoolers will take their second semester finals. On June 1, students will take the science and world language finals, while on June 2, they will take history and math. All exams will take place in the gymnasium.

HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION

On June 8, the class of 2023 will graduate from Sacramento Country Day. The event takes place in the Edwards Plaza at 7 p.m. All grades are invited to attend and celebrate the end of the 2022-2023 school year. Congratulations, class of 2023!

Among the dead was a well-known community member, David Breaux, who was stabbed to death in Central Park on April 27, according to the Davis Police Department.

Three days later on April 29 at 9:14 p.m., a local Davis resident found the body of Karim Abou Najm, a senior at UC Davis, in Sycamore Park. He had multiple stab wounds.

The following Monday, May 1, a 64-yearold woman, Kimberlee Guillory was critically injured when she was stabbed through her

tent at a homeless encampment.

She survived and was released from the UC Davis Medical Center.

The suspect, 21-year-old Carlos Reales Dominguez, was located on May 3 by Davis Police officers near the scene of the second homicide.

Dominguez, a former UC Davis student, was arrested on May 4 and charged with

STABBINGS page 3 >>

INSIDE ISSUE the

“Groovy Guardians: One Last Jam”

Read a review of “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” the finale to our comic book superheroes’ cosmic jam. (PAGE 15) COURTESY OF MARVEL STUDIOS

DYNAMIC DANCE Dancers from Fenix Drum and Dance Company performed in the Edwards Plaza to an audience of lower, middle and high schoolers for Country Day’s first Pacha Mundi celebration on Wednesday, May 17.

PHOTO BY ZEMA NASIROV

PRINT EDITORS-IN-CHIEF

Simone DeBerry

Garman Xu

ONLINE EDITORS-IN-CHIEF

Adam Akins

Samhita Kumar

NEWS EDITOR

Ishaan Sekhon

FEATURE EDITOR

Ava Eberhart

SPORTS EDITOR

Jacob Chand

A&E/OPINION EDITOR

William Holz

PHOTO EDITORS

Adam Akins

PAGE EDITORS

Andrew Burr

Jacob Chand

Emily Cook

Simone DeBerry

Ava Eberhart

Saheb Gulati

William Holz

Lauren Lu

Ishaan Sekhon

Garman Xu

Garrett Xu

BUSINESS STAFF

William Holz, manager

Aaryan Gandhi

Saheb Gulati, assistant Garrett Xu

SOCIAL MEDIA STAFF

Samhita Kumar, editor

Ava Eberhart, assistant

Lauren Lu

REPORTERS

Rehan Afzal

Siri Atluri

Eesha Dhawan

Aaryan Gandhi

Daniel Holz

Irene Jung

Sophia Monasa

Anisha Mondal

Anika Nadgauda

Zema Nasirov Ryan Xu

PHOTOGRAPHERS

Rehan Afzal

Adam Akins

Simone DeBerry

Anika Nadgauda

Zema Nasirov

MULTIMEDIA STAFF

Garman Xu, editor

Jacob Chand

Simone DeBerry

Ava Eberhart

Irene Jung

GRAPHIC ARTISTS

Brynne Barnard-Bahn

Lauren Lu

Garman Xu

ADVISER

Bonnie Stewart

The Octagon is the student-run newspaper of Sacramento Country Day high school. The print edition is published eight times a year, and the website is updated daily. The Octagon is committed to unbiased and comprehensive reporting, serving as a source of reliable information for SCDS students and the school community. The Octagon will publish all timely and relevant news deemed appropriate by the editors-in-chief and adviser. We seek to highlight high-school-related events and spotlight the voices of those with a story to share. Further policies can be found on our website or by scanning the QR code below.

Student leaders chosen for upcoming year

BY ANISHA MONDAL

Marking the end of the school year, graduating seniors from The Octagon, Medallion and Student Council have chosen their student leaders for 2023-2024.

The Octagon is Country Day’s student-run newspaper that publishes eight print issues annually and exclusive online content on its website for everyone to access.

Junior Lauren Lu and sophomores Ava Eberhart and Garrett Xu are replacing the current print editors-in-chief, seniors Simone DeBerry and Garman Xu, and the online editors-in-chief, seniors Samhita Kumar and Adam Akins. Bonnie Stewart, the adviser of The Octagon, is retiring at the end of this school year.

Junior Siri Atluri will be in charge of The Octagon’s new position: Director of Technology. Atluri will be responsible for managing the Octagon’s website and ensuring that stories are posted online in a timely fashion.

“We’ve decided to have Siri be in charge of operating the website and making sure it runs smoothly because that’s been a problem in the past,” DeBerry said.

The upcoming EICs will manage content for both the print and online platforms.

“By merging online and print leadership, students will be able to work better together,” Deberry said. “If these three are responsible for both sections, they’ll be able to give each section more weight because they’re sharing that responsibility.”

Eberhart is happy that the EICs will no longer have specific online and print roles.

“Since now we only have three EICs it would be very helpful to have everyone work together,” Eberhart said.

Eberhart’s goal is to get articles in on time. She wants to make sure that pasteups, the week where page editors design the pages of the print issues, goes smoother for next year’s page editors.

“I also want to make sure that no one feels left out and that people get articles and points when they need it,” Eberhart said.

Final semester grades for the Octagon are calculated as a percentage of points students earn by writing stories, taking pictures and designing pages.

At the Medallion, a yearlong elective

dedicated to creating the yearbook, editors-in-chief seniors Amaya Anguiano and Jackson Fox selected three sophomores to take over: London Hoffart, Priya Chand and Manny Biddle. Melissa Strong will be returning as the Medallion’s adviser.

Anguiano said her, Strong and Fox collectively chose the new leaders based on their ability to lead.

“They all stepped up and worked on a lot of design,” Anguiano said. “Whenever we ask who wants to design a spread, London’s always the one volunteering.”

Anguiano is proud of the work that the staff completed this year and is confident that the new EICs will succeed in leading the rest of the staff to create next year’s yearbook design.

Biddle plans to change the structure of how work is assigned.

“This year everyone was asked to do one spread,” Biddle said. “We plan to change it so that it’s more of a collaborative thing.”

Although he is sad to see the seniors go, Biddle is excited to take on the role of an EIC.

“I think the work might be more challenging, but it’s also something I enjoy,” Biddle said.

Biddle recognized freshman Claire Gemmell for being the only freshman who would be an editor next year.

“She’s becoming a design editor, which

is really exciting because her designs this year were really good,” Biddle said.

The Student Council, which handles organizing high school events, is going through leadership changes, too.

President senior Jonah David and vice president senior Callister Misquitta chose juniors Harper Livesey and Brooke Barker to be student body president and vice president respectively next year. Garrett will return as the Director of Communications, and Atluri, sophomores Saheb Gulati and Griffin Misquitta will be the new Directors of Finance.

Student Council adviser and computer science teacher Charles Farris prompted the new student leaders to assume the top leadership roles immediately.

Livesey, Barker and Garrett are taking over the weekly Wednesday and Friday morning meeting announcements. Callister said that the students made their choices based on leadership experience and involvement in Student Council. He considered how they worked in groups and how involved they were in Student Council.

“I think next year will be a fun year for everybody because I know they are very involved with Student Council and they are going to make sure to plan events all the time,” Callister said.

Octagon adviser retires after three years

BY SIRI ATLURI & AVA EBERHART

High school journalism teacher Bonnie Stewart is leaving Country Day after serving as The Octagon’s adviser for 3 years.

“It’ll make me sad, but I think I’ve given Country Day what I can, and I’m ready to retire,” Stewart said.

Stewart has been teaching and working as a journalist for almost 40 years.

“I was a professor at California State University, Fullerton for five and half years. I retired from there in December 2018. I moved to Sacramento to be near my family, my grandkids, my son and his wife,” Stewart said.

At CSUF, she advised the award-winning Daily Titan.

Before that, Stewart worked as an investigative reporter at the Indianapolis Star and then the Riverside Press-Enterprise.

After that, she worked as a journalism professor at West Virginia University, and then at Oregon Public Broadcasting as an investigative reporter also working in multimedia.

Stewart also cares deeply about justice and has reported on environmental stories and stories about the voiceless.

“I think journalism is something that has to be around or democracy is going to be in big trouble. I think it’s so important to have free and fair journalism in this country,” Stewart said.

“There has to be unbiased news reporting, or people won’t know what’s really happening and then they can’t make good decisions.”

Stewart initially took up the adviser position at Country Day because of her passion for journalism.

Since Stewart’s joining 3 years ago as advisor, The Octagon has won dozens of awards, including the most recent General Excellence award from the California News Publishers Association.

English teacher Jane Bauman commended Stewart on her ability to adapt when she initially joined the Octagon staff.

“I think it was an enormous task to come into a school that you’re unfamiliar with, that has its own very specific culture and has years of tradition behind The Octagon, and take over,” Bauman said. “But she certainly was very professional. She really brought her expertise to The Octagon and

elevated the newspaper.”

Stewart’s favorite part about working as The Octagon’s adviser was being able to mentor students in journalism. She loved being able to watch students work, talk about reporting and observe the staff’s process as they discovered the issues they wanted to cover in the newspaper.

Now, Stewart is ready to enter a new chapter of her life.

“I got a new puppy, I have a Roadtrek travel van, my sister just moved to the coast of Oregon and I want to be free,” she said.

As she bids farewell to The Octagon staff and the Country Day community, Stewart imparts her final words of advice to the staff: “Seek truth and report it.”

ROSY FUTURES Sophomores Garrett Xu and Ava Eberhart and junior Lauren Lu will be The Octagon’s editors-in-chief.

PHOTO BY ADAM AKINS

ROADTREKKIN’ Adviser for The Octagon Bonnie Stewart gets ready to leave for her next big adventure.

PHOTO BY REHAN AFZAL

Reparations: CA to make amends for past atrocities

(continued from page 1) birth outcomes could be seen more frequently in historically redlined communities. His study, which examined several areas within California from 2006 to 2015, found that overall mortality and preterm birth rates also increased based on risk rating.

While research is still taking place, evidence already shows that redlining and other discriminatory practices have had severe health effects, causing significant damage to Black communities in California.

Housing Discrimination

In conjunction with redlining, communities adopted covenants that barred African American families from purchasing homes in certain communities, including Country Day’s neighborhood. These covenants are most prominent in northern Sacramento communities, such as Land Park and Arden, while the most aggressively redlined communities fall in the southern communities like Oak Park.

These covenants were used by Sacramento developers as late as 1960, shaping the cultural landscape of the city, according to a 2012 book project, “The History of Redlining and Restrictive Covenants in Sacramento: Explaining Today’s Neighborhoods” published by urban sociologist Jesus Hernandez. This resulted in white communities defined by investments and African American communities defined by neglect.

In modern times, we see the median net worth in Land Park is over $800,000 more than Oak Park, according to Hernandez’s report.

Due to community investment in parks, trees and quality services in Land Park, the value of homes have appreciated greatly, while homes in Oak Park suffered with none

of the government support, as summarized in Hernandez’s report.

Mass Incarceration and Over-Policing of African Americans

The Task Force also found that the U.S. War on Drugs disproportionately affected African American people.

The federal government’s campaign against drug use was unevenly enforced, targeting African American individuals at far higher rates. According to data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, despite illicit-drug use in non-Hispanic white and non-Hispanic Black demographics sitting at a rate of 6.4% in 2000, four times as many African American individuals were arrested for drugs.

Over-policing of minority communities, itself a significant concern, has also led to a rise in mass incarceration. California Penal Code Section 2700, which deals with carceral rules, states that “The Department of Corrections shall require every able-bodied prisoner imprisoned in any state prison as many hours of faithful labor in each day and every day during his or her term of imprisonment as shall be prescribed by the rules and regulations of the Director of Corrections.”

As a result, a disproportionate number of African American prisoners are subjected to a system of unpaid labor that mirrors slavery.

Unjust Property Takings

“California built its cities over the bones of the African American neighborhoods that it tore apart,” the Task Force concluded. This was done “through eminent domain, building the highways, cities and parks” which have allowed California “to become the fourth or

fifth largest economy in the world.”

One clear example of this phenomenon is Bruce’s Beach in Manhattan Beach, a Los Angeles County community. This beach was a Black-owned spa and wellness facility that was taken through eminent domain and transformed into a whites-only beach, according to the Los Angeles County Anti-Racism, Inclusion and Diversity Initiative.

Only recently did the LA Council return Bruce Beach land to the Bruce family’s closest living relatives — a circumstance the Task Force’s team of experts cited as an early example of partial restitution.

Devaluation of African American Businesses

As of 2019, white households own as much as nine times more assets than African American households, the 2022 interim Task Force report showed. This devaluation is a result of redlining, which, according to the same report, isolates communities by limiting access to public services such as quality healthcare and education.

At a city planning level, African American communities are frequently listed as hazardous or risky to invest in. This, along with racism in our country’s private financial system marks the struggle of starting a business even harder for African Americans, as they are denied loans at higher rates than whites. According to the Task Force, this cycle has prevented the growth of familial wealth and equity in predominantly African American communities.

Meet the Task Force

The Task Force is composed of nine members from different backgrounds and communities. Gov. Gavin Newsom filled five of these

seats while Speaker of the Assembly Anthony Rendon selected two and the State Senate selected two.

The council is chaired by Kamilah Moore — a reparatory justice scholar and attorney — who was appointed by Speaker Rendon.

Moore’s vice-chair is Amos C. Brown Th.D., a Baptist minister who has fought for equality since the Jim Crow era. Brown was a freedom rider and was arrested alongside Martin Luther King Jr. at sit-ins in 1961.

The rest of the Task Force is composed of senators, assembly members, council members and experts in pertinent fields such as psychology, social equity and reparations law.

An expert team assists the Task Force in gathering research and creating a methodology for compensation.

This team is composed of economics experts, sociologists and historians chosen by Newsom, the State Senate or Rendon. This team has provided frameworks for reparations, strategies for the disbursement of reparations funds and forms of adjudicating reparations for the Task Force to vote on and enact.

For example, the Task Force plans to award restitution based on family lineage and state residency, which a “low threshold of proof.”

The Task Force recommends that each incident of ongoing harm, which they describe using the blanket term “atrocity,” should be heard by a tribunal, which facilitates court filings to calculate reparations.

In order to enforce and monitor the process of these tribunals and reparations, the Task Force recommends the resurrection of the California American Freedman Affairs Agency, a reconstruction-era program created to help settle freed slaves.

After June 1, the studied changes and recommendations will hit the legislature, and reparations may become a reality in our state.

Stabbings: Attacks on campus leave lingering fears

(continued from page 1)

two counts of homicide and one count of attempted homicide. He pleaded not guilty to the charges on May 5.

Breaux, the first stabbing victim, was a well-known Davis resident known as “The Compassion Guy.”

Day recalls seeing him often while going jogging.

“I used to notice him sitting there at the corner of downtown Davis, interacting with people,” Day said.

Day never saw Breaux approach anyone. Instead, people would come up to Breaux, and he would gather their self-defined meanings of the term “compassion.” Breaux published the definitions in a book named “Compassion.”

“He seemed like a quiet, gentle soul. I never spoke to him, and I regret that,” Day said.

Now, passing by the bench where Breaux once sat, Day sees numerous people gathering around the many flowers and notes left in Breaux’s honor.

“He seemed to have touched a lot of people’s lives,” Day said.

Another Davis resident, high school English and Spanish teacher Diego Panasiti,

was also shocked by Breaux’s death.

“He had this intrinsic motivation to find out what moves people and why.”

Although Panasiti only had brief interactions with Breaux, he said he took more time to understand Beaux’s intentions.

“I think a lot of people took David Breaux’s outlook on life and live with compassion and really honored him as an individual,” he said.

After hearing about the recurring stabbings, Panasiti said his shock turned into fear, and he prioritized being more aware of his surroundings.

In addition to Country Day teachers who live in Davis, former Country Day students attending UC Davis and Country Day seniors who plan to attend UC Davis were also directly moved to rethink campus safety.

Senior Ibrahim MoheyEldin is planning to attend UC Davis next year. He was informed of the incidents by UC Davis’ Aggie Alerts messaging system.

“I was startled, but I believe they arrested the suspect, so I felt relatively safe that it was conducted in a timely manner,” he said.

MoheyEldin said his views of UC Davis

have not necessarily changed, but the incidents did bring the thought of school safety to the forefront of his mind.

Country Day freshman Annabelle Do’s sister, Celeste Do, is a sophomore at UC Davis. After hearing about the third stabbing, Celeste said students were scared to go to their classes, even the ones that took place during the day. Some of her friends were even afraid to take the bus.

“A lot of students were saying on social media how they did not want to go to class,” Celeste said.

On May 2 the UC Davis campus temporarily pivoted to remote instruction for all courses ending after 6 p.m., according to the UC Davis website. These rules were in place until the Academic Senate approved the return to in-person classes on May 8.

Many students hesitated to come to class until it was absolutely necessary.

“After class, I would immediately go back home because it was so scary being outside and just risking our lives,” Celeste said.

The campus looked empty, Celeste said. She compared campus life to that of a holiday or weekend.

“There were a few professors and teaching assistants that would act really insensitively towards their students, but there were also a lot of professors and TAs who were really accommodating,” she said.

Country Day graduate, Tarika Brar ‘22, is also a UC Davis student and a cognitive science major.

Brar had an astronomy lab the night of the first stabbing.

She later found out she was in class around the same time. The thought of walking home alone during that time was nerve-wracking, she said.

“I was pretty anxious for the next few days,” she said.

According to Brar, even though none of the stabbings occurred on campus, she felt less safe knowing that a UC Davis student was one of the victims.

In order to ensure all students got to their destinations safely, the UC Davis Safe Ride system extended the time that the vans ran.

Students can travel to and from campus

via the UC Davis Safe Ride system by using an app that contacts a van to pick them up.

Although UC Davis provided a secure transportation system, students still felt unsafe because many of their classes during the day were still in session.

It wasn’t until after the third stabbing that evening classes were canceled.

“I feel like the school could have had a better response and acted faster,” Brar said.

FOND MEMORIES Members of the Davis community leave flowers and cards for those killed at the UC Davis memorial.

PHOTO BY ADAM AKINS

BY SAHEB GULATI

The Sacramento Kings’ meteoric rise to the 2023 National Basketball Association playoffs sent shockwaves throughout the city, reigniting Sacramento’s loyalty to its hometown team, boosting economic vitality and instilling a sense of community on the Country Day campus.

“We showed how Sacramento has life. We aren’t just this random team in California anymore. We’re a real basketball team,” said sophomore and lifelong Kings fan Max Weitzman.

The Kings, after a 16-year wait, shattered the longest-standing playoffs drought in North American team sports this century, according to the NBA.

For the first time since the 2002-2003 season, the Kings closed out the regular season at the third-highest ranking in the Western Conference, boasting the highest offensive rating in the league.

The metamorphosis of the team unfolded via a sequence of tactical moves, including major trades and cultivation of the team’s young core.

Kings Coach Mike Brown was hired, and strategic efforts were undertaken to acquire Domantas Sabonis and draft rookie Keegan Murray to join forces with De’Aaron Fox, the Kings’ longtime starting point guard.

Sabonis, the team’s towering 7-foot forward-center, delivered a stellar season, recording an average of 19.1 points, 12.3 rebounds and 7.3 assists per game.

Fox improved from previous seasons, averaging 25.0 points and 6.1 assists per game on a 51.2% field goal percentage.

Sabonis and Fox were both selected to play in the NBA All-Star game, an exhibition match with the league’s best talent.

Entering the first round as underdogs with considerable momentum, Kings faced off against the defending 2022 NBA Golden State Warriors.

Although the Kings were ultimately defeated, they took the best-of-seven series to its maximum length, barely losing 3-4.

Sophomore Imani Thiara watched the Kings playoff games from inside the Golden 1 Center, the team’s stateof-the-art home arena located in downtown Sacramento.

She described the atmosphere as nothing short of insane.

“The die-hardness of the fans has upped,” Thiara said. “It was the loudest arena I’ve ever been in.”

The return of the roar to Sacramento is reminiscent of 2013, when Kings fans set the then world record for the loudest indoor arena at 126 decibels, according to Guinness World Records.

Previously, Thiara doesn’t recall much anticipation surrounding Kings basketball. That changed this season, with fans flocking to rally behind a winning team.

“You don’t see sports being as much of a big thing anymore, so it was cool to see it bring people together,” she said.

Entering the first round of the playoffs, Fox was the inaugural winner of the NBA’s Kia Clutch Player of the Year Award and Brown was unanimously named the NBA Coach of the Year.

“To have that recognition for a small team is really important for our self-esteem as a team and fan base,” Thiara said.

Barry Broome, the President and CEO of the Greater Sacramento Economic

Council, has observed some of the positive economic and communal impacts of this uplifting season.

“If you were thinking about investing in Sacramento, this increases your chance,” Broome said.

Golden 1 Center’s presence has driven 1.5 million square feet — from retail to residential units to a hotel, according to the Downtown Sacramento Partnership.

Broome said that the Golden 1 Center is the biggest driver of economic activity downtown.

The Downtown Sacramento Partnership estimates that the arena will attract 1.6 million new visitors to downtown Sacramento each year.

Games also drive significant income to the city and the small business sector.

“Every game produces tens or hundreds of millions of potential economic impact for the community,” Broome said.

According to the Downtown Sacramento Partnership, the Golden 1 Center was at the heart of $6.7 billion dollars in investment by 2021, which is continuing to increase.

“The Kings might be downtown, but still do a lot for El Dorado Hills, Elk Grove and Folsom,” Broome said.

This positive economic influence is mirrored in the emotions and expectations of the fanbase. Fans, both dedicated and emerging, became invested in the Kings performance.

Weitzman was pleasantly surprised by their performance this season.

“I’m impressed. I never thought we’d go to the playoffs and take the defending champions to seven games,” he said.

One of Weitzman’s favorite moments of the season was the 176-174 double-overtime thriller win against the Los Angeles Clippers, where the Kings scored the third-highest points total in NBA history.

He witnessed firsthand the presence of fans on game nights, particularly during the playoffs where live screenings of games occurred outside Golden 1 Center.

Sophomore Wyatt Hall was happy to see the culture around Kings basketball shift to be more positive — the last playoff run the team made was before he was born.

“A lot of people joke about how bad the Kings are, but now they’re winning,” he said.

If the Kings continue to succeed, he plans to try to go to more games. The atmosphere in the stadium during the last match he attended, Game 5 against the Warriors, was the most electric he had ever experienced.

According to Weitzman, the turning point in this cultural shift was the laser beam.

In the 2022-2023 season, every Kings win is marked by a vibrant purple laser beam shooting from the Golden 1 Center into the night sky.

This display, the brightest full-color laser set-up in the world, spurred on chants such as “Light the Beam,” as reported by CBS Sports.

“‘Light the Beam’ is probably the best community brand I’ve ever seen,” Broome said. “People can feel the culture of our community by watching our fans.”

“We have a fanbase now that I never thought we’d have,” Weitzman said.

The presence of the Kings franchise

LIGHT THE BEAM Sacramento Kings’ fans celebrate after the Kings defeat the Golden State Warriors in Game 1 of the first round of the 2023 Playoffs.

is a mark of pride to Broome, as they chose to stay in Sacramento over relocating to Seattle in 2013.

Staying in Sacramento, the Kings became an integral part of the city’s

future, a role they wouldn’t have had in Seattle, he said.

To Broome, the benefits to community are clear, and not just economic.

“It gives people hope.”

KINGS STARTING FIVE STATBOX

2022-2023 PLAYOFF SEASON

De’Aaron Fox - 27.4 points, 7.7 assists, 5.4 rebounds per game

Kevin Huerter - 9.1 points, 1.1 assists, 4.4 rebounds per game

Harrison Barnes - 10.7 points, 0.7 assists, 3.4 rebounds per game

Keegan Murray - 9.7 points, 0.7 assists, 6.3 rebounds per game

Domantas Sabonis - 12.0 points, 2.7 assists, 7.0 rebounds per game

Stats from StatMuse

PHOTO BY SAHEB GULATI

Kings v. Warriors series

Nihal Gulati, ’22, enjoys Berkeley engineering program

BY AVA EBERHART

Nihal Gulati, ’22, attends University of California, Berkeley. He is majoring in mechanical engineering but is hoping to transfer to the aerospace engineering major next school year.

Q: Why did you choose to go to Berkeley?

A: When I got my decisions back, my original reaction to Berkeley was like, ‘Alright, definitely. This is an awesome college that I would love to go to.’

I also got into Georgia Tech, though. So, my final decision was between those two because Georgia Tech has a very good aerospace program.

In the end, I chose Berkeley because it’s closer than Georgia Tech, which is a lot more convenient, but far enough away that it’s not too close to home.

Also, Berkeley’s general engineering reputation is probably a little better than Georgia Tech’s.

Q: What classes are you taking this semester?

A: I am taking Aerospace Engineering 10, which is a new class that just started this semester. It’s sort of a wide spread of topics. We’ve done airfoil physics, a little bit of rocket propulsion, some orbital mechanics, some astrobiology and some drone control. It’s a very fun class.

I’m also taking Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences 16A. I’m taking that one because I want to possibly minor or double major in that. It’s circuits and linear algebra, which you would think is sort of an unusual combo, but they managed to make them work together.

I am taking Engineering 26 — that’s 3D modeling or CAD software. That’s a requirement for mechanical engineers.

I’m also taking MCBC 61, which is brain, mind and behavior. That’s a psych class. That class is interesting; we go reasonably in-depth into a lot of different biology aspects of the brain.

The last class I have is Physics 7B, which is heat magnetism. A lot of it overlaps with Advanced Placement Physics C: Electricity and Magnetism, and I’d say taking that prepared me pretty well for this class.

Q: Have you joined any clubs?

A: The club that I’m in, Space Enterprises at Berkeley, SEB, is honestly a large portion of my college experience. I do way more work for SEB than I do for any of my classes.

Every Saturday, we have a work session

at Richmond Field Station, which is 20 to 30 minutes away from Berkeley. Berkeley dumps all of their engineering teams there so we can hammer away and not bug anyone.

Currently, for SEB, we’re working on launching our revision of E1, E2, which has bigger tanks and a custom pressurant flow controller, and which we hope will double our altitude of E1.

We went twice in April to “hotfire” out in the Mojave desert, meaning we just mounted it and fired the engines at full thrust without it moving.

I mainly contributed to firmware and electronics debugging for things like reading sensors and opening the valves. I actually did a fair portion of all the firmware and basically became the go-to person for that when we needed to mess with it.

Over the summer, we’ll be starting the engine design for E3, which we hope will hit space. So that’s a lot of simulations and design work.

Q: How has Berkeley’s location been working out for you so far?

A: What’s interesting about all the colleges is that they all have very different vibes, and you don’t really realize this until you go and visit them.

Berkeley is very much in the city. The dorms are kind of off-campus and among the streets of downtown Berkeley, which makes for a different college experience compared to other colleges.

So, you just have to be a lot more safe about things. Things are going to get stolen if you’re not careful.

But it also means that you have a bunch of cool restaurants right next to you that are open pretty late at night. So, there’s always late-night food that you can go and get just a block away.

It’s also a very condensed campus, so everything is pretty nearby. Everything is walkable; bikes would be practically impossible to use because it’s too hilly.

Q: How is the housing situation?

A: Triple with three beds. The room is not very large, but you get used to that. It’s tight, but it’s just Dylan Margolis, ’22, and me now, so it’s fine.

Dylan is awesome. It’s really nice, especially because now, shortly after winter break ended, our third roommate also moved out. So now I’ve had three roommates that have each sequentially not stayed.

Now it’s me and Dylan in a triple, which is really nice because then some of our friends can stay the night if they need to.

Since it’s just Dylan and me, everyone can hang out there. We call our room the “Hotel California.”

Q: Academically, how was the transition from Country Day to Berkeley?

A: All courses will pretty much just do once-a-week homework assignments, so you have a lot more freedom to do the homework when you want to do it instead of having to do it every day.

That means you have a lot more freedom to either procrastinate or get things done early, depending on what kind of person you are.

I’ve just sort of adapted; it’s not been that difficult.

Q: What are your favorite places to go to nearby?

A: I’ve been to this music shop a couple of times called Rasputin Music. I got a record player from there, and Dylan and I have been checking out records from the Berkeley Music Library and just listening to them.

There are also three boba places every block.

Q: What is a freshman mistake that you made?

A: Sometimes I just forget to submit assignments.

I’ll complete an assignment and then forget to actually submit it in our portal. Don’t do that; it’s a pain.

You just want to keep track of things and run through a checklist in your head of all the classes that you have. Make sure you’re not missing anything important for any of them.

Q: What advice do you have for the class of 2023?

A: Maybe don’t do this during your first semester, but for your second, try and push your limits as to how many classes you think you can take because you might be able to manage it. In that case, you can get a lot more done.

My other advice is to look for clubs that you’re interested in. If you’re going to be an engineering student, I especially advise engineering clubs because they — at least the ones at Berkeley — don’t have strict applications.

You learn a lot, and you do really cool stuff in engineering clubs. A lot of clubs are going to be the same way.

College gives you the opportunity to rise to new levels, essentially.

FIVE STAR OR SUBPAR?

Quality of classes:

School Spirit:

Food: Social Scene: Clubs:

Location:

Student-Teacher Interactions:

SENSORY OVERLOAD Left, Nihal Gulati, a freshman at UC Berkeley, tests a pressure sensor reading circuit board for his Space Enterprise at Berkeley (SEB) workshop. Right, Gulati and his team build a rocket at the Friends of Amateur Rocketry site in Southern California. PHOTOS COURTESY OF NIHAL GULATI

EDITORIAL: Student Council should receive yearly budget

It’s a sunny Friday afternoon. Dozens of high school students are lining up in the quad, eagerly awaiting a sweet treat from the Student Council’s iconic monthly Friday ice cream tradition. Whether it may be a Klondike bar or an ice cream sandwich, the cherished tradition exemplified the spirit of the council in cultivating a vibrant and connected school community.

However, that tradition no longer exists because of financial constraints within the council.

The Student Council’s budget and bank account is not part of the school’s operating budget, said Country Day Controller Hannah Frank. Frank, who is responsible for overseeing the school’s accounting operations, said that’s historically been the case.

Instead, the account has been completely self-funded. All funds spent and earned come from fundraisers, dances, proms, other student-related activities and outside sources, according to incoming Co-Director of Finance sophomore Saheb Gulati.

Most of Student Council’s financial support comes from donations from the Parents Association, he said. Budgets are then carried over from year to year. Any money left over at the end of a fiscal year is rolled over to the following council, Gulati said.

This year, the account started with $4,900 in the beginning of the school year and; as of this April, the account is around $3,600, which will be used by the 2023-2024 government. This totals up to about $1,300 spent in Student Council activities as of August to April.

As a result of the nature of this financial model, incoming Student Council President Harper Livesey said that the council was especially cautious on spending this year, which restricted the council bringing life to the activities and initiatives they have planned.

“Sometimes, you never know what you get left with when you’re going into the presidency, and other times, and very often, the plans you want to do can’t get done because of that,” Livesey said.

Not only did that include the inability to bring back former Student Council President and alumnus Dylan Margolis’ ’22 beloved Friday ice cream tradition, costing upwards of $150 to $200 per month, other traditions like the midterms and finals goody bags ($200 to $300 per semester) to congratulate students amid their exams were also abandoned this year.

Despite both netting positive student feedback, they were sacrifices that had to be made even at the expense of school spirit because of its financial burden. Because the Student Council is also responsible for planning other events including school dances, financila concerns forc-

es them to prioritize certain activities over others.

Especially with high school prom coming around the corner, the relevance of a Student Council budget becomes increasingly important, considering the ever-sohighly-priced prom tickets. As prom approaches, the cost of the tickets progressively rises, starting from $50 to $100. This week is already marked at $100.

This high-price is largely because of prom’s substantial expense. The average cost of prom for the past three years (excluding the years during COVID-19) was around $4,000 to $6,000 depending on the venue. Last year’s cost around $5,000 at the courtyard of the California Museum.

This year, however, prom is set to take place on a moving train to Woodland, totaling up to a cost of approximately $9,800. As of May 19, $5,100 worth of prom tickets have been sold according to Gulati.

To further elaborate, because the majority of Student Council’s budget goes directly to dances (prom, homecoming and winter formal), the only way to make up the money to break even is by either attracting a high number of attendees or to just simply increase the price of prom tickets, said former and incoming Spirit Coordinator Co-Chair junior Ishaan Sekhon.

Oftentimes the case is the latter as a result of the small size of the school.

As a response to those prices, Livesey said she feels a little bad sometimes when she has to tell a student the lowest price is $50 especially when students either can’t afford prom tickets, are hesitant to ask parents to pay or are reluctant to spend their savings.

With a high cost for prom tickets, it creates a cost barrier for students which then further disincentivizes them to attend prom, contributing to an endless cycle all over again. As a result, Student Council often struggles to break even by itself as the rest of the cost is covered based on the generosity of the PA.

The problem does not lie only in the financial aspects. Especially with prom, it serves as a way to nurture school spirit by bringing students together and creating lasting memories. However, when a significant portion of the student body feels discouraged from participating due to cost, the overall sense of school spirit and unity decreases altogether.

Ultimately, all these problems of prom’s cost barrier and loss of school spirit and past traditions cycle back to financial problems within the council. The solution is installing a yearly budget of $3,250 to the council from the school’s operating budget.

That number comes from calculations considering the

2022-2023 year’s expenses and projected yearly expenses based on the cost of bringing back traditions.

To break that down, the cost of Student Council operation in 2022-2023 total up to $1,300, the cost of bringing back Friday ice cream tradition held once a month between September to May totals up to $1,350 and the cost of bringing back goody bags once a semester would cost around $600.

All of these total $3,250 per year which will be used to ensure these traditions stay for good with the rest of the funds within the Student Council sectioned off specifically for dances. This way, neither the price of prom tickets nor traditions are sacrificed for the other.

Sekhon said this plan has a practical purpose when it comes to prom.

“For prom, If we were to have a consistent budget, the cost barrier would either be completely gone or minimized. We no longer have to overprice our tickets anymore.”

It’s not just prom.

By having that fixed yearly $3,250 budget, Livesey said it would help her goal to bring back Country Day Student Council’s beloved traditions to show appreciation for all high school students. With it, she said she would feel confident that any ideas she or the council has or will have next year will come to fruition with little to no financial setback.

Yes, it is true that a fund of $3,250 per year is a lot of money. Yes, it is true the money could be spent to fund clubs or other high school activities throughout the year.

However, the Student Council is interconnected with the student body and represents the voices of the students. The money would still benefit the students even if it is not directly siphoned into other avenues that need funding, said incoming Student Council Vice President Brooke Barker.

At the end of the day, the Student Council helps build school spirit and brings students together with its activities to fully enjoy the Country Day high school experience.

It’s what makes Country Day, “Country Day.”

Perhaps Livesey says it best.

“Things like those Fridays last year with just ice cream and fun activities make us really unique like no other school. And I would really like to continue that uniqueness,” Livesey said. “I love the school, and I love that we have the ability to do that. So just bringing that all together with the consistent funding just would make me confident and feel accomplished next year,” she said.

“Unsuccessful Prom-ise” by Brynne Barnard-Bahn

MY ANGLE: Explore your passions during the summer months

BY ANIKA NADGAUDA

As the school year comes to a close and summer vacation approaches, many of us are excited for the break from classes and homework. While it’s certainly important to take some time to relax and recharge, I believe that summer vacation is also the perfect opportunity to explore your passions and discover more about yourself.

During the school year we are often stuck in a cycle of homework that prevents us from exploring our passions.

A person’s passions are an integral part of who they are. You need time to nurture the different parts of who you are to find what your passions are.

When you find your passion it helps you grow as a person. Engaging in activities that are meaningful and fulfilling will help you see yourself in a new light. You may start to identify with certain groups or communities, or discover new aspects of your personality that you didn't know existed.

These experiences can help you build a strong sense of self and purpose, which can be incredibly valuable as you navigate the challenges and opportunities of the future.

One summer six years ago I discovered my love for poetry. My sister had brought a book home and it included some of the most beautiful poetry I had ever read.

I thought it was so beautiful that I was inspired by it. I started writing small short poems about what I found

throughout the day. Eventually my poetry matured and I used it to express my feelings.

Now my poetry has become a huge part of my identity. My poems reflect parts of me that normally I have a hard time expressing.

Exploring your passions during summer vacation doesn't have to be a big, expensive undertaking. There are plenty of ways to pursue your interests without breaking the bank.

For example, you can take up a hobby at home, like painting, writing or playing an instrument. You could also start a book club with friends and read books that you've always wanted to read but never had the time for during the school year.

Last summer, I learned that I had a passion for extreme sports. I went ziplining and scuba diving with my family. The adrenaline rush I got when I jumped off the platform and felt the wind blow past me as I sped past the mountains behind me felt amazing. I realized that those feelings were what was missing in my life.

These experiences helped me develop parts of my personality that I didn't have before. I learned to be more adventurous and outgoing, taking risks like jumping off the high dive or trying new bike trails. I also became more appreciative of my surroundings, taking time to notice and admire the natural beauty around me.

These experiences can help you build a strong sense of self and purpose, which can be incredibly valuable as you

navigate the challenges and opportunities of the future.

Exploring your passions during summer vacation can also have a positive impact on your mental health and well-being. Pursuing activities that you enjoy can help reduce stress, boost your mood, and increase feelings of happiness and fulfillment.

It's no secret that school and other responsibilities can be demanding and stressful, so taking some time to focus on things that bring you joy can be a great way to recharge your batteries and start the new school year with a fresh perspective.

One way that I have found helps me recharge is baking. I pick new recipes which often include flavors or ingredients that I normally would not use.

Following a recipe helps me get started but I like to add my own twist to each recipe. It adds a fun element to each dish making it unique and it helps distract me from whatever is stressing me out.

Overall, I believe that summer vacation is a valuable opportunity to explore your passions and discover more about yourself. Whether you're interested in trying something new or diving deeper into a hobby you already love, taking the time to pursue your interests during the summer can be a fulfilling and rewarding experience.

So, as the school year winds down, I encourage you to take some time to think about what makes you happy and fulfilled, and make a plan to explore those passions during your summer vacation.

ADVICE: Coping with rejection and overcoming insecurities

BY ANONYMOUS

This is an advice column that responds to questions from anonymous Country Day students. To submit, send a question to the Google form sent out on May 11, 2023. Responses are not guaranteed, but all submissions are welcome.

Q: What do you do if you like a guy, and you were about to tell him, but then he told you that he likes one of your best friends?

As hard as it is to hear, I suggest you not tell him. I know that contradicts my motto of confronting the situation outright, but in this case, you have received confirmation that he likely does not reciprocate your feelings.

Of course, you can still go ahead and tell him if you feel that will quicken your process of moving forward, but I worry that it will only result in an outright rejection.

As I say this, I think it is necessary to discuss the topic of rejection. For many high school students, rejection is one of the scariest things. Students would rather bottle up their emotions than risk being rejected.

To those students, I must say that rejection does not have to be so scary. In many cases, it is only as catastrophic as you make it.

If you can move on from the situation with poise and confidence, then everybody will forget about it. If instead you choose to dwell on it, hiding away from embarrassment, then you will only make it harder for you and the other party to overlook.

Still, I think in this situation, the best course of action is to overcome your feelings for this boy without telling him because the possibility of reciprocation is slim to none.

While exposing yourself to rejection might work on occasion, by telling him, you run the risk of him handling the news poorly. Thus, for you, I think the bigger dilemma is how to approach this news with your friend.

There are two possible outcomes: your friend likes him back or she doesn’t.

If she doesn’t, you have very little to worry about. While you might not be in a relationship with him, you will also not have to deal with him being in a relationship with someone else, making moving on significantly easier.

Now, the issue arises if your friend reciprocates his feelings.

If she does, and you already know that, I suggest you have a conversation with her. Tell her about your feelings for him, but also remember that as a good friend, you should want the best for her. While it might be difficult to see your crush with your friend, you need to remind yourself that there will always be other guys.

Recognize that you would not want to be in a relationship with someone who does not feel as strongly about you as you do to him. In the meantime, distract yourself with other things: reignite your love for crochet, go out to brunch with a friend or binge watch your favorite tv show. In no time, he will just be someone from your past.

If you are unsure whether your friend likes him, I suggest you bring up the topic nonchalantly. Don’t jump right into it by telling her that he likes her. Instead, ask her if she’s interested in anybody right now. Tiptoe around the topic until you know for certain whether she feels the same toward him.

Once you know, act in accordance with the steps outlined above.

Q: How do I stop comparing myself to others? I always feel like I should be doing better.

For starters, I want to say that you are not alone. It’s easy to get lost in comparison, fixating on where people outperform you, but at the same time, it is important to ground yourself in reality.

When we compare ourselves to others, we have a ten-

dency to only focus on where they are doing better. If we are unhappy with our score on a test, we only notice who did better. If we didn’t receive the leadership position we wanted, then we only focus on who did.

While this is completely natural, it only harms us; we end up creating a distorted sense of reality for ourselves.

In a reality where everybody is better than us, it is only normal to feel horrible, but you have to remember that it’s not actually reality.

When you find yourself comparing yourself to others, remember to look at the big picture. Don’t just focus on your failures and their accomplishments; instead, recognize the times when you achieved something. Recognize that they too are human and have likely felt similar feelings of failure.

Additionally, it’s important to stray away from unnecessary competition. While life does naturally breed competition, it only fuels feelings of inadequacy. When you win, you get a quick high, but when you lose, the feelings stick with you much longer than the win ever did, making these unspoken competitions high risk, low reward.

Ultimately, however, the most reliable way to stop comparing yourself is to learn to be content in your own skin. Sometimes we win, and sometimes we lose, and that is why you should not define yourself solely by your accomplishments.

Your awards and your accolades are not you. Sure, you received them, but that’s rarely how people choose to describe you. Instead, you are defined by your personality traits.

Write out a list of your values, then make steps towards living in accordance with them.

You will find that in working toward becoming the best version of yourself, you will no longer feel compelled to compare yourself to other people because you are content with who you are.

THE WORLD IS

CALIFORNIA

California Polytechnic University, Pomona

Aaron Monasa

California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo

Jacob Chand

Emily Cook

Jonah David

Cecilia Wilson

California State University, Chico

Liz Cook

California State University, Long Beach

Shakhzoda Khodjakhonova

California State University, Monterey Bay

Amaya Anguiano

Sage Spradlin

California State University, Northridge

Tonye Jack

City College of San Francisco

Zander Cornelius

Loyola Marymount University

Minh Dang

Occidental College

Athenea Godinez-Gómez

Pitzer College

Adam Akins

Santa Clara University

CJ Dwumfuoh

University of California, Davis

Ibrahim MoheyEldin

Samrath Pannu

University of California, Irvine

Karabelo Bowsky

Grace Eberhart

Savanna Karmue

University of California, Los Angeles

Callister Misquitta

University of California, Riverside

John Fan

University of California, Santa Barbara

Mike Xu

University of California, Santa Cruz

Felix Wu

University of Redlands

Haylee Holman

CONNECTICUT

Wesleyan University

Brynne Barnard-Bahn

Yale University

Samhita Kumar

MAINE

Bates College

Jackson Fox

NEW YORK

New York University

David Kedem

Jiayu Tang

Garman Xu

NORTH CAROLINA

Duke University

Simone DeBerry

OREGON

Linfield University

RJ Vargo

Oregon State University

Natalie Park

TENNESSEE

Vanderbilt University

Ryan Paul

21 will attend an urban college

10 will attend college out of state

YOUR OYSTER

After a grueling college admissions season, the class of 2023 embarks on a new journey — college. With endless opportunities and a bright future, the world is theirs to conquer.

7 will attend a small college*

2 will attend a rural college

*small college: under 5,000 students

**medium college: 5,000-15,000 students

***large college: over 15,000 students

25 will attend college in-state

Sacramento’s Little Saigon maintains its rich history

took on odd jobs to support his family in the United States. However, he sought financial stability and decided to start a noodle company with his brother and business partner, Cuong Lu, serving a fusion of Vietnamese and Chinese food.

“At that time, the restaurant was very small, maybe less than 1,000 feet. Tan worked 16 hours a day, every day, trying to make it work,” Jenny said.

In order to serve the best quality food, Tan, Cuong and their employees created dishes with only the freshest ingredients, while also selling it at an affordable price.

Despite not using advertisements, knowledge of TK Noodle’s emphasis on fresh, flavorful and clean ingredients spread, causing the brothers’ small business to flourish.

“By word of mouth, people began to come by and eat,” Jenny said. “Everyday, people would line up outside for TK.”

Due to the success of their first restaurant, Tan and Cuong decided to expand into Sacramento in 2001, opening another TK Noodle in the Pacific Rim Plaza, which is in Little Saigon.

Although TK Noodle’s Sacramento location experienced a slower start, as more family-owned grocery stores, shops and restaurants opened in Little Saigon, business picked up.

A cultural hub for Vietnamese Americans and Southeast Asians began to form.

“Escaping the war was already hard, with that bitter feeling of leaving their country with nothing and trying to assimilate with Western culture,” Nguyen said. “It was challenging, especially with the language and cultural barrier. So, when they found an area where they can relate to each other and see their own people speaking their own language, they feel comfortable, they feel safe.”

BY LAUREN LU

As I sit in the corner of TK Noodle, a tiny noodle shop in Little Saigon, I hear countless interactions happening at once. Around me, conversations in Vietnamese, Cantonese, English and even Spanish are being conducted — waiters shouting across the restaurant into the kitchen, customers chatting and the cashier thanking guests as they leave, satisfied after a warm bowl of noodle soup.

This sense of contentment and satisfaction extends beyond this small restaurant. In fact, it describes the entirety of Little Saigon Sacramento — a cultural neighborhood and community for Vietnamese Americans.

Only recently did I discover the rich history of the community, despite growing up immersed in it.

Mai Nguyen, an advocate for Little Saigon and member of the Property Business Improvement Districts, also known as PBIDs, said the neighborhood was officially recognized in 2009 as Sacramento’s first cultural designation.

However, Little Saigon has existed for far longer than that.

After the Fall of Saigon in 1975, countless Vietnamese families were displaced. So, during the late 70s and 80s, the United States welcomed a huge influx of immigrants fleeing the war, Nguyen said.

“A lot of them came to California, particularly the Bay Area, because the tech industry in Silicon Valley provided a lot of jobs,” Nguyen said.

However, living expenses in the Bay Area were high.

Consequently, due to South Sacramento’s lower housing costs, Vietnamese refugees flocked there despite its reputation for being susceptible to crime.

“A lot of Vietnamese immigrants back then lived in apartment complexes around Stockton Boulevard, which was a very abandoned area at the time,” Nguyen said. “Business folks in San Jose saw opportunity, and they started anchoring businesses in South Sac.”

In fact, my family’s business, TK Noodle, began in a small storefront in 1983 on William Street in San Jose. The restaurant moved to Little Saigon in 2001, where my mother, Jenny Lu, has worked for 22 years.

She is the niece of Tan Lu, the restaurant’s owner.

After immigrating from Vietnam, Tan

Huong Lan Sandwiches is another one of the first family-owned businesses to move from William Street in San Jose to Sacramento in 1997.

The sandwich shop, owned by Vivian Pham, is most famous for its bánh mì, a Vietnamese sandwich. It typically has fillings such as ham and vegetables. In addition, Huong Lan Sandwiches sells other traditional Vietnamese dishes such as pho, bún bò hué and various rice plates.

“It’s like Vietnamese street food,” Pham said. “Our cuisine has a lot of flavor, but yet it’s also very light and healthy.”

According to Pham, Huong Lan Sandwiches expanded through word of mouth, similarly to TK Noodle.

As a result of the wave of Southeast Asian businesses such as TK Noodle and Huong Lan Sandwiches to Sacramento, PBIDs took an interest in Little Saigon.

In 2009, assembly member Kevin McCarthy proposed the idea of recognizing Stockton Boulevard for the economic contributions of the Vietnamese American businesses in the area, according to Nguyen.

McCarthy, along with assembly member Van Tran, agreed that the best way to acknowledge the two-mile stretch of Asianowned businesses and homes was to give

it an official name — Little Saigon. Today, the neighborhood reaches from 65th Street and Stockton Boulevard on the south side of the designation to Fruitridge Road and Florin Road on the north side.

“In order to make sure that the community was involved in the designation, we reached out to several Vietnamese organizations which were mainly run by the elders,” Nguyen said. “We wanted to make sure that this project was meaningful, that the right recognition goes to the right folks.”

In addition to formally labeling the community, the Little Saigon Committee, consisting of six members, was established to represent Vietnamese Americans in Sacramento.

The Stockton Boulevard Partnership, one of the PBIDs in Sacramento, prepared a presentation petitioning for the name “Little Saigon.”

“We were able to gather over 400 of our Vietnamese community folks, along with businesses, and we packed Sacramento City Hall that night,” Nguyen said. “We were on the agenda for the vote, and they all approved of this name, so it became a historic night.”

That night, there was a celebration featuring traditional dance for their success, Nguyen said.

“It’s a testament of the hard work and investment that we put into this really underserved, broken down area,” Nguyen said. “Because of the hard work and the jobs created, it created a retail shopping area, a place where immigrants can come to the Vietnamese community and call it home.”

In fact, Little Saigon has experienced an increase in diversity in recent years. For example, the racial demographic of Huong Lan Sandwiches’ customers has shifted.

“In the beginning, the majority of our customers and clientele were Vietnamese,” Pham said. “However, as we grew, it became more diverse. Word got out, and now we have all kinds of customers all over Sacramento who know our name.”

In addition, larger corporations and well-known companies such as Starbucks have moved into the area, Nguyen said.

“Our goal is to make it an international cultural place, while still having that cultural aspect of Asian, particularly Vietnamese culture,” Nguyen said.

But despite the immense growth that Little Saigon experienced with the resources allocated by PBIDs, COVID-19 had a drastic impact on these family-owned businesses.

“Little Saigon was hit quite hard, especially restaurant owners,” Jenny said. “We didn’t know what was going to happen, and just being out there was a risk.”

Huong Lan Sandwiches had a similar experience during the pandemic; however what Jenny and Pham missed the most was seeing their regulars and loyal customers.

“We always hope that our valued customers keep coming back to us,” Pham said. “Whenever we see a regular customer, it brings you so much joy because you know you’re doing something right.”

LET HIM COOK TK Noodle’s Head Chef Khuon Nguyen prepares a bowl of combination wonton noodle soup. PHOTO COURTESY OF JENNY LU

GoinG out with a

BANG!

Octagon seniors say goodbye to newspaper staff and Country Day in their final articles

Don’t ask Mr. Cunningham what to draw. He’s a poetic man, so his suggestion will be something unwanted: a nauseous elderly man sitting on a giant ice cream cone, a broken egg revealing a rusty toilet, or maybe a cluster of hairy bananas giving birth.

These answers were helpful in their implicit messaging: “Why are you asking me? Just do something.” There’s always something to do, but do you want to do it? Maybe you don’t want to grab a human anatomy book and draw nude men bearing absurd musculature. Or you do have ideas, but you don’t feel comfortable drawing your fursona in front of your super cool and popular friend group. Maybe you don’t think

JACOB ChAnD

I’ve always been curious about who I would be if my parents hadn’t decided to enroll me at Country Day in first grade and what might have happened if I hadn’t stayed — would I be different?

The answer, as many would assume, is yes. Of course I’d be different, but would I be happier? Would I still have gotten into my dream college or met the friends I have today? Would I have made all the interpersonal connections with my teachers and developed a genuine interest in every subject I’ve tried thanks to them?

Looking back, I think the answer to some, if not all, of these questions is no. I’m truly glad I’ve attended Country Day these past 12 years.

In lower school, there is one teacher I’d like to mention who sparked my love and passion for writing. My third grade teacher, Darian Giusti, had us write book reports that she graded using a scale of one to five stars.

What I remember most, however, were her thoughtful comments regarding every word I wrote and how she repeatedly supported me in my creative endeavors. She would always say how she knew I was going to be a writer, and while I didn’t believe her at the time, I find myself thinking back to her words whenever I find myself thinking

you’re good enough. Maybe it’s artist’s block.

As far as advice goes — honestly, if the problem is needing to create something, go ahead and trace a photo. It’s not original, but it might help your linework or anatomy.

I often struggle with artist’s block. So, I might pick a pose from Pinterest and an outfit from one of Mr. Cunningham’s magazines and run with it; it’s something. I’ll listen to music to prevent overthinking. I’ve learned that there’s not a solution to artist’s block, but there are options.

Maybe what turned me away from my teacher’s random prompts was that I already had an idea of what I wanted to do.

ountry Day smells like fresh redwood trees. Country Day sounds like my friends playing soccer at recess. Country Day tastes like the lunch my mom makes me. Country Day feels like a warm hug. Country Day looks like a hotel. Country Day is my school.

Don’t be confused; this slightly corrected poem isn’t a Frost or Dickinson but that of my younger self.

After 14 years, 504 weeks and a couple days short of the 2,520-day mark due to crippling senioritis, it’s hard to fathom that this will be the last thing I write attached to the Sacramento Country Day name.

It feels like just yesterday I was using the writing stone to correctly measure the space between my words in Ms. Kren’s first grade class. Fast forward a decade later, my Country Day portfolio is full of book reports, essays, speeches, journalism pieces, foreign language compositions, college admission papers and, of course, interpretive poems. You name it, I’ve written it.

In that sense, it’s been incredibly difficult on what to bring up for that last hoorah — so much so that in typical Jacob fashion, this article has been procrastinated past the deadline for days.

up a new poem or story. I’ll be forever thankful for her and her kind words of encouragement and support.

The majority of my development happened in middle school. Middle school was essentially three long years of drama, but in between the moments of teenage angst, I was able to find myself and began applying myself in school.

Once again, I would never have built up the grit and determination that propelled me through middle school and up into high school if it hadn’t been for Country Day teachers like my sixth grade math teacher, Edward Bolman.

To preface my statement, it should be known to all that I hated math when I first entered sixth grade. It was my weakest subject and I felt like no matter how hard I worked at it, I would never succeed. Then Bolman became my math teacher and things quickly changed. Ranging from taking tests in the dark and getting scared half to death when he jumped out at us to the zombie survival project, Bolman taught math in a way that was fun and engaging. I learned that I could do math and be good at it, and I’ll never forget it.

By the time I got to high school, I already had built up a solid base. Now all that was left was to transform my naive, overconfident self into the near-graduate I am today. I’m certain it was no

Did I just find the idea of pregnant ba nanas disturbing, or did I actually want to draw something figural?

Like other artists, I feel the pressure to create something elaborate and mean ingful whenever I’m trying to create a piece of art.

Occasionally, I question whether or not other people can derive pleasure from my art; it can be a challenge for me to feel proud and satisfied with my work.

Nevertheless, abandoning art has never crossed my mind. Drawing is essential to my life; I’m driven to create.

When I’m drawing, I’m making something, even if it’s not meaningful to me yet. Maybe it’s a step towards something else — something better.

However, the unfiltered nature of this assignment sits as a double-edged sword, giving me endless yet overwhelming freedom.

With this in mind, I took a stroll to where it all started, reminiscing along the rails of the Pre-K courtyard and throughout the various quads of the lower, middle and high schools.

And although change is inevitable, after years of not being in those parts of campus, it was mind-boggling how much development Country Day has put forth over 14 years.

From remodeled gyms, science centers and classrooms, it’s hard to deny that, like my poem-writing, we have grown for the better.

In that sense, this walk evoked memories of the stages of both my social and academic careers.

As a middle schooler, I stood as a STEM-driven student, full of social awkwardness and a nonexistent social life that was conveniently paired with a rolling backpack.

Coming out of high school, I stand as a humanities-based senior who dips toes into various extracurriculars and wears a double-strapped JanSport to learn and party with the friends I’ve

easy task. When it came to high school, my anxiety seemed to have no end now that everything mattered for the sake of my college education.

Because of this, what I remember most about high school and the teach ers in it is how much they care about their students. I can’t think of one teacher to single out; to write them all out would be quite a list.

Whether it be in the humanities or STEM, I can’t think of a single teacher who wouldn’t take time out of their busy day to listen to my concerns, help me with schoolwork or answer my seeming ly never-ending list of questions.

The reassurance that everything would be okay helped me get through a test, a difficult day or a presentation that had me completely stressed out. Without them, I doubt I would be as ac ademically successful as I am today.

I don’t regret my decision to stay at Country Day for my lower through high school education for a single moment. Maybe I would be different, but I don’t think I would be as happy or fulfilled as I am now. It was the teachers who made staying here worth it, and I would never have succeeded in the ways in which I have if it wasn’t for them. So, for all my teachers, I want to say, from the bot tom of my heart, thank you.

made on the way.

Undoubtedly, although that journey has been long, Country Day and the community around it has shaped me into the person I am today — ensuring I enter the next phase of my life as multifaceted as can be.

Whether that be sports, writing, science or just how to be an good person, Country Day has done its job better than I could have asked for.

For that, I would like to thank all the teachers, staff, my friends and family for guiding me through 14 years of unforgettable memories.

And on a final note, I leave you with this: Country Day smells like the plums in the seniors’ icebox. Country Day sounds like the bellowing roars of middle school and high school students alike, cheering away as the seniors announce their college decisions. Country Day tastes like the food from the bustling garden so graciously offered by the team of gardeners when they realize you don’t have a snack. Country Day looks like brilliant minds coming in all shapes and sizes to enact change. Country Day feels like no other place in the world. Country Day is my home.

EMILY COOK

Brynne Barnard-Bahn

Iwanted to write this goodbye, as I assume many of my classmates will, with a collection of memories that encapsulate my high school experience. But, as I sat in my bed attempting to come up with profound and engaging memories to share, I struggled to remember anything that fit the bill.

For years, I considered high school graduation synonymous with the commencement of my life. Once I entered college, I promised myself that I would join clubs, go out with friends and even research under particular professors. But, as my childhood comes to a close, I’ve found that I spent so much time planning my future that I neglected to appreciate my present.

So, as The Octagon’s in-house advice columnist, I feel it only right that I bid farewell by imparting my last piece of wisdom: live in the moment.

It’s easy to go through life focusing only on the next step.

In middle school, it’s all about high school. In high school, the focus is college, and in college, every decision can be tailored toward a life in the workforce.

But, when our only motivation is reaching the next milestone, we are never able to truly appreciate the moments that occur along the way.

Now, none of this is to say that I have not enjoyed high school, because I have. I’ve loved every pasteup, baseball game and club meeting I’ve attended.

The issue is that when I try to remember these past four years, I find that I was rarely able to be entirely present in the moment. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was always looking toward the future.

Now, with college only a few months away, I have decided not to idealize the next step in my life. Instead, I want to enjoy the little time I have left.

This summer, I want to cherish the remaining moments with my friends and family. I want to go on the day trips that I’ve been postponing since junior year. I want to read the books that, between classes and extracurriculars, I never made time to read. But most of all, I want to take a minute to slow down and recognize that life does not have to be a race.

That being said, I recognize that what I do with my summer is of little importance, but I believe my experience can be used as a cautionary tale. As high schoolers, it feels like our childhood is coming to a close, but that does not mean we should rush through it.

In fact, in my experience, some of my favorite memories came when I sat back and accepted my life as it was.

This year, on the annual Ashland trip, I, like many others, spent the week exploring the small town with friends. We ate in the town’s restaurants, shopped in the local boutiques and even met with the community tarot card reader. And, while it was no spectacular celebration, it was fun. In slowing down, I began to appreciate the small moments in my life.

High school does not have to be a stepping stone on our way to col lege. In fact, no era of our lives should be seen solely as a means to an end. There will always be an excuse to postpone enjoyment, but it is living in that way that we forget to live at all.

I was four years old when I was first asked the infamous question of, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” At the time, the answer was so simple: I wanted to be a Power Ranger, a brave hero that saves the day with his badass parkour and sick kungfu moves.

However, an inevitable dream-crushing realization of my lame human physical abilities came two years later; I could not in fact level a skyscraper through sheer confidence alone. In short, Garman’s prospective career opportunities weren’t looking too hot that year, to say the least.

Fast forward 14 years as I prepare to leave Country Day. I am once again confronted with the same question though this time, I am not so sure I have a definitive answer.

Be it prepping last-minute Mock Trial presentations or practicing for piano performances, I have always been a sort of jack of all trades, balancing my passions for activities both in and out of school.

As a result, I have always struggled with envisioning a future where I settle for one particular path. This was especially frustrating for me when it was time to represent myself for my college applications. I felt stuck at a crossroads, forced to weigh and compare my passions for so-called value deemed by admissions counselors and by the others around me.

However, the experiences I have gained and people I have met through The Octagon have made me realize that maybe that isn’t such a bad thing either.

From managing the class, producing videos and

designing graphics, I don’t think I have ever worked as hard and slept so little as I did this year. Even if I did not possess superhuman powers, I still felt like I really tested my limits and broke barriers of my own human abilities (I figured the feeling of going Super Saiyan is similar to my dazed trances of staying up designing both a biology poster and a newspaper until 4:30 a.m.)

Trying to keep a tight grip over all the activities I enjoyed like music, art and videography got progressively harder as I also put in even more activities into my basket of interests. Although I truly enjoyed each of these activities separately, I’ll admit it was very taxing for me both physically and mentally.

Amid my late night sessions, I would curse the schedule I had set for myself, questioning if I had wasted my time stretching my interests too far. Oftentime, I would lose sight of why I was even putting in so much effort in the first place and instead get through the day on autopilot.

However, every time I stepped into each Octagon class, I felt my motivation being refueled once more to push forward. For a lot of us, working for The Octagon was more than just writing off an achievement to brag about; instead, it was about independently running a quality publication only made possible through our collective hard work and dedication to accurately represent our community.

I think fondly of the moments where the beauty of teamwork shone through. Despite hearing everyone’s groans of complaint throughout paste-up week, see-

comfort in the fact that we as a class were able to keep the passionate flame of journalism alive for the next generations of the publication.

In the end, I realized I did not mind losing sleep if I was working toward something I found meaningful. Although my body eventually suffered the blowback of my unhealthy choices during my Advanced Placement exams (sorry, Dr. Whited, I was no match for the post-AP Spanish exam fatigue ), I could not have asked for a better experience even if I were to start high school again.

As I stand here, at the end of my high school journey, I am honestly as unsure as ever as to what I want to be. Maybe I will end up being some hotshot lawyer or maybe settle as a starving musician. Regardless of how convoluted my path and interests could be in the future, I am sure it will be alright as long as I walk forth with optimism.

So what do I want to be when I grow up? Quit asking me bruh, that’s none of ya business!

As long as I stay true to myself and carry the lessons I have learned at The Octagon, I’m sure I will figure it out somehow.

Ijoined The Octagon as a baffled freshman. Honestly, I had no clue what I was doing — and I’m sure it showed. I could never have imagined the years that followed. In the fall, I’ll be participating in the Yale Journalism Initiative, where I plan to write for the Yale Daily News or the New Journal. What began as an elective course has had a profound impact on my life.

It’s probably why writing this piece is so difficult.

There’s so much that comes to mind when I consider The Octagon. In my time on this paper, I have spent countless hours sorting through transcriptions of quotes and even longer hunting down the interviews behind them.

However, what I find myself returning to is not the grand purpose of all of that time.

Instead, it’s the small moments.

I think about passing dim sum plates back and forth at “the Obama restaurant” in Chinatown during the journalism convention; about crashing track practice with college flags and twine for a last-minute photo illustration; about waiting outside the weight room on a February evening, preparing to ambush the girls basketball team for interviews after a home game.

I think about paste-up.

The week before every print issue’s publication, 12 page editors huddle inside Room 9 until dark each night to design its pages, led by four exhausted seniors: editors-in-chiefs Simone DeBerry, Garman Xu, Adam Akins and me. We call it paste-up after the old, analog tradition, when editors used paste and scissors to lay out the stories and photographs of their newspapers.

There’s little glue involved in our process. Instead, we hunch over our monitors, muttering to ourselves about the evil of our Adobe design software, while we eat half our weight in SaveMart snacks.

By the microwave, Garman “lets the ideas cook” until Friday — when a brilliant page appears from the austere blankness of his InDesign document. Lauren brainstorms ideas for her page’s headline while I give her

increasingly horrendous options. (My record rests with “SCDSPN” for a sports spread.)

Simone asks what Garman and Garrett’s hypothetical sister would be named. Brynne shows up after basketball practice, produces a masterful editorial cartoon and departs before we can trap her longer. Adam and I hold a too-long debate about the proper use of “schadenfreude” in a Taylor Swift album review. Ms. Stewart says we must be “out of here by 9 p.m.” We push her to 10.

I’ll be the first to admit that, in the moment, paste-up can be a miserable, stressful mess. After all, there’s only one tone in which people say, “It’s paste-up this week, isn’t it?”

Even so, I know I’ll miss it, just as I will miss the rest of The Octagon. I already do. The crazily brilliant moments of The Octagon make friends out of strangers and life-long allies of acquaintances. They give rise to incomprehensible inside jokes that are only really funny when sleep-deprived. They make you laugh and make you cry, and they stay with you, forever.

I’ve been told many times that the college years are the next chapter in my life. I’m not sure what that makes this time before graduation: some bittersweet epilogue, maybe, or a last coda before I vanish into the mists of faraway Connecticut.

I’ll propose a different metaphor.

Right now, I’m at the end of an article. Perhaps not coincidentally, it’s my favorite part of a story. A good ending leaves you thinking. It shows you something new. It inspires you to make your community stronger.

Here’s the best part: a good ending does not demand a farewell. Rather, it takes up a corner of your mind. It sticks with you as you grow.

Now, at the very best of endings, I know what I’ll keep with me. These years on staff have been magical. They’ve taught me about truth-telling, friendship, dedication and what I want for myself.

I might leave, but I’ll never say goodbye. I’ve loved The Octagon, in all of its joys, too much for that.

adam akins

“You-you’re a f****** illuminated gothic black-letter manuscript. You couldn’t be hypertext if you tried.”

– Technical in “American Gods,” by Neil Gaiman

For a long time, I wanted to be hypertext. I wanted to be shiny and brand new and to snidely look back at the past.

In the pursuit of hypertext, I was controlled by an urge to compete and dominate, leaving the old behind. For a lot of my life, I have been deeply driven by a need for control. In everything I competed in, I needed to be No.1, even if the title was imaginary, arbitrary or unattainable — like my fixation with winning casual small talk, an impossible mission.

But my last two years at The Octagon have taught me the power of the black-letter manuscript and the sense of purpose, pride and devotion that comes with it. I want to take that with me wherever I go.

The quote at the start of this article comes from one of my favorite authors, Neil Gaiman.

His work has driven me to write frequently and helped me find the passion for storytelling that led me to join The Octagon in the first place.

Gaiman makes me think that if I were to pull hard enough at any mysterious locked door or try to find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, I would fall head-first into his world.

The process of saying goodbye to the intense structure and near-constant involvement that has been my experience at Country Day has left me contemplating the questions Gaiman poses.

Maybe, outside of the cheery world of Camp Country Day, there’s another world you couldn’t believe. I got a taste of this when I visited my new university.

I was immediately inundated with a strange energy. There were drumlines, protestors and a constant miasma of pot.

The place hummed with activity, populated by a cadre of vegan leather-wearing, septum-pierced warriors and well-dressed mysterious

men. I was entirely out of my element, and it was wildly exciting.

I was overloaded by how much was unknown. The easiest way to make sense of it all has been to look through the distorted yet comforting lens of fantasy.

Gaiman’s worlds compel you to examine your own world, looking for all the truth you could find.

It’s a feeling deep inside — a close cousin to discomfort — that pulls you in and demands that you hold onto it, so it can’t escape your grasp and slip into your reality.

Joining The Octagon opened up a similarly foreign reality to that of my new school. I was suddenly in a world where I could create garbage and another student would tell me immediately that it was, yes, a piece of trash. But despite that unfortunate fact, the team was going to move heaven and earth to make it publishable.

The ego and pride that went hand in hand with my journey towards hypertext could not exist in The Octagon. If I continued to compete with myself instead of take the time to learn, improve and shut-up, I could not attain success in the newsroom.

When I had too many errors for my editors to catch and my story went online with a couple of comma splices, Ms. Bauman AirPlayed my subpar sports beat to my whole English class and spent time picking out all of the errors. It was a bizarre world — it wasn’t a constant slug of analytical essays; there were stakes, and those stakes made it so rewarding to try and tell a story well.

It wasn’t about competing. It was accountability, constant feedback and constant interface.

I was fascinated, and still am, by trying to tell the story correctly. Completing a story that you have crafted feels amazing.

It isn’t that classic sense of victory; the gross kind that came from a deep need to win. It was earned catharsis. A gratification that was achieved through the labor of using that illuminated gothic black-letter manuscript.

a pop-ularity contest

Two Octagon staffers investigate whether big popcorn varieties deserve to be popped or dropped

Popcorn has been a snack enjoyed for millennia, dating back to the Aztecs and Mayans who popped kernels as early as 2000 BCE. It remains a beloved snack worldwide, eaten often in movie theaters and cozy living rooms. Since summer is the perfect time for movie blockbusters, here is a review of the movie treat and its variations. From caramel, white cheddar and kettle corn, the world of popcorn has something for everyone.

STORY BY ISHAAN SEKHON AND WILLIAM HOLZ; GRAPHICS BY SAMHITA KUMAR; IMAGES COURTESY OF AMAZON.COM

MOVIE THEATER POPCORN

Movie popcorn is a timeless favorite that never fails to impress. As soon as you receive your bucket, the aroma of buttery saltiness permeates the air. Each fluffy kernel bursts with flavor, leaving your mouth with a perfect blend of salty and buttery pleasure. The crunch is satisfyingly loud, and each bite delights the senses. Movie popcorn is the ultimate cinema snack that is impossible to resist. It is the perfect popcorn flavor.

CARAMEL POPCORN

We only had two questions when we bit through caramel-covered kernels for the first time: Why would anyone make this and why am I eating it? The common saying “more is less and less is more” defines the problems with caramel popcorn. The addition of caramel, which makes the kernels look like they’ve been coated in layers of dirt and glue, destroys the warm, buttery flavor of traditional popcorn and replaces it with an unusually crunchy and stale flavor. To be transparent, when we were eating caramel popcorn, we questioned whether we had bought a version of popcorn or overly-glittered rocks. Honestly, we would have taken the rocks.

KETTLE POPCORN

Like caramel corn, kettle corn is a sweet flavored popcorn. Instead of using caramel to glaze the kernels, kettle corn is created by placing kernels in a metal bowl, coating them with oil and sugar and finally cooking the combination over high heat on the stovetop. As it enters your mouth, the initial rush of sweetness is rapidly replaced by salt. The crunchiness of the kernels is at first delightful, but the coating becomes cloying and fake. Furthermore, the snack’s sticky, chewy texture might leave your teeth sugar-coated and gritty, making it harder to truly appreciate the experience. While kettle corn is a popular snack at fairs and festivals, its rich flavors and textures can be overwhelming, and after a few nibbles, the novelty of the snack wears off.

WHITE CHEDDAR POPCORN

Despite its rise in popularity over the years, white cheddar popcorn is very overrated. There has been far too much praise for this bootleg Pirate’s Booty, a puffed corn snack food, and it needs to stop. Although white cheddar could seem like an interesting alternative to traditional buttered popcorn, the truth is that the cheesy flavor is overbearing and leaves a sour aftertaste in your mouth. The creamy texture, however, is a very appealing and satisfying trait of white cheddar popcorn. Nevertheless, you should either stick with the traditional buttered flavor or experiment with some of the other, more daring flavors that are offered.

5/5

1/5 2/5 2/5

BY SAHEB GULATI & WILLIAM HOLZ

The first question we had walking out of a showing of “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” was a short one: “Why?”

We then checked if our drinks had been spiked with some sort of hallucinogen — but alas, no. The dose of delirium we had received over the past 2 hours and 30 minutes was courtesy of Marvel Studios.

The final edition of the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy was overwhelmingly weird. And yet, the film’s bizarre, zany charm and its avoidance of overplotted multiverse tropes made for a fitting finish with unique strength.

Exactly six years after the release of Guardian of the Galaxy Vol. 2, the trilogy closer gave us the chance to bid farewell to our beloved Guardians:

Peter Quill, the dopey captain of indomitable spirit (Chris Pratt); Rocket Raccoon, the gruff and sullen humorist (Bradley Cooper); Nebula, the resolute cyborg dynamo of the team (Karen Gillan); Drax, the kindhearted bonehead bone-crusher (Dave Bautista); Mantis, the innocent, antennaed empath (Pom Klementieff); Gamora, now-amnesiac and grumpily distant (Zoe Saldana); and Groot, a lovable, gentle giant voiced by Vin Diesel.

Now stationed in the hollowed-out skull of an ancient celestial being, the Guardians are suddenly attacked by the superpowered humanoid Adam Warlock (Will Poulter), leaving Rocket grievously injured and sending our ragtag crew on a quest to save him.

The quest digs deep into Rocket’s mysterious past, revealing his painful genetic engineering by the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji), the same person who sent Adam Warlock on the previous mission.

There’s a sadistic twist to this eugenist villain, motivated by Nazi-esque visions of a utopia and an unsettling delight in the torment of his creations.

RATING:

While seeing the suffering of mutated young Rocket and his endearing humanimal friends loses impact due to overuse, the film still undeniably excels in the deep development of its characters.

Unlike past Guardians movies, Rocket takes the limelight, allowing audiences to delve into his psyche and past. However, the supporting third, fourth and fifth string characters still get screen time and their well-deserved moments. Even a seemingly insignificant security guard manages to inject humor into the narrative, hilariously sharing anecdotes about the incompetence of his nepotistic assistants.

In a refreshingly imperfect character-arc, we see Gamora and her evolving relationship with Peter (StarLord). Unlike Marvel’s familiar return-to-the-status-quo resurrections, Gamora remains emotionally distant enough to pursue her own path at the film’s end.

The Marvel formula still applies to plot armor, however, as characters miraculously endure or randomly succumb to attacks based on whatever serves the plot, regardless of reason. Despite this, the standard Marvel formula did not apply to the visuals. Marvel has seemingly redoubled its efforts on CGI in recent years, making this experience feel slightly off-kilter.

At one point, Guardians traverse a ship formed from disgustingly accurate innards and organic matter, accompanied by unwelcome, revolting squelching sounds to boot. However, disgusting, off-putting effects are signature to the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise. For example, in the beginning of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, the team faces a giant slimy Sarlacc-octopus hybrid called an Abilisk. The team is only able to slay the alien when Gamora cuts its neck open, revealing its neon-green insides.

Later on in the third movie, the group engages in battle on an artificial planet, the location of the High Evolutionary’s newest “perfect” society — but all viewers are treated to is Counter-Earth, a disturbing mirror

of ’90s suburbia with humanoid-looking animals as its residents. If Counter-Earth is a mirror, it’s definitely a funhouse one: bats, birds, pandas, rabbits and other animals all walk on two legs and dress in ‘90s attire, making each scene extremely off-putting.

One would think a millenia-long quest for civilizational perfection would lead to something better than just a mirrored version of Earth. The High Evolutionary’s disappointing display of creativity here tells us this is apparently not the case.

But Gunn’s last film with Marvel before departing for DC Studios is not without his signature trademark: self-aware one-liners and well-timed remarks that break the intensity of an otherwise unexpectedly gruesome film (animal lovers would be wise to avoid).

These tension-killers often center around Drax, as perfectly displayed in this scene:

Drax: And we’ll kill anyone who gets in our way!

Peter Quill: No! Not kill anyone.

Drax: Kill a few people.

Peter Quill: Kill no people.

Drax: Kill one guy. One stupid guy, who no one loves.

Peter Quill: Now you’re just making it sad.

Another signature focal point is the “Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol.3” soundtrack, which hits all the right notes. Beastie Boys, Spacehog and Radiohead compose a few of the infectious oldies tracks that have become a hallmark of the trilogy.

Instead of staying within the bounds of its two predecessors, the movie experiments with firsts. Some, like the first f-bomb in Marvel Cinematic Universe history, were pioneering. Others, such as the interspecies animal romance, were plain off-putting.

However, “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” in all of its weird and wacky glory, stays true to its roots. The wild animated effects, the humor and the throwback soundtracks make it a satisfying continuation of the previous movies and a perfect end to the renowned series that we all love.

GRAPHICS BY HOLZ; PHOTOS COURTESY OF MARVEL STUDIOS