A8• December 16, 2011
OPINION
The Campanile
Second Spirit Week could benefit or distract students
Each October, Palo Alto High School students come together to celebrate school pride. This annual event brings the school together and promotes inter-grade bonding, raising student morale and allowing for friendly competition. Many students enjoy Spirit Week so much that they feel that a second Spirit Week during second semester would be beneficial. However, others feel that the tradition should remain annual.
PRO
Spirit Week is a chance to relax, laugh and have fun with friends, an opportunity to focus on other things aside from school stress and an experience that unifies the grades. When Spirit Week happens annually all these benefits also only happen once a year. However, this would change if Paly had another Spirit Week in the spring, making second semester more exciting. “Personally I think that it is totally necessary to have another [Spirit Week] because I love dressing up and it’s fun because it is a competition between all the grades,” freshman Brooke Santana said. Having an additional Spirit Week could also resolve conflicts sophieparker between grades and serve as a rematch to challenge the class in my opinion that had won earlier in the year. Most people love the original ideas from Spirit Week. So they could be used to create a similar week but with different activities and different dress-up days to change it up. “We need another spirit week this year, one that’s unbiased and doesn’t put in fake ‘unity points,’” sophomore Hillel Zand said. A second Spirit Week could be focused on grade unity where competitions consist of everyone participating to win. Junior Walker Mees says that an additional Spirit Week will give students time to unite even more than beforehand, as both a grade, and as a school. “I think it would be awesome to have another Spirit Week later in the year because then the classes would have more time to bond,” Mees said. Spirit Week, being a competitive time, caused controversy in the past, which can easily be settled by another Spirit Week. Something lively such as a “Spirit Week Rematch” where grades fight to win, but this time dressed with different themes and games, including possibly with a new “sports week” consisting of Powderpuff, Ultimate Frisbee and even a schoolwide game of Capture the Flag, could capture people’s attention in a new way. It would be interesting to approach Spirit Week from a different angle than usual. The competition could be two grades against two other grades, or even staff versus students, to spice up the week. “Spirit Week Remake” would be a twisted Spirit Week full of not necessarily grade-by-grade competitions against other rephrase, not necessarily gradeby-grade. This would make the school more unified. “It would be cool to have another Spirit Week because we could do something different like upperclassmen versus [underclassmen],” sophomore Sophia Moss said. With another crazy, energetic, amusing Spirit Week, students and the Associate Student Body would have more time to prepare than they do for the October Spirit Week, making Spirit Week overall run more smoothly. Additionally, it would allow grades the opportunity to unify throughout the year. Whether it is “Spirit Week Round Two” or “Spirit Week Rematch” there are many possibilities which could make second semester spirited, which would increase student happiness throughout the year.
CON
Spirit Week is undoubtedly one of the most exciting weeks at Paly, but one of the reasons why it is so fun is because it happens only once a year, making it unique and special. Creating a second Spirit Week would not only take away from its originality but also distract students from other important events taking place during the spring semester. Junior Aldis Petriceks believes that Spirit Week should remain an annual event because it is more memorable that way. “[A second Spirit Week] takes the novelty away from it,” Petriceks said. “It’s a fun week and people get pumped up about it but it might get kind of boring doing it again.” The current Spirit Week has themes that date way back in marieezran Paly history, allowing students to look forward to dressing up in my opinion in these traditional costumes each year. A second Spirit Week would imply creating new themes that students would not be accustomed to or may not like, ultimately lowering the student body participation. Junior Shaheen Essabhoy loves spirit week but thinks that the creation of new dress-up themes would not be as exciting. “Everyone waits for the traditional Spirit Week themes, so making new ones just wouldn’t be the same,” Essabhoy said. Part of the fun of this event is that each year, the class has gotten one year older and can create new cheers associated with their new grade. A Spirit Week in the same year would result in the repetition of a lot of cheers causing it to be less interesting and exciting. In addition, Spirit Week takes a lot of time and energy to organize for the Associated Student Body officers and creating one during the second semester would distract them from planning other important events or activities like prom. Although ASB Commissioner Sasha Robinson loves Spirit Week, she knows that it is very time-consuming and thinks that it is unnecessary to make another one in the same year. “Spirit Week is a lot of work and it’s very stressful for all of ASB especially the Spirit Week Commissioners so I think having to redo it would put a ton of stress on them,” Robinson said. The excitement of Spirit Week for students can also be a distraction and may make keeping up with academics difficult, especially since many teachers do not reduce their homework load. More importantly, second semester is full of Standardized Aptitude Tests, Advanced Placement exams and finals, and students need to remain focused to finish the year strongly. Essabhoy also believes that the second semester becomes too busy to fit in another spirit week. “Spring is such a busy time of the year, especially for upperclassmen with finals coming up, and AP testing and all the other college stuff,” Essabhoy said. Spirit Week is a great time at Paly for the school to come together and have fun, but like everything in life, it is fun in moderation and should remain an annual event. Another Spirit Week would take away from the originality of this school event.
Video camera surveillance system monitors students’ actions
Security system serves community, but students should know about it What do you think about the administration’s surveillance cameras on campus? “I am not keen on the idea.” Ms. Filppu English teacher
“I don’t know but that makes me really uncomfortable.” Jake Dagan sophomore
Cameras gaze down across students, with every action they do being reported immediately back to an iron ruler who decides their fate. Does this sound like a plot summary of George Orwell’s benhawthorne 1984? in my opinion Think again. This situation might resemble life for students here at Palo Alto High School. We conducted a survey of ten students, which revealed that only one of the ten knew that cameras were in place around the school. Nevertheless, the administration maintains that they informed the student body when the cameras were initially installed. “There were articles in the publications [about the cameras],” Vice Principal Jerry Berkson said. The Campanile published an article in 2006 entitled “Security cameras coming to Paly.” However, that article was published five years ago, and it constitutes the entirety of the press that the cameras have received. Almost no students know about these cameras, which is problematic because members of any institution in a democratic society, including a school, must have a say in the policies of the institution, as per the groundwork at Palo Alto High School our nation laid out in the Constitution. Thus, although the cameras themselves are both useful and constitutional, the administration should make the existence of the cameras public. The school should make its policies well known to its students, as any governmental organization, including a school, benefits from this input. This is especially true for Paly, because the purpose of our school is to benefit the students attending it.
Although governmental organizations usually require some kind of secrecy to function normally, as evidenced by the fallout from the Wikileaks scandal, declining to tell students that they are under constant surveillance is more than just creepy — it is wrong. This does not mean that the cameras must be removed, however. Video monitoring is useful insofar as it is for a good purpose, such as prevention of crime, and actually ends up achieving that purpose. The cameras were installed to prevent theft from locker rooms, so they are not inherently wrong. “The purpose [of the cameras] is deterrent and [is] helping us track down who steals or commits crimes in areas of campus,” Principal Phil Winston said. Winston declined to disclose the location of the cameras, however, Berkson explained that there are at least four cameras in place, all of them outside of the locker rooms, with the purpose of stopping crime. Berkson also repeatedly stressed that the cameras are outside the locker rooms, not inside them, so there is no potential for the cameras being used to produce child pornography. “I am only aware of the four cameras that I am responsible for, which are located outside the locker rooms,” Berkson said. So the system clearly has good intentions. But does it work? It appears that the system has been able to apprehend criminals, albeit with limited success. “Have they been effective at catching or identifying thieves or other criminals?” Winston said. “Yes, a lot.” However, others members of the Paly community are more skeptical. The system has been criticized in the past for its high cost, which some estimates placed as high as $100,000. “The cameras are kind of effective; they’ve helped a few times,” Berkson said. “We would be better off taking other security measures, such as just keeping an eye on things better.”
Outside experts have confirmed the effectiveness of security cameras in reducing crime in schools. A 2003 study published by Missy Baxter, a researcher at Duke University, found that video monitoring leads to good behavior and less crime. “Sometimes just the idea in kids’ minds that there’s a camera recording them keeps them from causing trouble or being difficult,” Baxter wrote in the study, which is entitled Surveillance in Schools: Safety vs. Personal Privacy. Thus, though security cameras are not inherently ineffective, the problem is simply that Paly is using its cameras poorly. One possible solution would be to alert students to the presence of the cameras to deter them from stealing. In addition, some students have raised objections to the supposed intrusiveness of the cameras. “I don’t like the idea of being looked at all the time,” junior Niassan Beyzaie said. However, cameras are not exactly a violation of privacy, especially in a public place such as a school, where the administrators can see what everyone on campus is doing, with or without cameras. Further, social networking tools have led to most teenagers on campus having their face plastered all across the Internet. Privacy is largely dead in today’s modern age, for better or worse. Those who dislike being seen by the cameras should remember that they are in a public place, where they would be able to be seen anyway. There is also a legal aspect to the issue of surveillance. Since those who run schools are responsible for any losses of property or damages that occur on school grounds, they ought to have a right to take means to protect against such losses out of their own interest. The Supreme Court has been silent about the issue of surveillance cameras in schools, although it has been very vocal about the issue of privacy in schools in general. In the 1985 case New Jersey v. T.L.O., in which a student named T.L.O. (not his/
“I was unaware that there were cameras, but I don’t have anything against it.” Lindsay Black senior
“It is an invasion of privacy.” Max Chen freshman her real name; his/her privacy is protected because he/she was a minor) was suspended for drug use after being suspected to a search of her handbag, the Court ruled 6-3 that the school’s interests of maintaining order and discipline came before the student’s right to privacy under the Fourth Amendment. Although there is the possible objection that the Fourth Amendment maintains that authorities need to establish a “probable cause” to search a student, New Jersey v. T.L.O. established that schools only need a “reasonable suspicion” to search a student, and that searches are acceptable if the crime occurs “in plain view,” or visible for all to see. Since one can observe theft at the locker rooms using nothing but their own two eyes, and since the locker rooms are public places, bike and locker room theft is clearly in plain view, so the cameras are thus constitutional. Despite their constitutionality, good intentions, and mostly successful results, the camera system is problematic because nobody knows about it. If their purpose is to deter crime, then it would be wise for the school to inform all incoming freshmen about the locations of these cameras, so that students know that there is a 100 percent chance of them being caught for stealing. Even a $10 “This area is under video surveillance” sign would be sufficient. All of the students interviewed agreed that they should have been told about the cameras.