The Mark Winter 2022 Vol. XIII Issue I by The Mark

The Mark

Piecing it Together

the mark

Volume XIII Issue I | Winter 2022

About This Issue

In this issue, e Mark explores the theme of “Piecing it Together” to acknowledge the challenges the M-A community has faced while returning to campus. Our community is coming back together after a long time apart. While many of us are returning to the lives we led before the pandemic, many others are beginning new chapters in their lives. But for everyone, our everyday experiences and routines have been altered in countless ways. As the second semester begins, e Mark both celebrates our community’s resilience in the face of change and acknowledges the e orts it took to get to where we are now.

Policy

e Mark, a feature magazine published by the students in Menlo-Atherton’s journalism class, is an open forum for student expression and the discussion of issues of concern to its readership. e Mark is distributed to its readers and the students at no cost. e sta welcomes letters to the editor, but reserves the right to edit all submissions for length, grammar, potential libel, invasion of privacy, and obscenity.

Submissions do not necessarily re ect the opinions of all M-A students or the sta of e Mark. Send all submissions to submittothemark@gmail.com. To contact us directly, email us at themachronicle@gmail.com.

Staﬀ

Brianna Aguayo

Isabelle Stid

Katherine Welander

Jane White

Marlene Arroyo

Grace Hinshaw

Sheryl Chen

Maia Goel

Juliana Jones

Emily Olson

Ella Bohmann Farrell

Emily Buck

Tess Buckley

Eli Chane

Samir Chowdhary-Fitton

JJ Discher

Katie Doran

Natalie Fishman

Sonia Freedman

Juliana Fullmer

Jack Hanson

Brian Hoyle

Ellie Hultgren

Alex Parikh-Briggs

Cleo Rehkopf

Chase Trigg

Sarah Weintraut

Justina Wilkins

Jackson Williams

John McBlair

Editor-In-Chief

Managing Editor

Copy Editor

Journalism Advisor

Sweeps: What’s With the

“This is a Hall Sweep [Article]. This is a Hall Sweep [Article].”

Hall Sweeps: What’s With the Music?

illustrated by Justina Wilkins

Frederick the Squid: M-A’s Non-Binary Icon

@frederick_the_nonbinary_squid is an Instagram account detailing the life and events of Frederick, the squid who lives in Ms. Olson’s room. I sat down with Frederick to ask them our burning questions.

How did you meet Ms. Olson?

We met a while back. We were both going to a birthday party for a mutual friend. We met, we talked, we exchanged numbers, and then we just became friends! en I moved into her room, because I was like, “Hey, we’re good buddies.”

So your full name is Frederick Toby Bader Ginsberg. Does that mean that RBG was part squid?

No, don’t be ridiculous. Next question.

Oh, so that means you’re part human?

Yes… One of RBG’s descendants married a squid. I don’t know what percent human I am, but I’m de nitely part human. My eyes are pretty human. Secretly, I have a pair of human teeth.

What’s your favorite social media account?

e M-A Gender and Sexuality Alliance Club’s instagram account! @ma_gsa. e GSA is a safe space that educates students on LGBTQ+ issues, history, and culture. All are welcome!

And your favorite post?

Probably my Halloween post because I asked people what they were for Halloween, and they had some cool responses. One person said they were a tra c cone, and I’m a sucker for good costumes like that. I was a cowboy for Halloween and blessed everyone’s feed with my sparkly, silver hat and awless looks.

Frederick’s movie-star signature

written by

Maia Goel designed

Sheryl Chen

Do you have any goals with your Instagram account?

Goal One: become famous, like a household name. I’m thinking: Frederick-brand toys in all the markets.

Goal Two: Times Square Billboard. Goal ree: to just make people happy when they see a post, like, “Hey, Frederick posted today. Yay!”

Do you have a goal number of followers? My only goal is to get to 100 followers because then you unlock more analytics tools, and I need to know why people follow me.

Frederick’s goal has since been reached.

How do you feel about starring in Tentacles/being a movie star?

I’m so happy, actually—I’m a cephalopopstar! I got to sit in the fancy trailer, with the director’s seat, and I even managed to get a waterbed. I’m living my best life. I’m trying to keep the fame from getting to my head, but I have to admit...it’s hard when you’re as adorable as me! Haters are just salty.

How do you feel about being a queer icon? Amazing. All the young little students can look up and say, “Hey, that stu ed squid is just like me,” you know? I’m so happy to be able to help people understand their identity. ere are a whole lot of incredible people and marine life out there who would bene t from having representation in pop culture.

Do you feel under pressure, or can you manage that since you’re a squid?

Sometimes things can get a little deep, especially when you’re running your own Instagram account, but I like to keep things light. I like to go with the ow. I always know my posts are shore to make you laugh. I love making people happy!

Anything else to say?

Come visit me in B-3!

Sophomore Nat Barman is the photographer and social media account manager for Frederick.

my alma mater, and numerous other wellknown institutions. As someone who took the SAT 17 times and took 50 AP classes throughout high school, most notably AP Lunch, I have experience and am more than happy to guide you throughout this magical process.

e most important aspect of college admissions is the vocabulary: Holistic. Diversity. Interdisciplinary. Undergraduate research. Women in STEM. ese are the targets you want to hit with your essays and activities. One way you can display your interdisciplinary capabilities is to make connections between what happens in your life and what you’re learning in school. I personally wrote about my garage ooding, and how that is represented in the “fording the river” scene in William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. I walked three miles just like Elizabeth Bennet did in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. If you see someone getting mugged on the street, stop and stare at it for a while. How does that connect to the interests you’re planning on pursuing in college? Turn it into a math problem. If

How to Get Into HARVARD: Advice From

an Unemployed College Counselor

someone who has $100 in their wallet is held at gunpoint and the criminal takes $75, how much dignity does that person

The most important aspect of college admissions you need to understand is the vocabulary: Holistic. Diversity. Interdisciplinary. Liberal arts education. Undergraduate research. Women in STEM.

Once you’ve understood these concepts, you need to gure out your “spike.” A spike is the thing that makes you unique to colleges, like having an interesting cultural background. You need to do something big to set you apart from every other applicant. ey don’t care that you’re president of the National Honor Society or captain of the baseball team. ere are already a million of those kids out there. Nobody else is applying to Harvard with “successful hitman” on their resume. No other student has a small child locked in their basement.

Your intelligence and character don’t matter nearly as much as you think. Being attractive, however, does.

Making sure your teacher knows your name after the rst day is key to a good recommendation letter. My teachers described me as “that girl” and “certainly one of a kind.” I knew that pulling the re alarm on the rst day of school would instantly set me apart from my peers. Did you know that Benjamin Franklin, Jennifer Lawrence, and the lizard from the Geico commercials all pulled the re alarms at their high schools?

For the alumni interviews, it is imperative that you dress the part. It’s more important to be beautiful on the outside than on the inside in these situations. Your intelligence and character don’t matter nearly as much as you think. Being attractive, however, does. ey want to see how you would look on their brochures, especially if you’re “diverse.” However, on the other hand, if you look like you’re putting e ort into your appearance, your interviewer won’t think you’re smart enough for the school. You just have to be e ortlessly beautiful. Try pairing perfect, clear skin with an oversized crewneck. It’s called looking the part, sweetheart.

The side door exists for a reason: the front can get crowded.

If you’re struggling to nd topics of conversation and are worried the interview won’t last long, stick to the basics: politics and religion. Interviewers also like to see that you’re emotionally intelligent. To hit this point, treat your interview like a therapy session, where you can express your feelings. Introduce yourself, get comfortable, and unload your feelings onto the person; there is no such thing as being too TMI. And if all else fails, just lie. Say you’re a descendent of the school’s founder. Bribe an admissions o cer and get in through the side door. Get a job as an admissions o cer and let yourself in. Universities won’t even fact-check anyway, and if you get involved in a lawsuit, just steal all of your local bank’s money and run away from home. e side door exists for a reason: the front can get crowded.

written by Juliana Jones designed by Jane White

“This is

a Hall Sweep [Article].

This is a Hall Sweep [Article].”

Scan the QR code for some hall sweepin’ tunes!

is year, it feels like more students than usual simply aren’t going to class when the bell rings. It has become normal to hear students shouting and running down the halls. When you go to the bathroom, you’re likely to pass numerous students hanging out at tables or roaming around campus. e apparent solution?

“ is is a hall sweep. is is a hall sweep. Students, you have ve minutes to get to class.” Cue staticky, throwback Mariah Carey songs blaring from the loudspeaker. e frequency of hall sweeps may be a response to an increase in tardiness and disrespect from students towards sta this year. In a survey of 42 M-A teachers, 74% reported more frequent tardiness, and 79% reported an increase in hallway rowdiness this year.

English teacher James Nelson said, “ e amount of distributed de ant behavior has

74% of surveyed teachers reported more frequent tardiness

79% reported an increase in hallway rowdiness

de nitely picked up. I haven’t measured the di erence, but I can absolutely feel it. No question.”

e G-Wing is a hot-spot for roaming students, and as a G-Wing teacher, Nelson recounted multiple instances where he was met with disobedience when trying to get students to class. He said, “ ere are people who are laughing, talking while I’m trying to teach class. And I go outside, and they’re just screwing around. I ask ‘Hey, can you be quiet?’ and they’ll actually confront me and say, ‘You’re not my teacher.’”

“ e number of students in the hallways is outrageously high, and it’s having a substantial impact on instruction. It distracts students who did get to class on time, and those students who are tardy often miss critical instruction time and are likely to do poorly,” commented an anonymous teacher.

Another said, “Students need to be held more accountable for their words and actions. ere have been signi cantly more acts of disrespect this year than in any year that I can remember.”

e root of this de ance is unclear. However, according to the SUHSD Student Services Coordinator Jarret Dooley, “[across the District] we are seeing a lot of [bad] behavior particularly with our freshmen and sophomores and a signi cant number of suspensions among them simply due to the fact that they never truly transitioned to high school.”

He continued, saying, “It’s really kind of like dealing with two freshmen classes and they’re going to make a lot of mistakes.”

Many students think there are more ghts on campus this year, but it seems that there are fewer ghts than previous years, including the 2018-2019 year which was marked by a signi cant increase in ghts on campus. Administrative Vice Principal Stephen Emmi said, “It’s less ghts this year, really. Not even one a week.” So while physical altercations are not on the rise, the data suggests de ance and disrespect are.

Principal Karl Losekoot said, “It looks like, on the surface, that there are more suspensions for A1 compared to the 2019-2020 year.” An A1 suspension refers

written by Emily Olson designed by Katie Doran

to a suspension for general disrespect and de ance.

English teacher Erin Walsh said, “the thing I noticed the most is there are a lot of people not going to class on time or taking really long bathroom breaks and then meeting up with people in the G-wing. It’s mostly noise and rowdiness.”

And some teachers are fed up. Nelson said, “[Teachers] didn’t become teachers to go out in the hallway and deal with kids who are rude to [sta ]. We’re just over it.”

Another teacher said, “At the start of the year we were told to have grace, be kind, be understanding. It hasn’t paid o . ere are some students who are just rude and mean to others.”

Walsh, whose rst year at M-A was online, said, “It’s de nitely harder than I was expecting to deal with some of the unruliness. It has made it hard for a lot of students and for teachers too.”

In the same survey, 95% of polled teachers think hall sweeps are an e ective response.

95% of teachers reported hall sweeps are e ective

English teacher Susie Choe said, “I love hall sweeps!”

While hall sweeps aren’t always ideal— one teacher even commented, “I abhor the loudness of the music and instructions”— they may help reduce tardiness and rowdiness this year.

An anonymous teacher commented, “Hall sweeps are great. ey are a preemptive measure to make sure students are in class on time and ready to learn rather than a reactive measure to rally students already late to class.”

Report: Bathroom Closures at M-A Violate State Law

written by Ella Bohmann Farrell & Emily Buck designed by Jane White

Update: Following the publication of this article on machronicle.com on November 19th, Principal Karl Losekoot said, “ e bathrooms are no longer being locked, and they are open throughout the day. We have kept them open since the Monday before anksgiving break (11/22), and we have not had any problems, so we will continue to keep them open.”

is year, bathrooms across campus have been closed frequently, and M-A’s student body is pissed. Every day during the week of October 25-29, Chronicle journalists checked every bathroom open to students and found that 47.6% of bathrooms were locked during times when they were supposed to be open. We checked each bathroom before and after school, during brunch, lunch, and every class and passing period, for a total of 14 checks per bathroom every regular day and nine checks per bathroom on block days. e results speak for themselves.

47.6% of bathrooms were locked during times when they were supposed to be open.

According to Assistant Vice Principal Stephen Emmi, bathrooms are “locked when the bell ending lunch and brunch rings, until ve minutes into the period” as a result of “a huge increase in vandalism in the bathrooms,” and “kids grouping together in the bathrooms to avoid going to class.” e vandalism concern could be in reference to a recent TikTok trend called Devious Licks, where students steal school property as a joke

and post videos about it. Nevertheless, our data proves that the bathrooms are locked far more than just after brunch and lunch, and are sometimes locked and not reopened for the rest of the day.

Most of M-A’s campus was built in 1951 to adhere to a speci c “Prior to 1994 Uniform Building Code,” which requires one toilet per 100 men and one toilet per 45 women. Given our student population of about 1,190 women and 1,250 men, the school is required to have 27 toilets for women and 13 toilets for men open at all times. If M-A were built after 1994, newer codes would require even more toilets.

Our data shows that, on average, only 18 out of the 39 toilets for women are consistently open, which is substantially under the legal requirement. Conversely, the average number of toilets available to men consistently exceeds the requirement at 19 out of 36 toilets open throughout the day. is could be due to the fact that men have toilets and urinals, and both count as ‘one toilet.’ Gender-neutral restrooms do not have listed legal requirements; however, our one gender-neutral restroom, which was the result of a vigorous, eight-year push by the Genders-Sexualities Alliance, has only three toilets, and is seemingly either open the entire day or not at all. On two days during the week of October 25th, Tuesday and ursday, the bathroom was closed essentially all day.

M-A’s 11 bathrooms are scattered all across campus, meaning certain restrooms are less accessible than others. e E-Wing was open 99% of the times we checked, but it is a long walk away from the places where the most students gather during breaks: the Green and the G-Wing. Bathrooms closer to the Green, like Pride Hall, are open 68% of the times we checked, and the G-Wing upstairs bathroom is open 46% of the time, with the G-Wing downstairs open 75% of the time.

Senior Rishi Siddharth said, “I usually go to the K-Wing rst to see if it is open, since it has a ton of stalls. But when it’s closed I need to waste more class time and go to the G-Wing or Pride Hall. It’s really annoying.”

Since we only have one gender-neutral bathroom that does not require sta assistance to open, it is imperative that it is constantly available as its inaccessibility isolates the students that typically use it. In a previous M-A Chronicle article regarding concerns around M-A’s gender-neutral bathroom, student Austen Dollente (‘21) was “scared to use the gender-neutral bathroom” initially because of the “stigma around it or because of the remarks that we’ve heard or the aggression towards the bathrooms.” Users of the gender neutral bathroom already feel secluded, and the added unavailability exacerbates the issue. On ursday the 28th, the gender-neutral bathroom was closed for the entire day, forcing people that use it to use another bathroom that they might be uncomfortable with.

Many M-A students have expressed frustration with the closures. Sophomore Kate Budinger explained, “when I have tried to go, they have been locked more times than I can count.”

Our data shows that, on average, only 18 out of the 39 toilets for women are consistently open, which is substantially under the legal requirement.

Sophomore Janiya Moss said that the bathrooms are closed “so many times. It’s terrible—I can’t pee.”

Emmi acknowledged that “not all the bathrooms are necessarily getting reopened after the initial locking during brunch and lunch.” He explained, “Bathrooms should be open after lunch and then open for the rest of the day.” However, in our data, bathrooms were only open after lunch about 53% of the time throughout the entire week, giving students a 50/50 chance of bathroom accessibility after lunch.

Assistant Vice Principal Nick Muys said that the bathrooms shouldn’t be closed “for more than 15 minutes during the day.” However, on average, the bathrooms were closed for approximately 175 minutes a day.

Campus aides and other sta are tasked

with opening and closing the bathrooms at allocated times throughout the day. Campus aide Ms. Dixon said, “ e instructions we were given from administration were that it’s mainly brunch, lunch, and ex when they want it locked for up to ten minutes after the nal bell rings.” ese instructions can be understandably confusing, as there is no set routine to who locks each individual bathroom, just a goal of having them all locked during “intended times.”

Campus aides are also managing all types of issues around M-A’s campus, so bathroom monitoring may not always be a top priority. Campus aide Steven Guerra explained, “there are a million reasons— vandalism, crowding, and bad behavior— why they stay closed.”

However, keeping bathrooms open is important for avoiding health and hygiene issues and reducing lost class time. “Holding it in” can actually have negative long term health implications, and wandering around campus to nd an open bathroom turns “bathroom breaks” into 15-minute excursions which causes students to miss valuable class time. Junior Lilly Cobos said,

Percentage of Time Bathrooms Were Open by Wing (10/25-10/29)

“Sometimes I have to walk all the way across campus just to nd an open bathroom.”

Freshman Amanda Jennings said, “I don’t like how the bathrooms aren’t open during class,” calling it “very inconvenient.”

In particular, people that are menstruating require bathroom access for menstruation hygiene. Junior Calista Schmidt said, “I think it is especially unfair to girls who need to use the bathroom a lot more for things like hygiene if it is that time of the month.”

Both of the AVPs sympathize with students, and Emmi said, “I apologize, but this is our attempt to try to recalibrate and monitor our bathrooms and make sure they are not being damaged or abused.”

Muys explained, “Our aim is maximum bathroom access. We will work to address it because it is important. I don’t want this to be an issue of contention for our students who are already having so many di cult days getting readjusted to in-person school and the stresses of academic life.”

Regardless, students are legally entitled to a certain number of toilets open for their use.

Muys added, “there were de nitely some holes, and we are in need of a more systematic approach to opening and closing.” He also noted that the administration is “very grateful for this research, and I will share it with the team and work towards implementing a better system.”

Percentage of Time Bathrooms Were Open By Gender

(10/25-10/29)

Rethinking College Admissions

e college admissions process is stressful at the best of times, and the pandemic has introduced a whole new set of challenges. From the wave of test-optional policies to the ability to change grades to a “Pass” on transcripts, the admissions process has become

even more di cult to navigate. To hear admissions o cers’ advice on the changing landscape of college admissions, we called 165 undergraduate admission o ces from across the country. Ultimately, we spoke to admissions o cers from 19 schools, including representatives from the

A new California law allows high school students to retroactively change any letter grades from the 2020-2021 school year to Pass or No Pass. Students in our District had until December 10th to make grade change requests, but were unsure of how changing their grades could a ect their applications. College admission o cers’ responses varied, even within the same university system. For example, former UC Berkeley admissions representative Bob Jacobsen said, “I’d rather see the transcript for the full set of grades.” He then stressed the importance of explanations if students decided to change grades to a Pass. He acknowledged that it

University of Washington, Claremont McKenna, UC Berkeley, and an anonymous Ivy League school. ey gave us their insights on Pass/No Pass grades, test-optional policies, and essay writing. To read each full story, scan the QR code next to each topic.

To Pass or Not To Pass...

is reasonable if a student wanted to take a Pass or No Pass due to family circumstances, but said that if the student changed their grades “every semester, two semesters, three semesters—there should be a much better explanation.”

By contrast, Linda Koch, one of the head admission o cers at UC Santa Cruz, had no problem with Passes on students’ transcripts. She explained, “it becomes a matter of running the numbers to see if it’s advantageous for a student to take the Pass, or to take the [letter grade],” depending on what would raise a student’s GPA.

The Test-Optional Dilemma

Now that 1,700+ colleges have announced test-optional policies for the fall semester, many students are struggling to decide whether or not to include their SAT and ACT scores in their applications. Will admissions o cers be biased against students without standardized test scores? Should students submit scores if they are below the school’s average admitted score?

Most college admissions o cers advised that students should submit test scores if they are representative of their ability or improve their academic pro le. Miguel Wasielewski, the Director of Admissions at the University of Texas at Austin, explained, “If they were a straight-A student and got a lower than average score on the SAT, I would likely tell them, ‘don’t submit that.’ But if it was consistent with everything else on a report card, even if it wasn’t the best, I might

tell them to submit it.”

Additionally, higher test scores among admitted students help improve a school’s national ranking, a system which may disadvantage students who submit lower scores. Anne Fleming Brown, Director of Admissions from Union College, said, “I’m not ashamed to say that colleges are interested in your SATs to improve their rankings in US News and World Report.”

Other admissions o cers reassured students that not submitting test scores won’t make or break their application. A representative from Harvey Mudd College, for example, reported that last year the percentage of applicants with no test scores was more or less equal to the percentage of admitted students with no test scores, with 38% of applicants and 39% of admitted students not reporting scores.

Essay Advice From The Inside

Writing college application essays may feel like one of the most daunting parts of the admissions process, so we asked college admissions o cers to break down what they’re looking for, from picking essay topics to their pet peeves.

e ultimate goal of the essays is for colleges to “learn something about the applicant that we aren’t getting from another part of their application,” said Kelsey Mark, a Senior Admissions Counselor from the University of Washington. Most admissions o cers emphasized authenticity and the importance of highlighting a student’s individuality.

To that end, some representatives encouraged students to avoid certain topics that are often overdone. For instance, Jacobsen from UC Berkeley said, “Personally, I’m sick of hearing about students from wealthy high schools who spent a week in

Guatemala on a service trip and it changed their life.” While some admissions o cers agreed that topics like service trips have become cliché and should generally be avoided, others said that students are still welcome to write about them if they can do so uniquely and genuinely.

College representatives also spoke about the importance of showing vulnerability, and for students to show the obstacles they have faced and overcome. Still, students need to be careful to portray these experiences in a way that highlights their resilience rather than just sparking concern from admissions o cers. Lisa Otsuka, an M-A English teacher who edits many students’ college essays, explained, “You have to be 100% honest in these essays, but you don’t have to tell 100% of everything.” So what details should students tell, and what should they choose to leave out?

written by Tess Buckley, Katie Doran, & Sheryl Chen designed by Tess Buckley

*originally published on the M-A Chronicle on January 6th, 2022.

The COVID-19 Dashboard is Not Enough

As M-A students are returning from winter break, the surge in COVID-19 is noticeable across campus. In recent weeks, with the emergence of the Omicron variant, case numbers have skyrocketed not only in San Mateo County, but statewide and nationally as well. Yet there is no way for students to know how this surge is playing out on campus because the District’s COVID-19 Dashboard will not be updated until Friday, January 7th. It is District policy this year to post the number of sta and student cases each Friday.

We argue that the COVID-19 Dashboard should be updated daily, as cases are reported to schools, because the exponential nature of the pandemic means that just a few days of inaction can signiﬁcantly harm our ability to stop the spread.

We argue that the COVID-19 Dashboard should be updated daily, as cases are reported to schools, because the exponential nature of the pandemic

means that just a few days of inaction can signi cantly harm our ability to stop the spread. Students, sta , and parents must be kept updated in order to ensure their safety.

COVID-19 is very much a matter of life and death.

While it is obvious to many that M-A is in the middle of the highest case rate it has seen since we returned to in-person instruction, the District would not provide any data when contacted for comment, instead referring us to their Dashboard, which won’t be updated for several days. And it’s possible the information won’t even be posted this Friday. Immediately following anksgiving break, which also had the potential to cause a rise in cases, the Dashboard was updated four days late. We returned the 29th of November but our case rate wasn’t posted until December 7th even though data for that week should have been posted December 3rd. is meant that the information students received was at least four days late, considering that COVID cases are reported to the school throughout the week. If there had been a spike in cases on the Monday we returned, we wouldn’t

written by e Editorial Board designed by Jane White

427

have known about it for eight days. According to the CDC, people can spread COVID-19 up to two days before their symptoms start, meaning it is possible for COVID-positive students or teachers to spread the virus to other people on campus before they even begin to exhibit symptoms. Receiving data at the end of the week creates a delay that makes it di cult to gauge how much COVID-19 is actually spreading on campus.

As the second semester starts, students are returning to M-A after traveling and visiting their families, which, when compounded with how easily Omicron spreads, almost guarantees an uptick in cases on campus.

Fortunately, even with delayed reporting, case rates stayed low in the weeks following anksgiving break, but that is not the case now. Omicron has magni ed the problem and, according to e New York Times, “Omicron cases are doubling every

two to four days—a much faster rate than Delta.” On January 4th, 2,749 new cases were reported in San Mateo County, more than double the 1,217 cases reported just one day earlier on January 3rd.

As the second semester starts, students are returning to M-A after traveling and visiting their families, which, when compounded with how easily Omicron spreads, almost guarantees an uptick in cases

on campus. is has been heavily felt at M-A as many students and nearly one- fth of teachers have been absent from school. And, inaccuracy concerns aside, the Dashboard is one of the only ways that parents, students, and teachers can stay informed about the spread of COVID-19 on campus.

It is di cult for families to understand the risks of returning to school without upto-date information from the Dashboard.

M-A’s Reported COVID-19 Cases As of 1/21

Students and families deserve to know how safe school is for their children, since COVID-19 is very much a matter of life and death, especially for those who interact with vulnerable individuals. e District must update the COVID-19 Dashboard as cases are reported in order to ensure that both students and families are as safe as possible.

Scan here to visit the District’s COVID-19 Dashboard:

Semester 1 Semester 2 Semester 2 Semester 1

District’s Reported COVID-19 Cases As of 1/21

Redeﬁning Yourself After Injury

written by Sarah Weintraut designed by Katie Doran

Sports are often a critical aspect of athletes’ lives; with daily practices, weekly games, and monthly tournaments, sports take incredible commitment. So, when an athlete su ers from an injury, they lose a monumental part of their life. ey are forced to ask themselves the daunting question: Who are they without their sport?

For many, sports are one of the most positive aspects of their life.

Senior and outside-linebacker for the football team Douglas Adams said that football is the thing that “brings me happiness and gives me a reason to want to improve, if that’s academically or on the football eld.”

Sophomore soccer and basketball player Abby Ko said, “I was on my soccer team for four years, so we had a really strong team community. We were like a really tight-knit family, we were always there for each other, and we became really close.”

Instantaneously, these athletes have their support systems taken away from them. One wrong fall, one shove too hard, one wrong landing, and all of it comes crumbling down.

Ko su ered an ACL tear in 2019 and subsequent knee injuries followed, which stopped her from playing basketball and soccer. She said, “When I was given the diagnosis, it hit really hard. It was this slow realization that I wouldn’t be able to play my sports for at least a year. Sports were a big part of my life, so I had no idea what I was going to do from then on.”

Kieran Kunihiro, a senior and varsity soccer player, su ered a stress fracture in his elbow in his junior year. Kunihiro has played soccer all his life, and he said, “Not being able to play felt like a big part of my life was taken away from me.” He said that prior to his injury, “I was pushing my body way too much with no rest and no recovery.”

Rigorous training schedules are not uncommon—especially following the pandemic. M-A basketball coach Mike Molieri explained that “knowing there’s cuts, athletes push themselves past their limit to improve. ey’ll do additional training outside of practice, and it’s just too much wear and tear on their bodies. I’ve especially seen an increase in injuries after the pandemic because kids feel like they need

to make up for the time they lost during quarantine. ”

Before his injury, Adams had football practice every afternoon. In his sophomore year, Adams su ered from a broken tibia, which kept him from playing football for several months. In regards to his injury’s e ect on his mental health, Adams commented “My injury a ected my mental health terribly. I was at one of the lowest points of my life and I went through a lot of mental health problems. At that point in my life, sports were my everything, so I was pretty lost when I wasn’t able to play.”

Kunihiro said, “It was hard watching my friends continue playing and improving knowing that I just had to sit and watch and wasn’t able to partake in those activities.”

“My injury affected my mental health terribly. I was at one of the lowest points of my life and I went through a lot of mental health problems. At that point in my life, sports were my everything, so I was pretty lost when I wasn’t able to play.”

Additionally, whether permanently or temporarily, athletes that have been injured are forced to realize that sports will not always be in their lives. At the end of high school, athletes who will not play in college have to reach this realization as well. Leo Krupnik, M-A soccer coach of six years said, “It’s always sad when something ends, right? We want to continue doing what we love, but there’s nothing that’s neverending. ere’s always an end to something good” and advised that “we have to realize that there’s more to life than just the game. [Soccer] Is a great game—it’s one of the best things that you can do in your life—but at the end of the day, it’s just a game.”

Ko explained, “Sports can be very important, but there should be a limit to how much you invest into sports. If your entire life revolves around a sport, and then you lose that sport, then what are you?

Athletes should branch out to other things so that they have multiple things to identify with when their time in sports reaches an end.”

And that’s what Adams, Kunihiro, and Ko did. As much as their injuries were detrimental to their mental health, the injuries also gave them time to step back and reevaluate where they were in their lives. Adams said, “I learned more about myself while I was injured. I know I became mentally stronger. ” Adams mentioned that during his time o he found an interest in psychology and plans to pursue it in college.

Kunihiro also came back from his injury with a changed mindset. He said he found a lot of happiness volunteering and drawing while he was injured, and plans to continue both.

Ko explored several new interests, including learning two new coding languages and starting a journalism project by interviewing local business owners. Unlike Kunihiro and Adams, Ko was unable to return to her sports after her knee injuries persisted, and decided to join the M-A water polo team as a way to continue doing sports. Ko said, “At rst water polo was awful–I was terri ed. I had never played before and didn’t know many people. But then there was a slow process of learning to love it, and now I want to continue doing it.”

None of those interviewed argued that injuries are something to dissuade people from doing sports. Sports remain a positive part of their lives and parts of their identities. eir injuries do not de ne them. Even though the road to recovery was challenging, they persevered through it, have grown stronger because of it, and have hope for the future.

Adams said, “I thought it was over. ere were a lot of days where I struggled in physical therapy and wanted to quit. But, with the help of my physical therapist, my coach, and others, I got through it and am back on the football eld.” He assures all those who have gone, or will go through an injury, that “the sun will shine again.”

Why Should We Care About Tenure?

written and designed by Cleo Rehkopf

81%

teachers

surveyed

mentioned that the protection from suddenly being ﬁred is one of the key advantages to having tenure.

“When I returned from maternity leave at a school outside of SUHSD, the principal commented that women should be home and not working. He tried to give my job to his friend, but my tenure prevented him from doing so,” said an M-A teacher.

According to California state law, schools are required to give “probationary,” or non-temporary, teachers tenure after two years. Otherwise, they can’t rehire the teacher. However, not every M-A teacher that has been here for more than two years is tenured. Many teachers are hired as temporary for several years before being put on track for tenure.

Once a teacher has tenure, unless they do something illegal, the school has to go through an extensive and expensive process in order to remove them from their position. Most non-teaching jobs don’t o er tenure, even within schools; coaches and administrators don’t get tenure and must be rehired each year. Of 48 M-A teachers polled, 80% reported having tenure.

Sequoia District Teachers Association Executive Board Vice President Cary Milia said, “Tenure is a permanent status that protects teachers from an administrator who doesn’t like the teacher or a complaint from a parent.” 81% of teachers surveyed mentioned that the protection from suddenly being red is one of the key advantages to having tenure.

Math teacher Manuel Delgado said, “Teaching is very political. A new principal can come in and, for whatever reason, the principal might not like a teacher. Without tenure, they can just get rid of that teacher, regardless of whether they’re a great teacher or not.”

Milia said that if administors want to remove a tenured teacher, “the teacher has to go through an evaluation, and if they don’t get a good evaluation, then they get referred to the Peer Assistance and Review (PAR) program.” In the PAR program, teachers are mentored by their colleagues, and only after they get another negative evaluation can the removal process continue. Milia said, “the entire procedure can take one or two years.”

77% of teachers polled appreciate the

current tenure system, while the remaining 23% would prefer either no tenure or a modi cation of the current system.

Almost all of the teachers who opposed the current tenure system cited the longer process required to remove colleagues that should not be teaching.

Even though a tenured teacher can still be removed, this process makes some students feel that it is impossible to do so. Senior Cate Whittaker said, “No matter my frustration or disagreement with a tenured teacher, they are there to stay.”

“Tenure also makes administrators, parents, and teachers work together because people can’t threaten to ﬁre others who don’t do what they want.”

29% mentioned that tenure serves as compensation in a di cult profession. Principal Karl Losekoot said, “Teaching doesn’t pay a ton of money, so teachers can’t save money for a rainy day. ey need the stability and nancial security that tenure o ers.”

21% of teachers polled said they like tenure because it gives teachers the power to stand up to administrators to ght policies that they believe hurt students. With tenure, teachers can also teach controversial topics without having to worry about losing their job.

Candace Bolles, who is the Site Representative for M-A, said, “At other schools I’ve had some really good administrators and I’ve had some really bad ones. I’ve been asked to change the grade of the quarterback on a school’s football team. Tenure made it possible for me to say no without having to worry about getting red.”

A recently tenured teacher said, “Teachers are usually the ones who advocate most for the changes in schools that bene t students, families, and communities. Without tenure, parents who are already privileged by society’s structures would have even more control over the school and

inequity would become more pronounced than it already is.”

Losekoot said, “Tenure also makes administrators, parents, and teachers work together because people can’t threaten to re others who don’t do what they want. On the other hand, because there’s not as much of a top down hierarchy, changes can’t happen as quickly.”

Some also believe that tenure creates a greater sense of community. Losekoot added, “In order to create a stable environment for students, it is important to have teachers that have been around for a while and become pillars of the school community.”

Many have also raised the question of whether two years is really enough time for the school to make a tenure decision. Athletic Director and math teacher Steven Kryger said that, “For most teachers, two years is not enough time to be able to tell whether or not they are going to be a great teacher. Five years would be ideal.”

However, Bolles argued that, “two years might not be enough time for somebody who is fresh out of college to prove themselves, but it is enough for teachers who have switched school districts and have to start over as probationary.”

Losekoot said, “My preference would be three years. Two years is a little quick for both the school and teachers. It doesn’t give enough time for younger teachers to learn and get better before the school makes a decision about permanency. Sometimes schools let a teacher go even though after another year they could be a great teacher. On the other hand, ve years would be too much. If a teacher spends ve years somewhere and invests in the school and community, and then they aren’t rehired, they would have to start over somewhere else. ree years is the right amount of time for teachers to adapt to a new school.”

Kryger, who’s been teaching at M-A for 14 years said that, “Tenure allows teachers to establish long term relationships with the community which wouldn’t be possible with a high turnover rate.”

Our Top 20 Things to do at M-A

written by Ella Bohmann Farrell designed by Ellie Hultgren

We love utilizing our class time—outside. Students speckle the Green and outdoor tables during class for a nice mask break.

M-A’s cultural appreciation shines through in our lunchtime events like our Día de Los Muertos celebration of life.

Dedicated M-A canners can be found outside any of your local grocery stores. We reached our ambitious goal of 300k cans this year. Go Bears!

M-A students don’t come to school for nothing: we come for our enthusiastic spirit weeks, our cultural celebrations at lunch, and our lovely hall sweeps and blaring false re alarms. Oh, and obviously for the good of our education…Chronicle journalists and you all helped us condense a list of the absolute best things to do at M-A: the things that make school worth showing up to. So, outsiders, bored M-A students, and even administrators, here are the reported TOP 20 THINGS TO DO AT M-A (in no particular order):

Sit through a re alarm, since they go o all the time. On the o chance it’s a real re, whoopsies!

Waiting in line for an hour is totally worth it for a night of sweat, lights, music, and dancing. Nothing says a romantic night out like having an administrator and your freshman year bio teacher watch you get jiggy on the dance oor from a dark corner of the room.

Science Class Projects: AP Environmental Science classes grow their own lettuce (and eat it) and create life-sustaining habitats... and always make sure to post them on instagram. @ma.apes @apes_powell

Creative Sacred Heart slander at our homecoming rally is an M-A tradition. ere is nothing M-A students love more than gator huntin’!

What do you call a relaxed octopus? A calm-ari! Marine Bio students enhance their culinary skills—in science class!

Need to pee? Prepare for an extensive trek around campus for a bathroom...Hey, at least you’re getting exercise!

Spongebob, Squidward, and Plankton dazzle the stage in this fall’s performance of SpongeBob SquarePants: e Musical.

Splash zone warning! e rest of campus is empty during water polo lunchtime faceo s, as all students ood the stands to support our 2019 CCS-winning wopo champs.

Beep beep! e person that sits behind you in class unexpectedly cuts you o midline in the tra c circle. It takes you another 20 minutes to get out...

PDA: Walking past the K-Wing? Don’t forget to shut your eyes to avoid the expressive couple passionately making out in broad daylight.

Club Rush: Students crowd the Green and join new clubs, as each table famously o ers some kind of sweet treat to bribe new recruits.

“Teachers, please close and lock your doors, teachers, please close and lock your doors.” e adrenaline while listening to Spice Girls’ biggest hits mid-sprint to class is unmatched. And how could you not love the audio quality that sounds like a 2002 iPod being held up to a can on a string.

M-A’s world renowned cold pizza is like no other. Students swarm the G-Wing as lunch starts in competition to snatch the last slice.

Feel-Good Friday: It’s always a nice surprise when we have extended lunches with a farmers market and the opportunity to do some relaxing yoga. Free carrots never tasted so good. A little bit of dirt builds immunity.

Our football team does it well, but our student section does it better. e rowdiest and most spirited high school crowd in CCS history breaks records every game of the season while committing acts of psychological warfare with Instagram captions that would be mean if they weren’t so true.

Congrats! You’re in trouble. Enjoy your thrilling ride around campus in Sam’s ve mph golf cart.

Lunchtime Games: Anyone up for a friendly game of pickleball?

Monday slump? Donut pick-me-ups save the day. Follow their TikTok @madonutclub.

designed by Katherine Welander

Faces of M-A

Art Submissions

designed by Justina Wilkins

by Walden Lee

by Emily Buck

by Ella Bohmann Farrell

by Diana Castro

student written student managed student voices