THE
SBHS
FORGE
Volume 101, Issue 8
Once a Don Always a Don: Late principal remembers his school in a big way Edoardo Kaplan College can be the Managing Editor golden ticket to a more rewarding and betterpaying job, yet it can take a pot of gold to pay for all its expenses. For 50 stunned SBHS seniors, however, paying the bill for high education just got a little easier. This year the SBHS Alumni Association gave out 50 scholarships, each worth $1000, but in a surprise, a remarkable benefactor matched the scholarship with an additional $1000. The extra money came from the Claud Hardesty Scholarship Foundation. The foundation was created this year by an “extremely generous gift” from Claud Hardesty, who reigned over SBHS as principal from 1957 to 1970. The new foundation will distribute funds to SBHS seniors each year from now into “perpetuity,” according to Alumni Association vice president Tim Putz. David Zevallos, one of the recipients of the scholarship, was deeply thankful and impacted by this gift. “It was really amazing, my dad started crying tears of joy and I felt very proud of my school.” Another recipient, Mathew Prado, stated “I was very appreciative when I found out that I received a scholarship from the Alumni Association and Mr. Hardesty. It lightened my financial burden and will help many students future students get to college.” “His sizeable gift will ensure that many of our Dons will benefit from his extremely generous and gracious bequest for many years to come!” notes the Alumni Association. A principal for 23 years, Mr. Hardesty lived until 103 and passed away in 2012. The alumni association reports that Mr. Hardesty had no family but always felt that each generation of Dons was part of his extended family. While principal, Hardesty was known for his fancy western fashion, wearing a cowboy hat in the school olive and gold colors along with boots and bolo tie. Mr. Hardesty’s school spirit was so strong that he attended every Dons’ football and basketball game until the ripe old age of 102, cheering for ‘his’ team.
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June 5, 2015
Say goodbye to the Class of 2015!
Goodbye to the Class of 2015! We wish you the best of luck in whatever you choose to pursue in the future. Photo courtesy of Jonathan Little (Roberts Photography)
To the last class to walk down “The Hill” into “the stadium” as we know it. To the Class of 2015 My freshman year, we hosted a foreign exchange student from Germany--Ole Peters--who was a Junior at the time. Every day he would come home fixated on some new aspect of American high school that had amazed him during the school day. He first remarked how refreshing it was to have students of all skill sets, academic levels, and interests in one high school. He told me that the European model for high school divides students into specialized schools soon after junior high. Initially I thought this sounded like a pretty cool concept, however, Ole was quick to point out its shortcomings, and what he saw as advantages of our American system. In Europe, typically there are classical, scientific, musical, and vocation-specific high schools, which holds the downside of splitting students up into specific cohorts which rarely intermingle. Adding to this, few European high schools fielded sports teams of any sort, nor did they require community service, or offer such diverse electives as student government or journalism. Above all, however, he noted that the concept of “school spirit” was a completely foreign concept to him personally. It was something he had seen in movies, but that, at the high school level, was a distinctly
American construct. Needless to say, he was quickly smitten with SBHS. He was fair, however and noted that neither of our two systems of schooling were, per say, any “better” or more successful than the other, but simply that they were very different. And therein lies what I believe to be the beauty of our high school experience. Our standards of raging school spirit, fantastic sports teams, extracurricularly activity, and community involvement are unlike those of any other place in the world. Add in Santa Barbara High School’s specific tradition of school pride and excellence, and hopefully we begin to see why we, as the class of 2015, really should appreciate this place we’ve called home for the last four years. Whether you’ve bought into the “school pride” game or not over these last four years, there is no denying it has helped shaped the high school experience for us all. Whether you believe our class was a spirited, or a drab bunch, there is no denying that our school events have done far more work to unite 2,300 teenagers than it has to divide them. Every test we ace, game we win, and event we put on, immediately impacts and invigorates our local community. When our basketball, or tennis teams go to state, our community gets behind them. When we put on a great theatre production our
What’s Inside? News: Goodbye class of 2015!
Centerspread: Top artists at SBHS Sports: Season recaps for all sports
community comes to watch. And when we all finally decide what and where we are going next year, our community gets to pat itself on the back and say “Yea, I had a hand in that”. And so I would like to say thank you. Thank you for joining the scream team, for coming to dances, and for getting excited at Pep Rallies. Thank you for painting the cow, for explaining that a “Don” is an honorific Spanish title of a leader, and for saying “Olive and Gold” instead of “green and yellow”. Thank you for treating DP with friendly though patronizing disdain, and thank you for hating SM. Thank you for being dedicated to the activities you are involved in; the hard work you have put into your area of expertise has enriched the high school experience for all those around you. You are not graduating from high school, but from “The High School”. June 10th, let’s meet on the 50 yard line one last time. This time no facepaint. P.S. Our Senior gift is a brand new cut marble sign at the Canon Perdido entrance to the school. Go us. Sincerely, William Belfiore Associated Student Body President 2014-2015