Have you read a good book outside of class lately? Why not? Here’s how to get back in the habit.
Though women are leading the Bionic Bruins, STEM classes are still predominantly male. PAGES 10-11
Science classes are beginning to catch up with climate curriculum
NOLAN ZILS
The rollback in February of federal and state food assistance during the pandemic is expected to lead to food insecurity and has led to a dropoff in donations at food banks.
During the pandemic, the federal program for food aide, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), increased payouts to food assistance programs in each state. Until February, families in California’s program, CalFresh, received up to $95 in extra benefits.
More than 3 million California households, including 78,746 in Santa Clara, receive food
assistance through CalFresh, a number that jumped during the pandemic and has remained there.
After March, households would no longer receive these extra funds. A typical family will stand to lose an average of $200 a month.
The recent rollbacks are a blow to area families, who are feeling the effects of inflation in their pocketbooks as well as their grocery carts.
At Branham, a pop-up food pantry in the parking lot funded by the Second Harvest Food Bank has been regularly providing fresh vegetables, milk and poultry since early 2020,
Exploring factors behind the high costs of joining a club sport.
In the student-athlete culture surrounding the school’s athletic program, those who can afford to join sports clubshave an advantage over those who can’t.. As family income increases, so does sports participation. Global Sports Matters in 2017 reported that 69% of athletes playing at least one sport come from families earning more than $100,000 famili However in families earning less than $25,000 a year, just 34% participated. The article claimed this to be a cause of the expenses to play sports, including club sports.
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Senior Ava Medina, played varsity girls volleyball last season and recently committed to play Division II at Shorter University in Georgia. She said that playing in college would not have been possible without her participation in club sports.
She estimates that her family has spent as much as $7,000 annually for her to play club volleyball, including travel and lessons. This made playing collegiately and getting a scholarship a must.
While she said a few athletes on the Shorter squad did only play school volleyball, recruiting is infinitely harder in that scenario, since club games allow for more exposure to scouts and colleges.
The experience gap created from club sports
Fleming joined the Branham staff in 2014 as part of the substitute clerical pool, substituting only for Branham. When the previous book room secretary left in 2015, Fleming took the position and has stayed ever since.
MAKAYLA WU Staff Writer
Bookroom clerk Susie Fleming will be retiring at the end of this year after nine years in a role that went beyond helping students check out textbooks and novels.
As clerk, Fleming has been responsible for preparing and organizing tests, from the PSAT, AP to the statewide CAASPP exams and figuring out schedules for thousands of students and keeping track of books that students need for their English classes.
She said that she doesn’t mind that her hard work is largely in the background and unknown to most, saying that her favorite part of the job is organizing testing schedules and making sure everything runs according to plan.
“Not a single AP exam has fallen through the
Athletes in club sports have an advantage over those who can’t afford it
Senior Scotty Moore after winning the 106-pound state championship at Mechanics Bank Arena in Bakersfield
ALLI WANG News Editor
The Bionic Bruins are seeking to raise $15,000 after learning that they’ll be heading to Dallas next month for the Vex Robotics World Championships, a decadelong dream of theirs to compete at the international stage.
OVERHEARD | QUOTES OF THE MONTH FROM OUR ONLINE STORIES
Moore, ranked sixth in the state, pinned four out of six opponents he faced, including Buchanan freshman Rocklin Zinkin in the finals for the first Branham state championship since 1983.
Math and engineering teacher Barbara Schremp for Bionic Bruins heading to Dallas, Texas for VEX Robotics World Championship
can
Freshmen Erica Kim after her performance for the Korean language class at the World Language Banquet
and their expenses results in not only disharmony in school squads, but also causes low-income children to drop out of the sport.
A 2020 national survey from the Aspen Institute’s Project Play initiative and Utah State University’s Families in Sport Lab concluded that children aged 6-18 of low-income families are six times more likely to quit sports on any level compared to children from high-income families.
Junior Maisie Wong is one of four athletes on the varsity girls volleyball team who has never played club sports for volleyball. She cited the cost of club sports and lack of time as the main reasons for not participating. She said even though she sometimes feels inferior to the club sports players, the team environment fostered by head coach Heather Cooper keeps her motivated and passionate for the sport.
“There is definitely a little bit of imposter syndrome or feeling like you’re not good enough,” she said. “But with a good team, coaches, and environment in general, you quickly get over it and play the sport you love.”
Varsity girls soccer coach Erich Rabago acknowledges the inequities in playing club sports, and estimates that 90% of his varsity athletes participate in them.
Due to the money-driven culture of soccer, he doesn’t see a scenario where the game will become more affordable for his team to stay competitive.
“Soccer is pay to play in the U.S.,” he said. “Unless that changes, not sure if there is anything you can do.”
To donate
The VEX competition’s challenge this year is called “Spin Up” in which teams have to work with an allied team to launch disks in a net and spin rollers on the side of the game.
The team is looking to raise $15,000. To donate, scan the QR code above.
The highly competitive tournament accepts around 800 high school and middle school teams out of more than 20,000 entrants worldwide, with teams qualifying through local tournaments or online challenges.
The team credits sophomore Kai Chua for helping them qualify for the global round. Chua had spent 67 hours working and eventually winning an online Mathworks challenge to code with MATLAB to make a drone to follow a line. The win gave the team a ticket to the VEX Worlds round.
As it was his first time coding with MATLAB, the win was even more surprising for Chua.
“I didn’t really have as much time to code it compared to the other team, so I was actually really happy that at least the hours I put in were put to good use,” he said.
Robotics adviser Barbara Schremp said she screamed when the team notified her that they had qualified last week. The robotics team had qualified for the VEX Worlds three years ago by winning a local competition, but were unable to attend due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“These guys have worked and tried so many different ways to get there,” she said. “They were strategizing how we could do this. … This isn’t the first year that they’ve tried things like trying online challenges. They did, and it yielded an invitation. I’m really proud of them.”
Clubs: More opportunities to practice, improve Sophomore Toma Ii has been playing club soccer for six years, which he said has helped him learn to play as a team, how to make a through pass, and how to look for a striker on the run. Li credited the social setting of club sports with the improvement of his ability to play with others, which he said translated to playing on the Branham team, as all the club players had an easier time with teamwork and chemistry.
“I think I’d be more of a selfish person (if I had not joined a club sport),” he said. “It sort of motivates you to work harder than even before.”
For teams, experience counts, and playing on club teams means that there’s less catching up to do.
Senior Jacob Rinehart is on the varsity baseball team, and has been playing club baseball, including travel ball, since he was 12. Rinehart has gone as far as New York, specifically to Cooperstown, where the Baseball Hall of Fame resides. He was part of the squad that went to the CCS championships last year.
“There’s a clear line between the people that have played and people that haven’t, it’s a lot harder to work on drills and stuff and teach new things to people,” he said. “Because you have the people that know how to do it and people that don’t and it’s hard to process that all together.”
School sports are still meaningful and important to the development of student athletes, according to Rabago. He said that even for those in club sports, school sports provide opportunities and chances that club does not.
“I do think school sports are very beneficial,” he said. “They provide the student athletes to play on a team with friends and represent their school. It also provides some players to play different positions on the field, and have different responsibilities within the team.”
Wong said that the culture of Branham volleyball is unique to club sports in that it provides a more philosophical approach to the athletes’
“With a good team, coaches, and environment in general, you quickly get over it and play the sport you love.”
Junior Maisie Wong, who has never played club volleyball
Senior Jacob Rinehart, who’s
club baseball since he was 12
motivations to play volleyball.
“The volleyball program at Branham is like no other,” she said. “Cooper heavily stresses the importance of ‘why.’ Why are you playing volleyball? It’s not just because you like the sport, there is always something deeper.”
Though they recognize it as a notable inequality, student athletes expressed doubt that the elitism and lack of accessibility to club sports will ever improve.
Global Sport Matters reported that nearly nearly three out of four adults played at least one youth sport growing up, only 37% of their children ages 6 to 12 played a team sport on a regular basis in 2017, down from 41.5 percent in 2011.”
The article said that cost was a key reason behind the decrease.
Despite the camaraderie and supportive environment of her school, Wong said she has accepted the fact that without club sports, getting on the same level as her fellow athletes who do play in club sports is next to impossible.
“The best players were club players; that’s not meant to put anyone down, it just was the facts,” she said. “However, I wouldn’t say that my development was worse or anything, it was just that they practiced more than me.”
“I’d be more selfish (if I hadn’t joined). It sort of motivates you to work harder than even before.”
Sophomore Toma II, who has participated In club soccer for six years
Senior Ava Medina, who has ommitted to playing volleyball with Shorter University.
Costs to play in club sports in the Bay Area can range from a few hundred to several thousand dollars per year depending on the following factors.
Club fees: Clubs typically charge membership fees to cover the cost of facilities, equipment, uniforms, coaches, and other expenses.
Tournament and travel expenses: Many club sports involve traveling to tournaments and competitions, which can add significant expenses to the cost of playing.
Uniforms and equipment: Costs can vary depending on the sport and the level of competition.
Training and coaching fees: Some clubs may charge additional fees for specialized training or coaching sessions, such as individual or small group lessons.
Miscellaneous expenses: There may be other miscellaneous expenses associated with playing club sports, such as registration fees, team bonding events, and fundraising activities.
“I wasn’t overconfident, but believed I could take out whoever stepped on the mat with me.”
“These guys have worked and tried so many different ways to get there. They did, and it yielded an invitation. I’m really proud of them.”
“Once in a while if you do something impulsive and new you
earn something good from it.”Lauren Gernale/Bear Witness Freshman Adelle Kang posing for the ending of their K-Pop dance performance to “OMG” by NewJeans Courtesy of Zoya Brahimzadeh Sophomore Anvit Mishra teaches an elementary student how to drive a doodling robot during an outreach event in 2022.
“If I didn’t have club, like, it’s really hard to keep like getting better when you don’t really consistently practice.”
“There’s a clear line between the people that have played and people that haven’t.”
been Playing
Hackathon brings dozens of coders from around the district
More than 60 students typed and worked away in the cafeteria developing tech tools for teens Sunday at the annual Hackathon, sponsored by the Bionic Bruins and the Branham Programming Club.
Attendees from around the district spent 12 hours working on ways that would aid students in their daily lives, from modeling a speech AI model to extensions for Canvas that utilize ChatGPT.
The event offered free entry, prizes, activities and workshops for attendees.
The event began with a workshop that taught web technologies to help students with their projects. The material taught ranged from more beginning-level material like an introduction to Python, as well as more advanced topics.
“We want to be beginner-friendly so people who aren’t in computer science that don’t know a lot about (it) are able to come and get started with us,” said senior Andrew Goldberg, the Hackathon director.
— Aadyant Suresh Junior among 300 across the country chosen for national choir
before the start of the pandemic.
Among the recipients is Steve Chiler, who receives CalFresh payments.
“Groceries are expensive and I’m on a fixed income, so it helps a lot,” Chiler said of the pantry.
Social worker Kevin Nguyen started the pantry during his tenure at Branham, and now Hollie Winzenread has taken on the mantle to coordinate volunteers at the school’s Pop-Up Pantry.
“I worry about food insecurity in general,” she said. “People will be making choices between gas for the car and food, medicine and food. …If you’re stressed out about either not having a home or losing your home, or not having or not being able to afford food for next week, that stress can lead to so many issues.”
With more than 35,000 students under 18 whose families receive CalFresh funding in Santa Clara, Winzenread said that there’s good a chance that “whoever you’re sitting next to” has food insecurities at home.
“You don’t know when you’re sitting in a classroom or if you’re hanging out somewhere, there’s a student next to you who you don’t know what their situation is,” she said.
Food bank’s budget 95% of SHFB’s support comes from community donations. With less funding, inflated grocery prices and fewer volunteers, Second Harvest of Silicon
Valley is in the need of donations the most.
Howard Levitan, who with his wife has volunteered at Second Harvest for 22 years, packs boxes for distribution. He directly sees the impact the food bank has had on the community.
“It has to be a major help (for the households), but it’s never sufficient,” he said. “Still, it not only does it provide them much needed nutrition, and also gives them the feeling that somebody cares, that they’re not just out there by themselves.”
Food prices have risen 30% over the pandemic, jumping 13.1% between July 2021 and July 2022, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. Because of the higher prices and fewer donations, Second Harvest has cut back milk distribution from a gallon to a half-gallon at the beginning of this year.
“We’re essentially going back to pre pandemic times, if you will, but the cost of living here is not pre-pandemic times,” Winzenread said. “Inflation has hit everything more, so it’s worrisome. Food is a basic right, and people need to be able to have nutritious, good quality food.”
The joy of volunteering
Since people worked from home and had extra time, there were more volunteers over the pandemic and at Branham’s site, usually 10 volunteers participated. However, for the last few months, it was harder to get enough volunteers.
People would either sign up and not show up or not sign up at all. While Winzenread understands
that people are busier now with the return of in-person work and school, volunteers are continuously needed.
Sophomore Yejun Shin, who has volunteered for a couple of months, sees helping the Branham’s PopUp Pantry as an accessible and “relatively easy” volunteer opportunity.
“If they just want to help the community in a smaller way, this is a good option,” Shin said.
To volunteer at Second Harvest, teen volunteers must be 12 years old and must have parental consent and submit an electronic permission form.
Volunteers can either sort and box the fresh produce and groceries or distribute food at sites such as Branham.
Levitan, the longtime Second Harvest volunteer, said that for teens, volunteering helps in “every aspect of life, professionally or personally.”
“It just makes you feel worthy that you’re doing something and not just focusing on bankers.”
Winzenread agrees, saying that volunteerism at the pantry has a profound effect for the volunteer and the community.
“When you care for your community, it’s more than just yourself,” Winzenread said. “It’s those who are around you. We’re all a healthier community in the long run because of it. Just by volunteering even once, I betcha people would have their eyes widened to the impact that it makes and how good it feels. When you do that. the smiles coming through that line of people are so grateful and thankful.”
cracks under my watch,’’ she said. “I take pride in my work and doing the best I can for everything”.
Prior to working at Branham, Fleming worked as an accountant, and brought her organized and efficient mind to the task of the clerk. Her son also graduated from Branham in 2011, and she was heavily involved with PTSA.
When the time came to support her family again financially, she said that as her “home school” Branham was a perfect fit since the commute is convenient. Her husband Roger, a retired Intel employee, also helps out at school. As part of a volunteer program, the tech company donates $10 to Branham for every hour he volunteers. He has volunteered at Branham for a collective of more than 3,000 hours.
Some of his projects have included establishing a districtwide catalog of books and textbooks as well as setting up logistics for book distribution when school shut down during the pandemic. He also helps out as needed in the book room including with manual labor when shipments of books arrive.
“Students are fun, and the work is okay,” he said. “And it’s good to feel that you’re doing good, like doing a project.”
When she joins her husband in retirement, she said that they hope to enjoy a life with more freedom and
Editors-in-Chief | Jiyoon Choi and Nolan Zils
Editors
Art director: Erica Kang
News Editor: Alli Wang
Opinion Editor: Alli Wang
relaxation. The couple have plans to explore travel to New Zealand and more.
Fleming jokes that she plans on getting another job after retirement just to allow her to keep learning and exercising her brain.
Staff writers
“I’m excited,” she said. “But I’m a little scared that I won’t be using my brain as much.”
Fleming leaves behind a color-coded legacy and an efficient way of running the book room over her nine years at Branham. Her computer is surrounded by sticky notes and color coded schedules, lists, and spreadsheets.
Assistant principal Nikita Shah said that she and other teachers are grateful for the work Fleming has put in over the years, as she was a important in keeping the school operating properly and efficiently.
“Mrs. Fleming has been very integral to our school,” Shah said. “I’ve worked with her on scheduling testing and she is very knowledgeable, very thorough, very detailed, and we’re definitely going to miss her expertise.”
From parking permits and locker agreements to AP testing payment and registration, Fleming has it organized and handled. Her infectious smile and a simple “Hi, how can I help?” as a student walks through the door will be missed.
As someone who serves every student,Fleming said that she will miss helping them when she leaves.
“I’m the only person on this campus who gets to see every single student”Fleming said. “Not everyone needs to go to the office or to the Wellness Center, but every student needs a book.”
Aresema Agdie, Juliette Bonacum, Lia Choi, Owen Dazko, Shantala Murujanugan, Aadyant Suresh, Carissa Takaki, Anabelle Walker, Ryan Walters, Mila Windell, Makayla Wu
Guest artists: Dhatri Tummala, Grace Ngo, Supriya
Khandewal and David Tran
Arts and Entertainment Editor: Ava Stark
Science and Health
Editor: Angela Choi
Student Life Editor: Reese Gardner
Sports Editor: Alan Schaeffer
Online Editor: Sahasra Makamchenna
Adviser: Fitzgerald Vo
Mission Statement
The Bear Witness is committed to providing accurate, timely coverage of local and world news while connect-
ing these events to the lives of our diverse student body.
Website: www.bhsbearwitness.com
Phone: (408) 626-3407
Email: bhsbearwitness@gmail.com
Address: 1570 Branham Lane, San Jose, CA 95118
In a grand venue in Cincinnati, Ohio, junior Maya Calvert stood among 300 high school students selected from around the nation to sing over Presidents’ Week.
As Calvert sang, she felt both nervous yet excited. She was chosen out of thousands of applicants across the country to join the prestigious group, with 10 students from California.
“Everyone (in the choir) is feeling that way, so it’s very high energy and everyone’s bonding together,” she said. Her performance was a compilation of eight pieces across different periods, conveying the theme of “diversity.”
“If I’m going to do some new music in my future, it’s good to get to know them,” she said. “Then because those are going to be future music teachers, future directors and things like that. It’s a really amazing learning opportunity.”
— Alli Wang Branham among schools open durin recent atmospheric river Strong wind gusts brought on by atmospheric river two weeks ago left more than 7,000 in the area surrounding Branham without power, including Leigh, Westmont, Prospect and Camden Post-Secondary schools.
In the area, downed power lines caused mass outages and fallen trees resulted in road closures and major stores such as Target and Home Depot on Hillsdale closed early.
“I’m glad that no students were hurt,” Campus supervisor John Chun said.
Vice principal Victoria Waite said that the district facilities team cut down trees that were already close to falling down.
“If we could predict this kind of stuff, then we would be living the life,” Waite said.
Correction
February’s story “A robot wrote my essay,” did not interview theater teacher Jennifer Sorkin, who was named in the article.
It is common journalistic practice to verify with named subjects whether a piece written about them is factually accurate.
The Bear Witness regrets the error.
Though Andrew tate has been locked out of much of social media, his clips still circulate online, and educators say his influence on teenagers is concerning
Despite being arrested on charges of rape and human trafficking in December, his influence has not waned, and his fans continue to share his videos on social media.
Preteens mimic his rhetoric
Experts say that preteen boys are particularly susceptible to his toxic masculinity and that they are copying his offensive, violent rhetoric in classrooms.
Teachers have observed a disturbing increase in misogynistic language, including rape jokes.
— Sources: Education Week, The Social Institute
The arrest in December 2022 of Andrew Tate, the poster man for hyper-masculinity, aroused mass polarization on social media, as comment sections were rich in people preaching terms such as “Free Tate” or “Innocent until proven guilty."
Even before the arrest of Tate, when he truly boomed in late 2022 in the school atmosphere, I noticed a deep transformation among my male colleagues..
Students would be watching his videos during class, during breaks in huddles of people cheering and praising in a trance-like state to everything he said, especially when it came to when he talked about how teenage girls would act.
Tate had been too powerful of an influence on these boys.
When a well-known celebrity would be accused of sexual assault or rape, Tate would be quick to defend the side of the oppressor. Instead of ridiculing those for committing these actions, like these same boys would have done five years ago, they’re now dismissing and even praising these men for fitting Tate’s ideal of a “man’s man,” where they should be able to “control their woman.”
What was especially alarming to me is that some thousands of comments on a post, made by @rap on Instagram which covered his initial arrest, were voicing these things despite Tate and his brother Tristan being arrested on the premises of human trafficking and the rape of potentially multiple women in Romania.
On average, according to the Department of Justice, while the rate of violent victimization crimes has decreased significantly since 1993, just over 1% of sexual assault and rape cases actually end up in the conviction of the oppressors.
Tate rose to fame on Tiktok and Instagram in late 2022 following a stint on Big Brother UK in 2016, where he was kicked off the show after physically assaulting a woman contestant with a belt, which gave some sort of evidence to point that he could have very well been capable of committing actions such as human trafficking or rape.
Further evidence to back this up can be found diving into some of the things he has actually
Hispanic students like me make up around 40% of the student population at Branham, yet we don’t hear the music we enjoy at dances and rallies. It’s just the same pop songs over and over. We hear different types of music when it's Multicultural week, but after that, it seems to be forgotten, and the same trending music is played again.
Freshman Kyle Chieng is an ASB student on the tech committee, which is in charge of setting up tech for school events, including the speakers. The tech committee chooses music on the playlists too. He said that in one instance, the color fest during dig pink week, very energetic and upbeat music was chosen.
Chieng says there aren’t any specific artists or genres the committee chooses, but anything that is upbeat and clean is acceptable. However, there definitely isn’t any Hispanic music on those playlists.
You would think that a school with a large amount of racial diversity would include music from those cultures. So why aren’t there many Hispanic songs and artists being played at school?
Erica Marquez, a Spanish teacher who also helped supervise the Love Ball, has been pushing for Hispanic music to be played at school events to increase inclusivity, because she feels like the school has not properly represented the community. She said despite their being inclusivity training, representation isn’t shown when it needs to be, and that dances are a perfect opportunity to showcase inclusiveness.
Marquez expressed frustration that nothing seemed to be getting done towards better representation, and said that she felt like the only person that was pushing for it. However she’s not giving up because she knows how important it is for students to feel included.
To Marquez’s point, diversity does need to be properly celebrated and acknowledged. If we are to accurately show our population in school wide events such as dances, we need to play music from all of their culture. With certain countries having especially popular music such as Mexico and Korea, it provides even more reasons to showcase this music, and puts into question why they wouldn’t be included at events.
At the Love Ball, there were some Hispanic songs played, but only because Marquez, who was supervising, requested Hispanic music with the approval of the principal. The student DJ said he could only play pre-programmed music, then his system broke down and a leadership student took over. Marquez spoke to that student. I saw people get really hyped up when the Hispanic music was on, but they were disappointed when it stopped.
Marquez went to Heather Cooper, the leadership advisor, and asked that they put the Spanish songs back on. She said Cooper didn’t cooperate, despite her mentioning that the school is very diverse and multicultural. While there were rules that ASB had to follow for that specific event, it is unfortunate that Marquez’s attempts to showcase cultural music was not appreciated, even though the students were enjoying the music. If the international songs are a hit with a student population, the music shouldn’t be discouraged. If anything it proves that our generation appreciates music
from all over the world, and that language doesn’t matter if the music speaks to them. Although it didn’t happen at the Love Ball, Marquez hopes that eventually, more music and cultures will be represented at school. According to her there are already plans to include different types of music, including Hispanic songs. In the future, however, she wants there to be more change in more representation in the coming years. Some may argue that something as small as a school dance isn’t that significant when it comes to proper cultural
said in viral clips, according to examples collected by The Guardian, such as “rape victims must ‘bear responsibility’ for putting themselves in the position (to be raped).” In another case, when an ex-girlfriend of Tate accused him of physically assaulting her (different from the contestant he assaulted on Big Brother UK), he denied the allegations, yet decided to call her a “dumb h*e” for even attempting to accuse him. What I found especially fascinating about his case is that early in 2022, just before he had risen to worldwide infamy, his mansion in Romania was raided by police under the suspicion that he had held a 21 year old woman against her will.
With all of the tweets or quotes he’s voiced on various social media platforms, it’s incredible to me how long it actually took the Romanian police to actually arrest him. While there wasn’t an abundance of hard evidence to suggest human trafficking or rape actually occurred, there was certainly an abundance of evidence to suggest those actions may have been committed by Tate based off of his previous actions and demeanors about women and relationships online.
At the same time, it makes sense why Tate got off in many cases nearly scott-free, as he had earned easily six figures a year during his time kickboxing, and nowadays reportedly earns anywhere from $10,000-$80,000 USD a month from his YouTube channel and collabportating with other podcasters.
Tate had the financial might to either make settlements or hire the best lawyers to win cases with ease, even if much of the evidence played against him. Tate was defended by many rightwing celebrities such as Tucker Carlson because Tate and Carlson have one major aspect about their businesses in common: they gain notoriety and therefore fame by spewing controversy out of everything they say, and if Carlson decides to defend Tate, FoxNews are going to continue to accrue massive amounts of wealth because of the revenue generated from the aforementioned notoriety.
That is, businesses such as FoxNews seem not to care about if Tate has committed these heinous actions, or take his case seriously, as long as they generate fame and popularity for the company.
appreciation, but these small events are where we have to start if we are to have broader and more school-wide coverage of all the cultures our students are from.
This story focused on Hispanic and Latin music, but the issue doesn’t just apply to us: it applies to everyone - to all cultures and ethnicities - and to you. Representation, inclusivity, diversity - has your community followed through on its promises? Remember, you have a voice… use it.
Andrew Tate's dangerous message of misogyny undermines victims of sexual assaultNolan Zils/Bear Witness
Latinx students make up 40% of the population, yet its music is underrepresented at school dancesBear Witness staff graphic
Andrew Tate and Tucker Carlson have one major aspect about their businesses in common: They gain notoriety and therefore fame by spewing controversy out of everything they say.
The announcement of this year's prom ticket prices has upset many students. Starting at $95 with an ASB card, it's more expensive than the day-before cost for last year's prom.
Though many online have voiced their disappointment, they are still planning on attending prom. However, others say they are boycotting prom because they can’t afford the price tag, which will reach $135 for those without an ASB card.
There are many different reasons that ticket prices went up. The Saratoga Mountain Winery is a premium venue and hosts concerts, weddings and high-class galas.
This year ASB leaders said that they wanted to offer students “the most premium experience for students," said senior class president Yuva Krishnapillai
The prom committee did also state that the date chosen for the venue was inconvenient, but was the best date for the price. It sits on the same date as the SAT, and between two weeks of AP testing.
At these prices, Branham might have some problems getting more attendees. More than a quarter, 27.2% of students at school qualify for free or reduced lunch, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Yes, the venue is nice and overlooks SiliconValley, but it might not make up for the price.
Students such as junior Christian Winzenread have voiced their opinion about the ticket prices on social media and have decided to protest the event, calling prom a “luxury afforded to a few students.” He also noted that prom goes beyond just a ticket but the cost of a formal requires some spending, so the full cost could be anywhere from $200 to $500 for some. Even though the venue is expensive, other factors are to blame.
SENSITIVITY
Inflation is also another contributing factor to the higher ticket prices. Typically, ticket prices for anything go up because of market dynamics, which is when there is a fluctuation in prices based on supply and demand.
Even though inflation adds to the problem, prom tickets were not this expensive last year. You could buy a ticket for $90 without an ASB card the day before prom.
Leigh High School held their prom at the Winery last year. Their prices were only $75 and then $85 the week before the event. Leigh also does not raise prices weekly and only does one price increase the week before prom.
The ASB program does try to make a profit from prom, but if they don’t get enough people to attend, they might lose money.
In the end, the problem isn’t the price of the venue, but the price of the ticket and how it is inconsiderate for ASB to have these prices when many students cannot afford them.
$90 ASB/$95 w/o
March 27 to April 9
$110 ASB/$120 w/o
April 10 to April 23
$125 ASB/$135w/o
April 24 to May 5
The EHLI a multi-year project to address harmful language in Information Tech at Stanford. Among hundreds of entries, here are the first four samples from them and their suggested replacements.
Ableist
Language that is offensive to people with disabilities and or devalues people with disabilities.
Addict: Use "person with substance abuse disorder."
Basket case: Use "nervous."
Blind review: Use "anonymous review"
Blind study: Use "masked study"
Culturally appropriative
Language that misuses terms that hold meaning to a particular culture.
Brave: "Do not use."
Bury the hatchet: Use "call for peace/truce."
Chief: Use "the person's name."
Geronimo: Use "only when discussing figure."
Institutionalized racism
Language that is embedded in the laws and regulations of a society or an organization.
Barrio: Use "specific name of neighborhood."
Black hat: Use "unethical hacker."
Black sheep: Use "outcast."
Brown bag: Use "lunch talk/tech talk."
Source: Stanford's Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative, via Stanford Daily
Minor problems, minor solutions
ALAN SCHAEFFER
Sports Editor
Cancel culture has been a major topic of discussion in recent years, as celebrities or businesses have often come under scrutiny for making comments that are deemed offensive or insensitive. One of the most prominent examples is Kanye West, who lost major deals with Adidas after posting a number of antisemitic tweets.
When my AP Language class first discussed Stanford’s Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative, I was concerned but far from surprised to find out that someone had made an expansive list of words that are no longer politically correct.
Controversy over the list forced it to be taken down, just a day after a critical article from the Wall Street Journal shed light on it.
At Branham, posters made by the Ethnic Literature class caused schoolwide controversy last year, another example of some people taking offense to something that was not made to offend.
According to the Stanford IT Community’s website, the goal of the initiative was “to eliminate many forms of harmful language, including racist, violent, and biased (e.g., disability bias, ethnic bias, ethnic slurs, gender bias, implicit bias, sexual bias) language in Stanford websites and code.”
The list is broken down into 10 categories;
Problem: This spring change has really messed me up. I’m waking up every day with either my nose, ears, mouth or all of the above clogged because of my allergies, plus I lost an hour of sleep!
Solution: I don’t think the time change should affect me and I demand financial compensation for spring reinvigorating my allergies.
— Ryan Walters
“Ableist,” “Ageism,” “Colonialism,” “Culturally Appropriative,” “Gender-Based,” “Imprecise Language,” “Institutionalized Racism,” “Person-First,” “Violent” and “Additional Considerations.”
Some phrases that it highlights as offensive are reasonable and are widely considered to be slurs or not politically correct. For instance, the r-word is described as a “slur against those who are neurodivergent or have a cognitive disability.”
At a school like Branham, with a high population of special education students, words like this are insensitive to members of the community. Other words on the list aren’t as well known to be offensive, but are brought to attention in the initiative. The phrase “Long time no see” was originally a mockery of Chinese immigrants who didn’t speak English very well. The list suggests avoiding phrases such as this one due to their racist or offensive backgrounds.
Although many words and phrases are well within reason and deserving of their place, there are others that make me struggle to take the list seriously. It suggests that, instead of referring to things as a “walk-in” appointment, one should refer to them as “drop-in” or “open-office” appointments because the phrase walk-in is “ableist language that trivializes people living with disabilities.”
In December, The Wall Street Journal called out the EHLI in an editorial, ridiculing inclusions to the list such as “American” and “blind study.” Reporters from multiple other news
sources have spoken on the matter too, including Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro and USA Today’s Ingrid Jacques.
Despite being taken down, an uploaded PDF of the initiative can still be found on the WSJ website. As many journalists have already pointed out, the EHLI is a reflection of the new wave of hyper-sensitivity amongst society. While it is a good thing that we are starting to acknowledge the harm that some words can cause, it is being taken too far.
Cancel culture in itself has stepped far beyond its bounds. Initially, cancel culture was responsible for deplatforming prominent people with harmful and insensitive views, but now it almost seems that it is erasing parts of history. Take the recent issues with Roald Dahl for example. Publishers want to edit parts of his books due to concerns over fat shamingin their writing, but is this all that necessary?
Censoring literature and judging the correctness of it by modern standards ignores the lessons that it teaches. Books like Roald Dahl’s and Dr. Seuss’ serve as examples of how far we have come in terms of understanding and inclusivity. While of course, “Birth of a Nation” is certainly not the right film to choose for family movie nights, reading “What I Saw on Mulberry Street” to children before bed can’t do any harm when it is being used to teach about racial stereotyping.
Problem: I run out of coffee around noon every day and always want more coffee in order to get through my classes.
Solution: We should have a coffee shop or starbucks of some kind on campus like colleges do. then we can always get caffeine.
— Reese Gardner
Problem: My power has gone out twice in the last two weeks because of all this rain, making it difficult to do homework and go about my life.
Solution: Resurrect Nikola Tesla and pay him to build a "theoretically impossible" infinite energy source.
— Alan SchaefferProblem: Learning how to drive. There's always a bunch of idiots on the road that will make your life miserable.
Solution: Have people take a driver's test every five years and laser beam their car to smithereens if they fail. Maybe the person will be inside the car when that happens, maybe they won't.
—Nolan Zils
Problem: When borrowing supplies such as markers and pens from teachers, two out of three of them are dead and then I have to go around the whole room asking my classmates for working markers.
Solution: Invent a machine that discards the dead markers and replaces it with a new, working marker.
— SaiSahasra MakamchennaLess than 50% of high schools teach the recommended sex education topics, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, leaving a large proportion of the American population uneducated about the topic.
The story is different in California. The California Healthy Youth Act passed in 2015 requires public schools to teach teens age-appropriate topics such as things like anatomy and reproduction, healthy relationships, contraception and sexual orientation.
According to Planned Parenthood, 38 states have a mandated sex education curriculum. Because it is not federally mandated, schools can weave in and out the details without a formal requirement to teach certain topics.
Until 2016, the district had partnered with Real Options, an anti-abortion organization for its sex education presentations, but had dropped the program following a 2016 Bear Witness report that showed the program did not follow the Healthy Youth Act law.
Teaching it became the job of P.E. teachers, who now partner with Health Connected for their curriculum.
P.E. teacher Laura Andersson has been teaching the sex education unit for and has noticed the immense change the curriculum has undergone.
“We teachers currently go home and do four or five hours of homework to ensure we address and teach the content currently and are not surprised or unsure of what is coming up the next day,” she said.
Andersson says that the curriculum has changed immensely from the pre-COVID years, especially in a time when many states have started to reverse their policies.
“We do not want to tell anyone what to do or impose our personal opinions,” Andersson said. “That is why we encourage the students to bring home the information to their parents and hold that conversation at home.”
AP Psychology teacher Jennifer Ozdinski teaches a sexual motivation module and said that many students are very curious about the topic.
“I noticed how helpful it was for students to have an open, honest conversation on what sex really is, which has allowed me to not be afraid to teach it,” Ozdinski said.
A study done by USC nursing found that the United States is falling behind in teen pregnancies in comparison to many other developed countries largely due to the fact that sex education is lacking in many parts of the country.
The CDC recommends 20 topics relating to sex to be taught at high school, covering areas such as contraception, consent and what happens during sex.
Branham does meet these requirements, but some students feel that there is a lack of accuracy and transparency in the course.
After one class of the sexual motivation module in AP Psychology, senior Ellie Jenkins said that she learned more about the sexual cycle in comparison to the two weeks of sex ed.
“In regular sex ed we just learned about the reproductive cycles and STDs,” she said. “In Psychology we really learned for the first time why humans have sex and how we can do so safely.”
However, the sex ed curriculum has changed in the past few years.
Anderrson said that for sex education to become less taboo and more of a common required class, new curriculums such as AP psychology’s approach and the new Health Connected program in P.E. will help the sex talk at school become less taboo.
Therapy and the Wellness Center have supported students’ mental health
Staff Writer
Rose, a junior, suffers from depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder.
She asked to remain anonymous for this story.
Before seeking help, she said that she found it very difficult to talk to anybody about her issues, having refused to ask for help because she was afraid of the possible negative reaction from her family, causing her to “dig a hole deeper” for herself.
“I had a lot of anxiety and panic attacks and didn’t know how to handle myself when having outbreaks,” Rose said. “I would just melt down into myself.”
After having thoughts about harming herself, she decided that she would talk to her parents about her issues, and she was placed into therapy before being admitted to a psychiatric ward.
Rose said that her experience in the psychiatric ward taught her skills to control and respond to her emotions.
“I had girls around me that had the same problem, so we would be able to talk about it together,” she said.
Though Rose sought help and is receiving treatment, her story is among those of an increasing number of teens in the U.S. who are experiencing declining mental health.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention early this year reported that four in 10 high school students feel persistently sad, with onethird report feeling as though they experienced poor mental health. Of the students surveyed, one in five had serious thoughts of committing suicide, and one in 10 had attempted suicide.
Students interviewed say that stigmas around mental health continues to plague communities, which in turn makes teenagers reluctant to ask for help. But when they do, they learn coping mechanisms that will help them work through their problems.
In her experience and in Lily’s, another junior who experienced depression, reaching out to others for help has been instrumental in their journey toward improving their mental health.
In her time in the psychiatric ward, Rose attended multiple courses each day to learn how to manage herself and obtain skills that she could use when by herself.
Rose utilizes the rubber band method, which has her snap a rubber band on her wrist to remind her of obsessive thoughts, along with cognitive behavior therarpy and dialectical behavior therapy.
The rubber band technique
Patients snap a rubber band on their wrists to form mental associations with obsessive thoughts.
Cognitive behavior therapy
CBT teaches the patient to recognize when their thoughts are troublesome, and it allows them to use techniques that will help to redirect these thoughts
Dialectical behavior therapy
DBT helps patients find ways to be safe, accept themselves and manage emotions.
Acceptance and commitment therapy
ACT is a type of psychotherapy that includes behavioral analysis performed by a mental health clinician. While sometimes compared with CBT, ACT has its own specific approach. ACT is based on relational frame theory, which focuses on mental processes and human language.
In ACT, people are taught mindfulness skills and acceptance strategies with the goal of increasing psychological flexibility. Additionally, commitment and behavior change methods are used.
Cognitive behavior teaches the patient to recognize when their thoughts are troublesome, and it allows them to use techniques that will help to redirect these thoughts, while dialectical behavior helps patients find ways to be safe, accept themselves and manage emotions.
“There would be counselors around me all the time” Rose said. “I could talk to them and they would help me with my breakdowns.”
Distant from distance learning Lily, another junior who also chose to remain anonymous, said that she always an anxious child, but struggled more after the COVID-19 lockdown. Distance learning was not working for her and she stopped doing her schoolwork. After a while, her parents noticed her grades significantly dropping and found out about her struggles.
“I just worried about everything that could go wrong,” she said. “I thought I was weird for it,” said Lily. “Around COVID, I kind of had a whole breakdown from the pandemic and online school. And so I had an entire meltdown and stopped doing all work.”
Life before therapy for Lily was a daily struggle. She did not know how to manage her anxiety and balance her school work, so she often pushed it to the back of her mind, which she says “was not that effective” in helping her anxiety.
“Before seeing a therapist, I was just always telling myself I was crazy because I worried about everything,” Lily said. “It would consume all my thoughts all the time, to the point where I got super anxious.”
Lily says that her therapist helped her to “live less inside her head” and make her realize that she could find a way to respond to her anxiety, rather than react to it. She said that therapy helped her the help that she needed.
Getting help
Both Rose and Lily advise students to seek help with whatever they are struggling with, either through the Wellness Center, a therapist, or online therapeutic/meditation resources.
Branham’s Wellness Specialist Monica Hylbert believes that people refuse to reach out for help often because of a fear of the first, financial, or stigma issues.
Hylbert said that the Wellness Center as a free resource for kids struggling and encourages students to promote the use of the Wellness Center. As word spreads, more can get the help that they need.
“Today was one of those aha! days, where a student was struggling in class and they went to the restroom and somebody in the restroom saw that they were struggling and said ‘Please go to the Wellness Center, they can support you,’ and that student came in and got the help they needed,” said Hylbert.
Hylbert also knows that seeking private mental health help, such as a therapist, can be quite expensive, especially in the Bay Area. The Wellness Center and online resources, such as the Calm app and CASSY counseling, are free and a good resource.
“Everyone is struggling with something that may not surface or is underneath the skin, but it’s there,” said Hylbert. “I am a firm believer that we can do hard things, and the hardest thing is to take that first step to talk to somebody who’s knowledgeable and non judgmental, with unconditional positive regard. And that’s who all of us are in the Wellness Center.”
Biden administration approves oil project in Alaska
The Biden Administration recently approved a significant oil drilling project in Alaska, also known as project Willow. Due to vast opposition to the project’s possible climate and environmental effects, Biden announces restrictions on offshore oil leasing in the Arctic Ocean and Alaska North Slope, limiting oil leases in this region in the future. Willow would occur inside National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska located an estimated 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, which has no roads and is the largest expanse of clean land in the United States.
Opioid settlements lead to difficulties in getting medication
A year after a $21 billion opioid settlement imposed new requirements on drug companies, patients are struggling to get medication for conditions like anxiety, ADHD, and addiction. The settlement intended to decrease practices that flooded the country with these painkillers with caps on pharmacies in an effort to mitigate the opioid crisis. From five states' data, last summer tens of thousands of pharmacy deliveries were stopped because of suspicious orders, which ranged from 3300 to 10000 reports for each state.
Since the beginning of the year, California has seen 12 significant atmospheric rivers that have delivered 150% to 200% of the normal rainfall. This was good news for the state, which had experienced years of significant drought.
The historic atmospheric rivers and heavy snowfall in the Bay Area in the past few months have again raised questions about the impacts of climate change and the nature of erratic weather.
Although climate scientists say that weather can naturally vary, climate change has increased the magnitude of more extreme events.
As climate change becomes a fact of daily life, Branham’s science curriculum is evolving to meet the subject’s demands.
The current curriculum
The primary instruction with climate change for students takes place in their Living Earth, chemistry and physics classes. Each class approaches it in terms of the materials they regularly focus on.
Biology often provides students’ first exposure to the topic in high school, where they learn how climate change has an effect on various species and ecosystems. As a final project, students research an environmental issue and how species react to it.
Chemistry classes in turn focus on the carbon cycle and ocean acidification, building on their earlier learning about chemical equations. Similarly to biology, students last year identified an ocean based organism to research and learn about how they may be threatened by global climate change.
Physics meanwhile, focuses on renewable energy and resources.
Although these classes have their individual approaches to climate change education, they work to help students learn that global climate change is a systemic event that has causes and effects in many different regions.
“It’s hard to pinpoint one thing,” said science teacher Kevin Kalman “There’s feedback systems and loops, and one thing here can change a drastic amount for the entire world. It’s a systemwide change that’s going to happen and you’re going to see it.”
Classes also emphasize the use of “climate change” versus “global warm-
ing,” as this process does not just involve the heating of the planet.
“We think global warming is everything’s warming up, but in reality there’s different things going on in different parts of the world,” science teacher Alex Johnson said.
AP Environmental Science's Approach
In AP Environmental Science, climate change is one of its primary focuses, along with the ozone layer and biodiversity loss. To help students learn these concepts, the class spends the first semester covering Earth’s systems.
“Without having that in-depth understanding of how systems naturally work, climate change doesn't make sense,” Biology and AP Environmental Science teacher Kori Reynolds said. “Once you understand those big systems and how they actually function, then it's easier to navigate between what is true and what is not.
In particular, the class approaches the topic from different perspectives that students can apply in other fields.
“Students are interested in how these big picture systems may impact them or their careers, whether they're going into theater, arts, or business, or science,” Reynolds said. “It's a good class to take because you will be able to apply what we learn here, no matter where you decide to go.”
Challenges of teaching the curriculum
With the complexities of the topic, there are numerous difficulties in building a curriculum for students.
As much of the discussion on climate change shifts in relation to overall changes and patterns, it can be difficult for students to recognize these changes.
“Climate change may take more than a lifetime so (it isn’t easy) to identify,” said science teacher Juan Fernandez-Maculet, who teaches AP Biology and chemistry.
As the subject requires prior knowledge of physics, chemistry and biology concepts, teachers are working to ensure that students understand how multifaceted climate change is.
“We often have to design a lot more stuff which takes more time,” Kalman said. “And so sometimes that's part of the challenge, too, is we have to take more time to sit down, work more and do more together. It's gonna
Students learn about the effect of climate change on species and ecosystems. This includes research on environmental issues and the corresponding reaction of organisms
Students focus on the carbon cycle and ocean acidifcation. There is also a project studying the effects of ocean acidifcation on certain organisms
take a couple of years for each of the courses to really hammer out what's working.”
Moreover, teachers have to adapt with the changing curriculum in elementary and middle schools, where more information on climate change is being given compared to what current students learned.
“Right now we're in this transition period where we're figuring out what people know (and) how much of the basics we have to cover,” Kalman said. There’s also a time crunch, as there are other topics and tests to cover.
Aditi Anand is a high school student with the East Side Union High School District and is a hub coordinator for the Silicon Valley branch of the Sunrise Movement, a national climate activist group.
For her, the material being taught at Branham is very valuable in helping students better understand the concepts.
“There are also a lot of people today who know climate change is a buzzword and they're aware that it's a bad thing, but they're not exactly sure how the science of it works,” Anand said. She said that her own understanding of the relationship between organisms and the changing climate increased
Physics
Students learn about renewable energy and how it is produced
It is one of the three main concepts for the course. The class spends the first semester learning about Earth's systems and how human action can impact them. The topic is also discussed from different perspectives such as the impact on biodiversity, the spread of disease, human health, etc.
with a marine biology class while attending Accel Middle College, the district’s equivalent of Middle College.
“It was very fascinating to actually learn about the first hand effects of climate change and global warming on marine creatures and marine habitats,” Anand said. “I'm able to say the algae red tide blooms are causing fish to die faster, and that's also directly impacting humans because fishing communities are unable to make their living.”
Looking forward
Although climate change is becoming an increasingly significant part of the science curriculum, teachers say they are open to making an on-level environmental science class.
For Reynolds, the possibility is interesting for a class that would not also have to spend time to prepare for an AP test.
“It would be nice to see an on level environmental science … that is more accessible to more students,” Reynolds said.
Anand recommends that students learn about new technologies that are being innovated to better green energy.
“Your teachers have degrees in the subjects,” Anand said.“If you have those conversations with them, they can share more about it with you.”
First 3D-printed rocket fails to reach space
The first 3D-printed rocket, Terran 1, failed four minutes after lifting off on a demonstration mission. However, it also marked the first time a 3-d printed rocket had reached the point where rockets experience the most force, and another point when a launching booster engine separates from the main body. Terran 1 was built by Relativity Space, one of many companies that is striving to beat SpaceX to Mars.
3D printers have enabled these companies to transition quickly from concepts to testing. Every rocket from Relativity Space only takes 60 days to print.
EPA announces new regulations on cancer-causing chemicals
The Environmental Protection Agency announced that they will require utilities to maintain minimal levels of the cancer-causing perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). These chemicals can't decompose and persist forever in the environment, but still can be found in 200 million Americans tap water. These regulations are the first to limit PFAS in United States history. Opposing water companies are arguing that the new laws pose an unrealistic standard and will cost the industry millions of dollars.
The EPA predicts costs will go up to $772 million for corporations.
FDA approves new nasal spray for fighting migraines
The Food and Drug Administration has approved a Pfizer nasal spray for treatment of migraines that uses a different therapy from other nasal products on the market for severe headache pain, the company said on Friday.
The fast-acting treatment, which is called zavegepant and will be sold as Zavzpret, performed better than a placebo in relieving pain and patients’ most bothersome symptoms, according to clinical trial results published in the journal Lancet Neurology. Participants in the trial who took the medication were more likely to report returning to normal function 30 minutes to two hours after taking it.
—Compiled by Angela Choi and Lia Choi
Women’s History Month started in Sonoma, Calif. in 1978 as a weeklong celebra tion of notable women and their achievements. The project spread and caught on with other communities across the nation, and in March 1987 it became a national month-long celebration.
Though often relegated to the since the end of World War II, men and gained more opportunities In San Jose, women make up Although women representation sentation remains disproportionately gender-ratio gaps are continuously For example, the National Academy
During Women's History Month, we asked Branham students and staff what being a woman means to them.
“Speaking up for those women who don't have a voice around the world.”
“While we're gonna have to face a lot more struggles just because of [being a woman], I also get to experience a lot of wonderful things, like the relationship between two women.”
22.7%
of students are girls in third period Principles of Engineering.
20% of students are girls in the sixth period Principles of Engineering class.
Kaylynn Park Senior
Engineering teacher Barbara Schremp is among two female engineering teachers at Branham.
Schremp also teaches Integrated Math 3 and is the Career Technical Education Department co-chair, and said she has seen her fair share of difficulties in teaching predominantly male-taught subjects.
Her decision to pursue engineering came at San Jose State where she majored in electrical engineering, even though math and science were not her best subjects.
“I was actually better in English and history, but I loved science and math, and I knew that engineering involves using math and science to solve problems for people,” Schremp said. “And so I went into engineering specifically because I like to solve problems.”
However, the journey in chasing and honing her passions was far from smooth. She experienced a substantial amount of sexism, but she learned to adapt to these unfavorable conditions overtime.
“When I was in the working world in the ’90s, the things that were acceptable would be things people get fired over today,” she said.
For example, one of the very first speaker phones her company worked with was only modeled on men's voices, so when Schremp was on a call during a conference, her voice was not picked up by the microphone. Her male colleague had to repeat everything she said, and she said the experience was incredibly demeaning.
“They were really embarrassed to see that my tone of voice being female was not representative in the performance of this thing,” Schremp said. “It's a small piece of technology, but it gave me a real disadvantage and furthers the poor representation of people who design and test and have the ideas.”
Still, Schremp advocated for herself because that was the environment she was accustomed to, but it did not come naturally.
She said the stigma toward women in STEM is still prevalent and derives from “old fashioned ideas and perceptions about women.” There is still room for improvement among her engineering classes as even with a slight increase in female students this year, there are only a quarter of girls in the class.
“We look at the representations of the different genders and ethnic groups, and we are not representative of what Branham’s population is,” Schremp said. “For instance, AI right now is really being trained on existing data, and if you only have data from certain perspectives, then you're always going to have inequity in a system.”
She hopes to find better ways in recruiting and maintaining underrepresented groups of students in the engineering classes especially.
“People want to see role models like themselves,” Schremp said. “And as we get more and more people in STEM who are more diverse, then we'll get more interest from a diverse group of people.”
44% of women with at least a bachelor's degree or higher are in the STEM workforce.
25.8% of all STEM careers employ women.
34% of women are employed in STEM occupations in the U.S. — Source: U.S. Department of Labor
Sophomore Jin Cho is the president of the Bionic Bruins robotics club, the most visible engineering group on campus with nearly 50 members.
Although initially not interested, the club’s adviser, Barbara Schremp, pushed her to join given her math and science leanings.
Now Cho has been a part of Bionic Bruins for two years, but she said she constantly gets asked about her robotics expertise.
“People will walk in the meetings and ask me ‘How are you president?’,
‘What are you good at to be president?’ and just ask general questions about my qualifications,” Cho said.
Though Robotics Club’s main focuses are competition and coding — they will be heading off to Texas to compete in the Vex Robotics World Championships — Cho still finds gender representation in STEM fields to be important and has been growing.
“It's needed,” she said. “There’s a lot more active efforts to include women in those fields, and people are just more generally aware about the reality
difference and aren't letting previous biases control them.”
Though the robotics club’s membership skews dominantly male, she said anyone can join.
“There’s just a general atmosphere within the student body where female students will be less motivated to take difficult STEM classes, but we had a lot of events in the beginning of the year to recruit anyone and that aren't just specifically geared to women,” she said.
One of Robotics Club’s biggest events that they run is the annual Hackathon, a full-day event held on Mar. 26 in the cafeteria, where students districtwide were invited to compete in a coding challenge to come up with an innovative solution to a specific problem. Cho said that through this event, the coding community can collaborate and gain more exposure.
“We want to create a space where people can learn from each other, the workshops and the teachers and collaborate in a safe space for everyone
with no bias and be as inclusive as possible,” she said. necessary, and we accept all kinds of formats as and can come up with an idea.”
Future plans for women in STEM
Senior Nithila Vasant has been an engineering of her four years in high school and plans to pursue curently enrolled in Project Lead the Way’s engineering ment (EDD) class.
At first, Vasant harbored a dislike for engineering field by her parents. But as her involvement in it grew,
“I thought it would be really boring, but taking ing classes made me realize that engineering can with other people and come up with a brand new Vasant said that she does not face sexism for being
Tara Krishnan Junior
Naomi Bergman Sophomore
“Achieving the best possible version of myself in order to overcome social norms and push through what society thinks women are capable of.”
“Proving others wrong in like what you can do and can't do because we have come a long way in society, but I think we could go a long way more.”BULLETIN BOARD
the footnotes, women have made profound impacts in STEM II, where they initially entered the workforce in replacement of opportunities in predominantly male-occupated fields. up 25.8% of all STEM jobs, ninth for women’s representation representation in STEM fields has become more widespread, repre disproportionately low, and factors such as sexism, the wage gap and continuously prominent in STEM occupations.
Academy of Science a few years ago reported that female scien
tists and engineers are less likely to receive research funding, promotions, and job offers than their male counterparts, even when they have similar qualifications and experience. The disparity is also seen at Branham, where enrollment in engineering classes is about
This year, there are a total of 47 students in the Principles of Engineering classes, but only 10 are females.
For Principles of Engineering and physics teacher Ray Radlinsky, this disproportionate number of female participation has always been a problem in the engineering electives.
“It's a stereotype that in science, there’s guys with big lab coats,” he said. “I'll tell you my best engineering student is a female, and I think that's wonderful, so we would like to improve, but it's hard.”
Radlinsky and the other engineering teachers who teach freshmen are reaching out to middle schools and freshman-dominated STEM classes every year to talk about the engineering electives and recruit future students.
“It hasn’t proven to be the most effective, but I can’t think of a better way,” Radlinsky said.
“If other women that were in engineering chatted with their friends and said they should take digital electronics next year, that might help better get the word out.”
Although Radlinsky said that the number of female students in his engineering electives is better than the national average —10%-15% of the STEM workforce is female — he said it is “nowhere near” where he would like it to be.
“Any career path that doesn't show the participants in that career path and isn’t matching the demographics of the general population means there's a lot of talent that could be missed,” he said. “There are a lot of other demographics I can think of that even make up 0%.” y said that for any students carrying concerns or questions about the Principles of Engineering classes, they are free to drop by his classroom at J201 and talk to him at any time.
From the students Schremp has talked to, what is important in recruiting more female students is that they have the support of friends and teachers who have similar backgrounds to them.
“We need to continue to recruit teachers who represent a diverse field, as well as encouraging students to try it,” she said. “If you're a little bit concerned, come talk to the teachers because there's always a class we can find that will work for you. It's never too late.”
said. “There is no experience long as people are creative engineering and robotics student all pursue a future in STEM. She is engineering design and developengineering and was pushed to the grew, so did her passion. robotics and the engineercan actually be fun to work new design,” she said. being in the field, but there is
a wide gender gap among her engineering classmates.
“When you go into an engineering class there's always gonna be those four girls that are there and then the rest are guys,” she said. “So in the beginning you're always stuck with those girls because there's just so few of them, and it’s off-putting because it feels like there's no one there that you know.”
Though she said that more women are becoming involved in STEM, the gender participation gap is still prevalent. Vasant said the number of female students in her engineering class has decreased over the years, possibly due to elective credits and lack of promotion among girls.
'“Most people are trying to get credit for engineering or college electives, so they take those at the very beginning, which makes the people actually interested in engineering dwindle down,” she said. “And for girls…it's hard to get their attention in seeing how cool it can actually be.”
Vasant plans to major in aerospace engineering with the goal of being a mechanical engineer and building spaceships. This has been a goal of hers
The gender gap in STEM is not just prominent in high school and careers, but also in universities.
Branham alumnus Xiaomian Yang is a junior at Stanford studying material science engineering and minoring in computer science. She leads en engineering bridge program called Pre-College Opportunities within Energy Research, POWER, which hosts monthly after-school workshops with the Stanford Energy Club.
POWER’s main goals are to spread awareness on energy research and empower underrepresented high school students in pursuing future careers in energy through hands-on activities and learning.
Yang has brought POWER workshops to Branham regularly this school year, focusing on a variety of topics ranging from hydrogen to the greenhouse gas effect.
Yang said that although STEM may not interest everyone, it is important for these opportunities to be widely available in high school, where she was involved in Project Lead the Way as well as SPARE Club.
“Having a really great STEM program was extremely fruitful for me because I got to work with a lot of other things many high school students wouldn't have been able to touch upon,” she said. “And for people who are not interested in science, it's still good to learn a little bit about how the world works around them.”
For Yang, majoring and pursuing a career in STEM was an easy decision — she cites the thrill of working through problems and finding answers in physics and math
Though she didn’t notice sexism in engineering as a high school student, she said it’s more pronounced in college.
“I see a lot of times when women scientists are not as respected,”
she said. “You see a lot more issues revolving around gender, and I don't know if that's a good thing.”
After initially feeling discouraged from pursuing a Ph.D. due to the lack of female support and exposure, she said that working with a group of “smart female scientists driven to do their work” in her research lab changed her mind.
“It was my first exposure to understanding that I can be one of them in the future,” she said.“It doesn't matter who I am or what background I come from–as long as I enjoy doing what I like, I can be just as intelligent, and I wish that my high school self would have known that.”
POWER will be returning to Branham with their first workshop of the year on Mar. 30 from 3:15 to 5:15 p.m. in J201. The workshop will be focused on heat radiation and how it is harvested to innovate materials for saving energy and fighting climate change.
since freshman year, and she has applied to colleges that have aerospace engineering and art majors, another passion of hers. People who are engineers can pursue their other passions, she said.
“You don't need to limit yourself to engineering or avoid it either,” she said.
“Engineering can also be for people like me who really like art at the same time, so you can figure out ways to combine it with other things that you like.”
The engineering student wants to increase recruitment efforts to bring women to STEM,
The
Bruins president says that she often faces requests to prove her expertise in robotics.
themselves Engineering students trying to create environment for passionate students like themJin Cho Sophomore Bionic Jin Cho sophomore, president of Bionic Bruins Nithila Vasant senior, plans to major in aerospace engineering
“People aren't letting previous biases control them.”
Sophomore Jin Cho on STEM representationJiyoon Choi/Bear Witness Branham alumnus Xiaomian Yang regularly leads workshops on energy at school for interested students.
This year’s prom at the Saratoga Mountain View Winery lands on May 6, between two AP testing weeks and on an SAT date, and students who are already nervous about their exams find themselves having to balance their academic responsibilities with the dance.
ASB leaders who are planning prom acknowledge the conflicting dates, but said that it was chosen because it offered the lowest ticket prices for students.
Senior class president Yuva Krishnapillai said on behave of the prom planning committee, “We as planners had to examine our priorities in terms of venue quality and date flexibility while keeping ticket prices affordable for our students, so we hope that the financial trade-off of cheaper ticket prices and a higher quality event will compensate for all attendees.”
They also hope that people can look to prom as a sort of reward for AP students and students taking the SAT that weekend. They know it can be an inconvenience for those students effected academically but hope it the weeks leading up to it wont be as stressful if students choice to prioritize their academics correctly.
“It was to our belief that it would offer respite to those who diligently studied and worked towards performing their best, sort of a reward for taking all those hard tests over the previous week” said Krishnapillai.
Some AP teachers know how important prom is for people and have agreed that students should look at the event more as a celebration of their hard work, rather then an inconvenience.
“Prom is something that’s really fun,” said AP Language teacher Chelsea Follett, “People put a lot of energy into going into prom, and it makes me a little bit nervous that it’s situated right in between some of the most serious tests that students are going to take in all of high school.”
For many AP students and teachers, this year’s prom date has become less and less ideal. Follett expresses how in a perfect world prom would be weeks before or after AP tests and not on an SAT date.
She noted how if the possibility arises, looking to move the date of prom would be very beneficial to students, but she understands that sometimes it’s difficult to do that because of the venue itself.
“There’s not too much that we can change because we can’t change the date of the AP exam” Follett said, “so we just have to kind of carry on like we usually would.”
Many are planning to hold study sessions or mock exams to help students prepare for their tests. The AP Language teachers have held mini mock exams where students have to write two
A survey administered in February and again in March showed mixed feelings among students about that date of prom.
43% of the 180 students surveyed say that they have AP test either the week before or after prom.
8% say they have both an AP test and the SAT that weekend, and the weeks before and/or after prom.
70% say that they will still attend prom along with their AP tests and/or SAT exams..
Source: Branham survey of 270 readers
essays back-to-back.
Closer to the test date, they are going to hold two- to- three full options mock exams after school.
“A lot of the AP teachers use their entire tutorial to talk with AP students about what they can do to be successful moving forward,” Follett said. “I think what all AP teachers right now are trying to navigate is being in the middle of all of these really important events.”
Many students are also trying to find ways to navigate the busy weekends. Junior Alina Gudeli is nervous about having to get through the two weeks.
Gudeli is taking two AP classes: AP U.S. History and AP Language and Composition. With the tests being on opposite weeks she is more nervous for the AP Language exam more than the AP U.S. History not only because it is after prom, but because it is the more rigorous course.
“It definitely does make me feel a little guilty,” Gudeli said about going to prom and not staying home studying for her AP tests. “I feel like I really should be focusing on my academics so close to the end of the year.”
Even with his busy schedule, senior Jeremy Potts says that prom is a high school milestone. In additional to being in ASB, Potts is in three AP classes this year, statistics, biology and U.S. government.
“Frankly, at that point, if it’s three days before the test, I’m so sorry to tell you, but there’s nothing you can do to make it better at that point,” Potts said. “You have to be able to plan ahead cause not a lot can happen in the three days before.”
Planning ahead
Gudeli and others hope that more teachers
LAUREN GERNALE
Staff Writer
Treats, laughter and dance numbers were on display March 16 at the fifth annual World Language Banquet, featuring Spanish, French, Mandarin and newly added Korean student and staff performances.
The banquet featured nine class performances, including a fashion show from French, a Spanish Korean dance performances. Students could also choose from activities and food throughout the night. Two long tables were dedicated to a cultural potluck. Student-led booths featured French Mardi-Gras mask decorating, face painting and Chinese calligraphy.
The French fashion show showcased traditional and designer looks from the 1910s to 1990s, created by senior Jack Lawrence with the help of sophomore Ian Angelopoulos. Teachers also joined in on the fun, with Korean teacher Sunyoung Jeon and Mandarin teacher Linda Chen singing a duet of “Your Shampoo Scent in the Flowers” by Jang Beom-June.
A K-pop dance performance to “OMG” by
NewJeans, featured freshmen Erica Kim, Kate Okishima, Pauline Kang, Adelle Kang and sophomore David Tran.
This is the scond time the group has performed, having had no prior dance experience.
Kim said it has been her favorite experience so far this year.
“Once in a while if you do something impulsive and new you can earn something good from it,” Kim said.
Spanish students from teachers Merry Sara Maddelein, Heather Votava and Leticia Molina’s classes also joined in class performances. Votava enjoyed seeing her students outside the classroom setting.
“I’m glad the kids have time to socialize and connect again outside of the classroom,” Votava said. “I think it’s important. I don’t think we have enough opportunities to do that.”
French teacher Katia Saade said she enjoyed seeing how students shared appreciation for different cultures.
“They’re expressing themselves in such a lovely, beautiful way,” she said. “I love seeing everyone happy and enjoying the food, the dances and the cultures.”
will hold mock exams, like the AP Language classes are doing, along with study sessions before and/or after school.
“It’s gonna be three things going on at once,” said Gudeli. “You have to juggle studying and then also regular homework and then also getting ready for prom.”
Follett also urges students to communicate with their teachers. She knows students will have extra work on top of AP tests, so she wants students to know the importance and how helpful it can be to talk to teachers.
“I know that can be really hard and sometimes people feel intimidated, but you have to especially if you’re in an AP class,” Follett said, “Make sure you have an open dialogue with teachers and not just emailing your teachers but actually talking to them.”
Both Potts and Gudeli plan to ask for on-lev-
el teachers to take it easy on the AP students, especially the ones in ASB who are working double-time.
“As long as we’re doing more things in class instead of after school I’ll be ok,” said Gudeli. “After school time is going to be heavily focused on studying and preparing for the AP test.”
The ASB prom planning group also recommends students to find the importance of talking to their teachers and utilizing their tutorials that they have each week in order to help students better prepare for the hectic week that could be called Hell’s Weekend.
“Going to tutorial, asking your teachers questions, and making sure to make good academic choices.” Krishnapillai said. “You can enjoy yourself at prom as well as performing well academically.”
For Spanish 2 and 3 teacher Damian Fragano, teaching in America represented a possibility for him to live a better life than in Mexico.
When he was young, he often struggled with education, having to be held back in school for many years, due to the lack of academic resources at hand. His father passed away when he was 5, so his mother and his grandparents had to make ends meet moving from city to city.
“It was rough for me,” he said. “I remember just feeling really behind everyone, and the reason was there was not as much support. ... There was not a tutorial, and my family didn’t have the resources to hire a tutor.”
Later, his mother helped bring him to America, where he initially did not consider enrolling in college, but preferred to just hang out with friends and family. But when he came back to visit Mexico, he realized that he couldn’t see a future in Mexico and needed to travel back to the United States.
“I didn’t see any light at the end of the tunnel,” Fragano said.
He decided to come back to the United States and enrolled in junior college to take English classes to learn the language. When he applied for financial aid for college, he felt relieved that the California colleges
A future in the U.S.
not only paid for his classes, but gave him enough money to make a living, buy a car and attend school.
Despite noting that there were not many resources in Mexico to help him prosper, he found his teachers both in Mexico and California helped inspire him to become a teacher.
“A few teachers motivated me to do better and gave me that warning like either you applied yourself or you’re not going to finish high school.”
Fragano said. “At some point I had to hear that.”
Although he still had some student loans as he worked to become a foreign language teacher, he said he is thankful. As a public school teacher, he feels supported by the government to help pay back his student loans.
He has since taught at Berkeley High School for three years, and at Branham for seven years. Beyond teaching itself, Fragano values being a foreign language teacher because of the community he has gained.
“At the very beginning, it was more like, I have to do this, that, and they have to learn that now,” he said. “It’s more about learning from them too, and getting to know them as people, not just as students. And that’s something that inspires me more, and motivates me more as a teacher. I also have absorbed that positive energy from them and that’s what keeps me going.”
— Alli WangScience department co-chair Kevin Kalman has been teaching at Branham for seven years. He had graduated from San Jose State University right after the economy crashed. He began working at the Petco on Branham and Meridian. Still unsure of his prospects, he enrolled grad school, conducting field research in labs and discovered that he enjoyed teaching. He began as a substitute because he was unsure what age group he wanted to teach for. He enjoyed teaching high school classes the most, which influenced his decision to teach high school science at Branham High School.
While most teachers enter the profession out of college, others didn’t.
16% the proportion of high school teachers who come into the profession as a second career.
In high school, Laura Cellini was inspired by her teachers to pursue a career in education. Because mother was a kindergarten for many years, she thought that she had wanted to become an elementary teacher. Volunteering in her mother’s classroom made her realize that working with young children was not meant for her. She also didn’t want to teach every subject, and knew that English was her passion that she wanted to focus on. In college, Cellini worked at JoAnn fabrics, where she picked up a passion for crafts. She had also picked up sewing during the pandemic and cntinues to sew as a hobby.
— Shantala MuruganujanA fourth act
Physics and AP Physics 2 teacher Ioanna Theodospoulou didn’t plan to teach in America.
She was born and lived in Greece, and shortly after receiving her bachelor’s degree in physics, she taught students privately for 9.5 years.
Education in 1985 in Greece was different, with fewer resources and no hands-on learning.
“It was 1985 and I was in college, and unlike today, we had no lives,” she said, jokingly.
She taught in Greece for nine-and-a-half years, in England for 10 years, and the U.S. for eight years. In Greece, she tutored privately and received an international license to teach. In England, she taught in high school from grades 9 to 12. She was always interested in physics, and recollected a demonstration of circuits from her professor. But she wasn’t able to physically touch or experiment with a circuit, unlike the experiences high school students in America have had via hands-on physics experiments. However she said that moving internationally was due to a mix of life’s circumstances and unexpected obstacles.
“Life happened. I got married and my husband moved to England to work as an engineer. A year later, I followed him to England. I didn’t teach for 6 years. I actually worked as a telecommunicator for Alcatel-Lucent, which is German Based.”
She went to England to support her husband in the fiber optics industry, before the industry collapsed in 2003. She wasn’t initially a teacher in England, but rather a telecommunicator. But she then realized she needed to support her family, and found teaching her best option due to having experience in Greece.
Later, she moved back to Silicon Valley to work as a Quality Assurance process engineer for Oclaro, hoping to engage in another field of physics. But the factory had since shut down, with its other unit in England remaining due to factory costs.
“I was unlucky in terms that the factory had shut down,” she said. “And I was like,’ Okay, Ioanna, we can just teach.’ ”
She was told to get another teaching credential for California, even though she had an international credential. When she was 47 years old, she balanced time between being a student at Santa Clara University to get a California credential while working as a substitute teacher. Although her eventual teaching in the United States was not planned, she said she’s “not complaining.” She found value in teaching because she’s able to collaborate with various people and work in various fields with her degree in physics.
During college, social science teacher Stefanie Menera worked for the City of Monterey Museum and Cultural Arts Division as an archive and artifact specialist intern. Menera assessed, photographed and prepped exhibits. She also participated in Greek life and took a trip to D.C. for a conference with one of the student organizations she was a part of.
— Shantala Muruganujan62% of those who teach have a degree other than in education.
— Sources: Journal of Teacher Education
“Teaching opened my mind to other fields and I improved as an engineer as well as a physicist.” she said. “Although I was a private teacher in Greece and had experience, my experience teaching in America was miles away from my experience in the U.S. I learned so much about teaching not just from Professional Development, but from the people around me: how to communicate, not just teach.”
— Alli WangEnglish teacher Melanie Vega said that she always knew she wanted to become a teacher. During college, Vega was part of a teaching program. After graduating, she moved to Spain and taught the English language. She also traveled to Europe and other parts of Spain. Once she returned back to the United States, Vega started teaching at Branham.
— Shantala Muruganujan
Before they taught at Branham, teachers had careers as researchers, engineers, baristas, retail workers. We briefly share their stories here.Photos courtesy of Stefanie Menera, Melanie Vega, Lauren Cellini Kevin Kalman
In the swimming community, there is an unspoken discussion about body image and their restricting uniform setting and expectation to which students feel they have to conform.
Junior Kai Malin has been a swim team member since his freshman year, and he claims that the expectation of having a swimmer’s body has become more relevant to him over the years.
“There’s an image or goal that people want to be perceived as,” Malin said. “As a good player, and as a good athlete in order to get attention. You have to fit that look.”
With almost 150 people on the swim team, conversation about body image may be a prevalent issue that seems like it would be discussed more than it is, but instead, most students keep their worries to themselves.
Body image is a topic that is fairly universal, especially among teenagers. It can be a particularly sensitive issue for high school students who participate in swimming.
Paired with the expectation to wear swimsuits, the pressure for high school students to conform to a specific body type still prevails.
The United States Swimming Organization reports that the drive to meet a certain body standard for athletes can harm their mental health.
Malin said despite his interest in swim, he was hesitant to join the sport out of fear he would not fit into a swimmer’s “slim” standard. In the end, support from family and friends ultimately gave him confidence.
“I think (the expectations) have gotten better over the years,” Malin said. “If you look at the swim team today, many people don’t fit that Michael Phelps look, but they still do it because they think it’s fun and they want to participate in the sport.”
According to the United States Swimming Organization, it is common for sports like swimming to have a demanding body aesthetic or shape. Although it isn’t talked about much, Malin said that many members of the swimming community feel pressured to look a certain way.
Along with fitting the look, assistant swim coach Hayley O’Brien believes there are many other possibilities for why swimmers may feel pressure to look this way.
Body image dissatisfaction
70.8% percentage of female swimmers out of a study of 226 who have reported concerns over body image.
For O’Brien, swimming has been a large part of her life. She swam in high school and for UC Davis’ Division I team.
Pursuing this passion has benefited her, as she’s gotten to know the students whom she works with and understands where their struggles may stem.
O’Brien said that swimming is a unique sport, as its uniform involves very little clothing. She be lieves there might be more anxiety among newer swimmers since the uniform is more revealing than other sports.
“I think that there’s a desensitization to it over time,” O’Brien said, “If you’re in a swimsuit every single day, then it becomes more normal over time.”
O’Brien said social media has also harmed teenag ers’ perception of themselves and their body image.
“I don’t spend a lot of time on Instagram, but when I do go on it, the feed that I get recommended are always the super tall, ripped guys,” Malin said, “And I’m like, why can’t I be like that? I just wish I had that six-pack.”
Along with the prevalent social media use among teenagers, senior the swim team all four years, claims there is a con nection between how one feels in a swimsuit and how they perceive other people online.
Puebla believes that swimmers have to uphold specific standards, leading to external pressures to conform to a particular body type. According to Puebla, everyone is expected to look the same and maintain the ideal appearance.
“Being in a swimsuit, you kind of feel a little exposed,” she said. “For me, I’m really comfort able in my body, and I love myself but other people I know, they don’t feel the same way. And it’s upsetting to hear that they feel so negatively about themselves and in the pool where they are just there to work out and have fun with their friends.”
While social media can be a significant source of pressure regarding body image, Puebla reminds swimmers that instead of striving for an unattain able ideal, they can benefit from learning to accept their bodies for what they are.
“I just think it’s important that you’re out there and you’re trying and that’s all that matters.” Puebla said. “Just because you don’t look a certain way and you don’t fit other people’s stereotypes doesn’t mean anything different.”
50% number of male swimmers from a study of 132 that showed behaviors associated with eating disorders, such as purging.
35% of males and 43% of females
reported that they experience pressure from coaches or teammates to meet body expectations.
Source: Journal of Applied Sport Psychology
The Bruins continued their strong start to the league season, picking up a clean 3-0 victory in their home rivalry game against Leigh on Tuesday.
Coming off their sweep against Independence, Branham looked to keep that momentum and shut out their Longhorn rivals, but looked shaky in the first set. A number of missed hits and some good Longhorn blocks gave Leigh an early lead, but the Bruins fought their way back into the match, eventually winning the set 25-17.
By that point, Leigh was no match for Branham, as the Bruins went into cruise control, winning the second set by over ten points with a score of 25-14.
Although the third and final set saw a closer result than the second, Branham remained in control of the game before winning 25-19. Sets from junior Ethan Lo and strong hits and
serves from seniors George Argiris and Sean Willson saw the game out, extending the Bruins’ record to 2-0 in league, 5-2 overall.
Despite losing three crucial seniors last season, the team has big ambitions for this season, especially off the court.
“We always say we want to win and take league and take CCS,” varsity coach Heather Cooper said. “But if I had to reflect on all of it, how do I create the culture and the Branham family that I’m used to having.”
The JV team also emerged triumphant, winning the game with a score of 2-1 and keeping their 2-0 league record safe.
They proceeded to defeat Leland on Thursday, bringing their record to 3-1 in league.
Moving forward, Cooper hopes that her players take home something more than a victory.
“I think it’s great that we bring home trophies and banners, but in the end I want to make sure that I’m able to leave as much of an impact on them as they leave on me.”
With the swim season under way, form-fitting uniforms contribute to concerns over body image
“I don’t spend a lot of time on Instagram, but when I do go on it, the feed that I get recommended are always the super tall, ripped guys. And I’m like, why can’t I be like that? I just wish I had that six-pack.”
Junior Kai Malin, who has been swimming since his freshman year.
BOYS VOLLEYBALL
Varsity Girls: 1-1
Varsity Boys: 1-1
Across their two league matches this season, both girls and boys have won one and lost one
Boys Golf Varsity: 0-5
Although they have struggled this season, not all has been bad, as unior Ricardo Pham and sophomore Adam Wong have stood out amongst the team.
Boys Tennis Varsity: 0-7
It’s been a rough season for the boys tennis team, and between rain cancellations and strong opponents they have yet to win a league match. However, player like junior Frank Junkar have stood out.
Badminton
Varsity: 2-1
Despite a rough loss to Leigh, the Branham baminton team is having a solid year. Individually, the Bruins have done well and their two wins were by pretty significant margins.
— Compiled by Alan Schaeffer
For the latest updates and home game recaps, visit bhsbearwitness. com or follow us on social media: @bhsbearwitness
transform into a game that isn’t being loved as much as he thinks it should.
His nephew, starting at the age of five, was introduced to baseball, and Pianto wanted him to love the game as much as he did.
Although at first he didn’t find the game enjoyable, he still wanted to give it a try, but in the end, Pianto said he pursued soccer and preferred its fast pace compared to baseball and its slow cadence.
Even though Pianto tried to get his nephew back into baseball when he was older hoping he would have a better understanding, it wasn’t enough as he was more interested constant action that soccer brings.
“With soccer, they are always moving, and they got an object to put this ball in that goal,” he said, comparing it to the slower baseball, where time is often spent waiting for the next play to start.
For a fan back in the 20th century, baseball was the sport of the time. It was America’s game. From 1937 to 1960, baseball was America’s favorite sport until football took the top spot in 1972. Now though, it seems as though the game has been left in the past.
According to a report from Forbes, the MLB saw a 5.7% decline from the 2019 and 2022 season. In addition, the MLB saw its lowest attendance numbers since 1997.
This poses a major problem for the advertisement of baseball on its audience. It symbolizes the current stance on baseball, and in addition represents the place baseball could be in the future.
In the Bay Area, the A’s and Giants have been significantly affected recently. With the pandemic, plus the popularity of the sport on the plummet, the teams saw a decrease in attendance numbers. In addition, ticket prices are continually rising at these games, which causes a lack of attendance.
Decline in MLB attendance from 2019 to 2022
Number of little league players in 2014, down by almost 4 million from 2002.
Age of the average baseball fan in 2023 according to Off the Bench Baseball.
The A’s continue to have a problem as they are known to be one of the lowest market teams in the league ranking just 27th out of 30 teams in team valuations. Their performance hasn’t helped either as they won just 60 games out of 162 games last season, and there has been constant speculation on their movement to a new city. Along with the popularity of professional baseball on the decline, the number of youth participants in the sport is declining as well. Research has shown that there has been a decrease in Little League players from 9 million in 2002 to 5.3 million in 2014. Pianto points out that for a young kid to get invested in baseball they need to have coaches that can create that interest.
“They don’t have the attention span, so you’ve got to make the game fun, especially at that level,” he said. In this generation, children want things now, and they want them to be meaningful. Research has shown that the Generation Z is the most impatient generation, and that the average attention span has decreased over recent years.
Baseball is getting less and less pop-
ular for the younger generation, and the age of the average baseball fan being 57 years old, according to Off the Bench Baseball.
Mainly, youths are getting less interested in baseball due to its slow pace.
“It is a slower paced game. In fact, if you take the total time of a baseball game when the ball is actually in play, it’s minutes,” Pianto said. Baseball has declined significantly than most sports due to this problem. The ball is in play 18 minutes of the three hours a game typically lasts compared to soccer where this season in the English Premier League, the ball was in play for around 56 minutes of its 90 minutes.
Despite the lack of action compared to other sports, Pianto said it is the mental preparation and the complexity of the game that players love.
“If you fall in love with the game, and really take these complexities to heart, and the challenges to heart, it’s a very exciting game,” he said.
Junior Taryn Quam, a Branham student who was born into a family of baseball fans, has been watching baseball her entire life. She can relate to Pianto when he says it is a very exciting game.
“Spending my life watching baseball on TV and going to my brother’s games, I naturally fell in love with the sport,” Quam said.
The MLB over the years, with their decline in interest, has attempted to make the game more exciting by adding a clock in between pitches so the game moves by quicker, and are enlarging the bases so that there is more action when batters try to reach them. Making the game more interesting to the eye, Pianto said it will make it more available to all aspects of the community, and when the game catches the attention of more people, more people will understand what players and fans love about the game.
Until the right changes have been made to make baseball less boring, the decrease in baseball popularity that we are witnessing now will continue to grow.
Quam said the atmosphere at a baseball stadium is one of a kind and is truly something special and she hopes that people will soon be willing to expose themselves to the game.
“It’s the suspense, excitement, and rivalry that create the magic of the game,” she said.
As others rise, ‘America’s Game’ sees a decline in popularityNolan Zils/Bear Witness Senior first baseman Colin Williams prepares to tag a runner on an attempted firstbase pickoff at a match against Hillsdale.
ALBUM expérgo
NMIXX
What it is: expérgo is NMIXX's first EP which contains 6 tracks with pre-release single "Young, Dumb, Stupid", and the lead single "Love Me Like This". Debuting Feb. 22, 2022, NMIXX is a K-Pop girl group from JYP entertainment, one of the big 3 entertainment companies in Korea.
Liked: The first track, "Young, Dumb, Stupid", sampled a children's song with a hip hop and pop mix. It was a fresh try and the song is better than what I expected, being catchy as well. Personal favorite song from the album is the last track, "Home", because it best represents NMIXX's style that is continued from previous singles.
Disliked: The title track "Love Me Like This" is a departure from previous titles "O.O" and "Dice." It's missing the typica NMIXX sound and the change-up is disappointing.
— Jiyoon ChoiWhy don't students read? Students blame social media and the lack of choices at school
OWEN DASZKO Staff WriterWhen was the last time you read a book for fun?
Though there are no specific statistics about one's reading habits after high school, but more than a quarter of Americans haven't read a book in the last year, according to the Pew Research Center.
Freshman Josh Crocker, who has read more than 60 books since the start of the year, isn't among those numbers. He said that school takes the fun out of reading, and reading methods the the idea of what it means to read to many students.
“When you are reading for school,” Crocker said, “you are forced to read and it takes away the fun.”
He's part of the the newly formed Book of the Month club at Branham and said that reading shouldn’t be forced upon students.
He also shares his concern in a podcast made for his Introduction to Journalism class, titled "You should be reading instead of listening to this."
"What is the difference between those who enjoy reading and those who don’t? Is it because of time or its management? Is it because of reduced attention spans or other activities? Or can anybody read despite their difficulties? I believe so."
One of the culprits is a lack of choice.
Sophomore Elise Wellman, the Book of the Month president, said book assignments are not chosen by the students, leading to a loss of interest.
Aurora
From the show "Daisy Jones & The Six"
What it is: The television adaptation of Taylor Jenkins Reid's novel, Daisy Jones & The Six, following the rise and fall of a '70s music inspired by Fleetwood Mac, released a studio album "Aurora," consisting of 11 songs with the cast of "Daisy Jones & The Six." It's a snapshot of the show's intoxicating aura and performance.
Liked: The album perfectly encompasses the messages transmitted throughout the show and novel, featuring a mix of rock, pop, and electronic influences. The lyrics are thoughtful and reflective, exploring love, loss, and self-discovery themes. Each song on the album is a charter in the band’s history with titles like “Please,”“Aurora” and “Let Me Down Easy” following the band’s artistic journey.
Disliked: The album lacks the cohesive sound and style the band presents in their earlier works. Some of the songs on the album can be repetitive or formulaic, with hooks and melodies that are too familiar.
— Anabelle Walker
Created by Greg Berlanti, Sera Gamble and Penn Badgley
What it is: In the fourth season of Netflix's psychological thriller series "You", the audience follows Penn Badgley as Joe Goldberg to London as he faces his dark history and contemplates the morality of his decisions.
Liked: Beyond an enticing new setting with fresh characters, the month-long gap between the first five episodes and then the second evoked a prolonged feeling of suspense that kept me on the edge of my seat and wondering what happened with Joe Goldberg this time.
Disliked: I was let down by the lack of incorporation of past characters and plot lines in this season. While we continue to follow the eerie life of Joe Goldberg, there is hardly any attention paid to the previous three seasons, making the season seem almost out of place and context.
— Carissa Takaki“While it is very educational, for us as students this can eliminate the want to actually be involved in a book discussion and reduce the fun in reading,” Wellman said.
As people read books, they connect with the books they read and then soon enough, they are able to become a part of the story and imagine what the characters are going through in the book. However, reading for an assignment can negatively influences the imaginative connection to the book compared to reading for enjoyment. It is found that readers who read for enjoyment on a regular basis are more likely to become better readers of all types of texts, while students who read only for school will struggle finding enjoyment in texts they read.
Reading habits normally decline after students leave elementary school but have accelerated. The National Assessment of Educational Progress reports that in 2020, among 9-year old students, 42% said that they read for fun
We can't always find time to read for pleasure, but here are some ways experts suggest to do so. Set aside dedicated time for reading: This could be done in the morning, during lunch, or in the evening before bed. Research has shown that scheduling regular reading time can increase the likelihood of engaging in reading for pleasure Choose books that interest you: Selecting books that pique your interest can increase the likelihood of enjoying the reading experience.
every day, down from 53% in 2012. Among 13-year old students, nearly one-third — 29% — said that they hardly ever read, an increase from 8% in 1984.
The science of reading Reading leisurely influences a part of the brain called the somatosensory cortex, which responds to movement and pain, resulting in an increase of brain connectivity which helps people think creatively, learn new materials, remember, stay focused and relax.
A study in 2009 also found that 30 minutes of reading lowers blood pressure, heart rate and feelings of distress in students in the US just as effectively as yoga and humor.
Branham’s Book of the Month Club, which analyzes and discusses a book monthly provides a way for students to read without the worries that school
Create a comfortable reading environment: A comfortable and distraction-free environment can help facilitate reading for pleasure. This could include finding a cozy spot to read or creating a reading nook in your home.
Join a book club or reading group: Joining a book club or reading group can provide social support and accountability for reading for pleasure. There's a Book of the Month Club here that meets twice a month.
— Sources: National Literacy Trust, Libraries Unlimited
puts on them. Wellman wanted to provide students with an opportunity to display their love for books through the club with a “welcoming environment” to “share love of books”.
“Reading is a way of building a community and helping a variety of students participate in its culture,” Wellman said. When reading for school, the students lose interest and change their mindset about reading and with BOTM club, Wellman hopes to re-energize this motivation to read.
Researchers say that when teachers set up mandatory reading assignments, students start viewing it as a chore and a grade.
In his podcast, Crocker talked to his mother, Dartmouth English teacher Shelley Crocker, whom he says helped him develop a love for reading. She said that students reading for an assignment doesn’t represent what reading is sup-
PODCAST : To listen to freshman Josh Crocker's podcast, which will be submitted to NPR's Student Podcast Challenge, scan the QR code above.
posed to symbolize.
“Teachers push kids to read and record things about their reading, instead of reading for the love of it,” Crocker said.
To gauge interest in reading unlike for school assignments, BOTM at Branham aims to give more opportunities for students to express themselves relating to the book.
“It’s a way for many of us to have the freedom to share our own opinion and discuss topics we don’t often get the chance to at school,” Wellman said.
By creating a welcoming and free environment, the club tries to help students exit the stress of school and journey into a calm, relaxing, and enjoyable reading discussion.
Crocker said that getting into the habit is simple, and suggests that students read a little bit at a time.
“Just put down your phone and read a book maybe for 30 minutes and see what happens,” he said.
show's popularity, saying, "Everyone was talking about it."
In recent months, Chess.com, an online chess website, has seen a significant rise in popularity among students.
The website reported a staggering leap in active players, with numbers increasing from seven million to 10 million daily players in just three weeks, from Dec. 31 to Jan. 20.
In February alone, Chess.com announced over a billion games played, averaging to about 37 million games per day.
Sophomore Hari Srivastan has witnessed this growth in players first-hand.
"I'll be walking somewhere in the classroom, and everybody's playing Chess.com."
Online chess gained traction during the pandemic as students sought hobbies and ways to connect with others online. The game's intellectual challenge and accessibility have contributed to its growth in popularity, particularly
among teenagers and young adults. = Chess.com's growth is attributed to streamers and celebrities discussing the game, with the pandemic and recent events in the chess world also contributing to the explosion of popularity. Sam Khanin, an international chess master and chess coach on Chess.com, told the Bear Witness that acknowledged these factors, stating, "The com-
PODCAST : This story was adapted from the Introduction to Journalism's podcast, which will be submitted to NPR's Student Podcast Challenge. To listen to the rest of the story, scan the QR code above.
bination of the development of technology, the pandemic, social media coverage, Netflix shows all contributed."
Netflix's TV drama, "The Queen's Gambit," which follows an orphaned girl as she tries to become the world's greatest chess player, also contributed to chess's global popularity during the pandemic. Khanin commented on the
Chess.com's accessibility is another factor in its popularity, allowing members to play chess at any hour of the day and any location with minimal materials. The website also offers a variety of chess puzzles for those who do not want to play a match, as well as quicker games, including options to play matches lasting down to one minute.
Chess.com's uniquely online setting allows the game to be shared easily and efficiently, with many streamers recording gameplay, players posting on social media, and the ability to play against a friend online.
Chess's intensely competitive aspect is what gives it an edge over other games. While other popular online games have players competing against themselves to beat a high score or reach a higher level, chess has players battling oneon-one in real time, making it more competitive.
Khanin has faith that this chess craze will stick around, "I think that the growth of chess will continue," he said. "There's still a lot of potential for Chess.com, and we will see this growth for a pretty long time."
Online features and global appeal make the classic a hit
visit bhsbearwitness.com and @bhsbearwitness for updates on school events
SCHOOL EVENTS
Something Rotten
March 30, 31, and April 1, 5, 6, 7 in the Performing Arts Center
What: “Something Rotten” tells the story of two brothers named Nick and Nigel Bottom, owners of an acting company, who attempt to write the first “musical,” meanwhile challenging the famous playwright William Shakespeare. The musical is being put on by the Backstage Bruins.
Winter Guard championships
April 2 at Independence High School
What: The Winter Guard competition will be a part of the California Color Guard Circuit and will showcase the school's winter guard's show "A Million Reasons," a show about finding love.
Scoops and Tunes band concert April 4 in the cafeteria
ANGELA CHOI
Science and Health editor
Junior Christian Winzenread has performed in every post-pandemic school production since he joined the Backstage Bruins, Branham’s theater troupe. He starred two years ago in “Evil Dead: The Musical,” playing the sarcastic Ash with a chainsaw for a hand.
This week he will appear on stage as Nigel Bottom in the musical comedy “Something Rotten,” a mashup of Broadway and Shakespeare. Though he said that he was “humbled and very privileged” to live in a district that values arts programs, he said he is looking forward to things being better.
With the passage of Prop. 28 in November, which sets aside $1 billion to exclusively fund arts education in the state, Winzenread hopes that the theater department can reach even greater heights. Perhaps the funds can lead to more staffing.
The legislation will set aside 70% of funds to be distributed based on overall enrollment with 30% going to economically disadvantaged schools. Individual districts will decide specifically what programs and resources the money goes towards.
A bigger budget can also allow for higher production values in their shows, such as better props and lighting.
“Our sets could look a little bit better,” he said. “We probably (could) have a more polished product because we've been able to devote more time and resources to developing it. We would have more people to help and more opportunities for theater classes to help productions.”
Winzenread hopes the additional budget can also level the playing field between actors from public schools and actors from private schools.
In his involvement with theater outside of school, he has noticed that actors who want to pursue theater as a career are drawn to private schools for their increased arts program resources.
He hopes that the money from Prop. 28 can aid students who also want to pursue an arts career, but don’t have the resources to attend private schools.
At the district level, arts education has always been uniquely supported compared to other districts. Currently, the district allocates about $23,000 thousand dollars to arts
education, and holds. District-wide events including music festivals, drama and art festivals, and art festivals to highlight talent across schools.
District Superintendent Dr. Robert Bravo said that he hopes that the funding will benefit existing arts education efforts. The funding will take effect in schools beginning next year and will be split among schools in the district based on size and need.
Having access to new instruments or being able to have more accompanists or drama coaches are some things that Bravo said the district would stand to benefit from Prop. 28.
“It's going to be chiefly an enhancement of the programs that are in place,” he said.
At Branham, arts programs have a budget set aside as well as an additional boost from the district. Band director Chris Nalls said that the additional money is particularly helpful for the band because some instruments don’t last a long time.
“It just helps us do a better job serving our community in those ways,” Nalls said.
Nalls also hopes that the resources can push arts education exposure to students who didn’t initially consider it as a career. He hopes to use the budget to implement additional opportunities for students post-covid. Over the pandemic, although band enrollment dropped from 120 students to 60. However, the cost of instruction did not change. Band had to cut staff members from the marching band to stay under the budget.
“That means the group may not be as good,” Nalls said. “It means that students don't receive the same level of instruction that puts a little more strain on those of us that are left to fill the gaps.”
Eileen Bertron, the Visual and Performing Arts department cochair, said she is excited to receive the increased budget next year, and hopes she can use it to increase staffing for the arts department.
“It's more than one person's job. And we need help,” Bertron said. “We're so tired and we're scrambling all the time.”
Winzenread agrees that the budget will attract people to the arts.
“Art is one of the greatest things that you can do as a human,” he said. “And because of what we have you should definitely get out there.”
Mitty’s alumni currently in the performing arts include Isabella Esler, playing the role of Lydia from “BeetleJuice” on national tour, along with Myha’la Herrold, who is starring in the Broadway national tour of “The Book of Mormon.”
The school is known for its strong performing arts program, so it’s no surprise that Archbishop Mitty High School in San Jose employs six staff. By contrast, Branham has three. In addition to staff, the private school has a wider variety of classes available including AP music theory, advanced dance, sketch comedy, drama performance, and jazz choir, along with visual arts classes such as animation, cinema arts, painting, portfolio development, modern art and western art.
They also have various venues for their arts programs, including a dance studio, center for the arts, and an amphitheater. Despite their surplus of resources, the school population is only 1,768 students with a teacher to student ratio of 17 to one.
All of this comes with a price, as tuition there costs $24,550 at Mitty.
These funding opportunities at private schools give students advantages in resources over public schools such as Branham, where students in the performing arts perform with aging school-provided instruments and compete for rehearsal spaces.
Though the district and Branham make room for the arts, hosting music and theater festivals, they cannot pour resources into these programs as private schools in the area often have a surplus of arts equipment and greater performance and rehearsal venues, marking a clear disparity in resources.
The gap may narrow with the passage of Prop. 28, which provides $1 billion in additional performing and visual arts funding for public schools K-12 in the state, with 80% of the funding going towards teachers and aides.
In addition, Prop. 28 asks schools to be accountable with their funds, won’t allow school districts to use the funds for other purposes and asks schools to provide annual reports of their usage of the funds and impact it makes on the program and the students benefiting.
This aid will help many public schools bridge the gap between their private counterparts, but there are still issues that will continuously be
encountered.
In California, elementary schools and schools serving large populations of low-income families have less arts education and instruction.
As of 2022 in the state only around 11% of public schools provided instruction for music, dance, theater and visual arts, according to Create CA. In comparison, private schools such as Mitty are provided with significantly more funding and specialized visual and performing arts staff for a broader educational benefit.
The disparity in funding goes beyond high school, giving students receiving a private education an edge later on.
Students from lower income families are more likely to drop out before obtaining a degree even if they obtain government aid. There is also the factor of demands or work and family that create challenges in making time for education.
This disparity still largely comes from the educational gap lower income students may have gotten in high school. Since private schools put a lot of effort into preparing their students for the purpose of attending college, coming into a school with fewer educational advantages can be a setback for many from day one.
Prop. 28 and arts education may help improve a student's learning environment, it can also set students up for a more robust arts program, helping them find success in a career in the arts.
What: The concert will showcase the music program, including band and choir, and will be offering ice cream to raise money for graduating seniors and current students who are interested in participating in local music camps.
Tickets are $10 for adults, $5 for students and seniors.
Winter Percussion championships
When and where April 15 at the Stockton Arena
The Winter Percussion will be performing its show “Gravity” . It will be a part of the Northern California Percussion Alliance circuit.
OMG Family Festival April 1 and 2 at Milpitas Square in the Great Mall.
The OMG Family Festival aims to bring together family and friends with music, food and vendors in one place.
If you can't make it to Milpitas, it returns June 3 and June 4 at Discovery Meadow near the Children's Discovery Museum.
ART Community Pot Luck and Art Show
April 15 in San Jose
The group Garden to Table Silicon Valley is hosting a potluck that will also showcase local artists. The event will donate10%of proceeds toward farm education programs.
COMEDY
Jerry Seinfeld
April 13, Center for the Performing Arts
Comedian Jerry Seinfeld, best known for his classic TV show "Seinfeld" and recently will be here to perform his newest stand-up routine. His show was declared the best show of all time in 2009 by Time Magazine.
Jerry Seinfeld
Tickets cost $68-$185.
— Compiled by Ava Stark
Performing arts teachers imagine how Prop. 28 funds can help their programs
Prop. 28 can narrow opportunity gap between private and public high schoolsNolan Zils, Reese Gardner, Alli Wang and Tae Yun (Erica) Kang/Bear Witness archives Senior Marilyn Alonzo stars in "Evil Dead: The Musical" in 2022. Junior Nila Mettler performs in Branham Alliance field show. Sophomore Halen Yanez plays a solo piece during Acoustic Night in October. Eileen Bertron's dance class perform during a Halloween concert in 2021. Alli Wang/Bear Witness Courtesy OMG Festival
Private schools give students advantages in resources over public schools such as Branham.
Prop. 28 provides $1 billion to underserved arts programs statewide.
“Period education is important because it is a normal healthy part of the female reproductive system. It needs to be understood that a period is not something bad or harmful. tion will dispel any fear or misinformation.
Half of the world’s population experiences a period, but many still perceive the topic as taboo. However, hesitation to talk can lead to the spread of misinformation and misconceptions. Whether by social media or word of the mouth, female-identifying students say that overall miseducation, especially among male, as the root of the problem.
Carissa Takaki
illustrations by Lauren Gernale
“On social media, people shame others for talking about periods openly saying they’re gross and that they’re something we should be ashamed of…These people are uneducated and don’t respect bodies functioning. It happens to half of the population. Don’t hide your period, its natural and beautiful. comfortable: share your experience, share how its going because there are so many misconcep tions.”
Senior Morgan Lord
“A lot of misconceptions come from the internet because of misinformation… They definitely come from men who don’t understand the way periods work or want to say something hurtful… [periods] are used as a joke… As a woman, I feel hurt and offended… We should work towards a way where we can accept periods.”
Junior Leila Patigas
Swimming during a period can actually alleviate the discomfort of cramps through physical activity and is recommended by health professionals to deplete pain. As for blood leaking into the water, any chlorine or bromine in the water will work to kill the bacteria. To decrease the risk of leakage, tampons are a reliable product as they absorb blood before entering the water and can help prevent excess blood from escaping. Beyond the typical tampon, waterproof pants, period pads for swimming, and menstrual cups can also get the job done.
“Men in general really don’t understand how periods work…They just think it’s this one sided thing. I don’t want to explain periods every single time but I also don’t want men to be uneducated… They’ve been taught it in elementary school, middle school, even in highschool. They still don’t understand and its vexing at this point.
Sophomore Sage Oblander
While period blood is far less concentrated than the rest of the blood within the body, as it contains fewer blood cells, it is no less hygienic than any other blood leaving the body. Just like other blood, it is not suitable to exist outside of the body, so it will begin to decompose. However, this is natural and normal. Also, blood released during a period is actually a combination of uterine tissue, mucus lining, bacteria, and of course, blood that are exiting the uterus through the cervix, and out of the vagina.
“Periods aren’t about men, they shouldn’t be saying bad things about girls. It’s not about them… it’s not a pleasant experience. Some men are more understanding than others, the (knowledge men have regarding periods) depends on their family, the amount of women in their family, and how exposed they are to periods.”
Freshman Kyle Chieng
Yes, the average cycle is 28 days, however, it can fluctuate between individuals and between cycles. For one person, sometimes it can last 21 days and another up to 35. But all are normal. As for periods themselves, they can be as long as 3 days or even 7. Slightly fluctuant cycles do not indicate an underlying health condition, it is actually common for people to experience irregular periods when they first get their period.
The chances of pregnancy during a period are lower, but not impossible At the end of a period, ovulation occurs, and the ovary releases an egg. The egg moves down the fallopian tubes and toward the uterus. If met by sperm during this time, it will enter the uterus and undergo the process of fertilization. If not, the uterus absorbs it back into the body. During a period, the chance of sperm meeting the egg is lower than the rest of the cycle, leading many to perceive pregnancy as impossible. However, the length of a period can dramatically impact this. Those with shorter cycles may ovulate sooner, thus increasing chance at pregnancy.
The population that experience periods is far larger than solely female-identifying individuals, transgender men and nonbinary people may also get their periods if they have a uterus. Also, not every woman has a period either. Some may be pregnant, breast feeding, or experiencing menopause. Beyond this, some who identify as female may not have a period as well if they are, for example, a transgender woman.
While many people with periods experience premenstrual symptoms, a medical diagnostic is needed to determine if they have Premenstrual Syndrome. Many tend to undergo physical, emotional, or even behavioral changes during this time that can last up to 4 days before a period and 3 after a period starts. However, these symptoms are unique to every individual with a period. For example, some may face irritability, anxiety, bloating, acne, or food cravings.
District nurse Debra Phalen
