elESTOQUE LETTER FROM THE EDITORS

Editors-in-Chief:

Krish Dev, Anna Jerolimov

Managing Editors:

Melody Cui, Gauri Manoj, Kripa Mayureshwar, Mira Wagner

Design Editors:

Mikaylah Du, Sophia Ma

Graphics Editor: Sonia Verma

Copy Editors:

Minjae Kang, April Wang, Brandon Xu

Website Editors:

Yash Thapiyal, Vincent Zhao

Visuals Editor: Aditya Shukla

News Editors:

Lauren Chuu, Mihir Vishwarupe, Lillian Wang, Angela Zhang

Feature Editors:

Taryn Lam, Aashna Patel, Irene Tang, Stephanie Zhang

Opinion Editors:

Meggie Chen, Tvisha Gupta, Sarah Liu, Jisha Rajala

Entertainment Editors:

Nameek Chowdhury, Avni Gandhi, Jiya Singh, Aashi Venkat

Sports Editors:

Crystal Cheng, Kathryn Foo, Kalyani

Puthenpurayil, Michelle Zheng

Staff Writers:

Chiran Arumugam, Anika Bhandarkar, Samika

Bhatkar, Ananya Chaudhary, Sagnik Nag

Chowdhury, Jason Chu, Abha Dash, Arjun Dhruv, Lily Jiang, Pranati Kotamraju, Manas Kottakota, Jami Lim, Sameer Maheshwari, Megha Mummaneni, Riya Murthy, Aidan Ruan, Trisha Sannappanavar, Dahlia Schilling, Darpan Singh, Alan Tai, Eshika Tiwari, Alyssa Yang, Alex Zhang, Eric Zhou

Adviser:

Julia Satterthwaite, MJE

Mission Statement:

El Estoque will accurately inform our community through well-researched, unbiased and in-depth accounts of the student body and staff, news and developments and taboo topics prevalent in and near MVHS. Investigating various voices and credible perspectives, we hope to foster active discussion, effect positive change and spread awareness of timely, relevant content. As a trustworthy and reliable source of information, we strive to be accountable, adaptable and ready to correct and address our mistakes. Constantly striving for improvement, we will uphold integrity and ethics to be respectful and empathetic to our sources and our readers. We will exercise our press freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment and California Ed Code 48907 while maintaining a community passionate about our work and journalism as a whole.

With our time as editors-in-chief of El Estoque coming to a close, we’ve been reflecting on what the last three years of student journalism have taught us. We’ve discovered the value of sitting down and connecting with sources, face-toface. We’ve learned how to come together and collaborate to create exemplary work, and how to provide both compliments and criticism in a way that upholds our publication’s standards of excellence. And, most importantly, we’ve come to understand the extent of the immense power that we hold as journalists: the power to use our platform to effect positive change.

In our last cycle as editors, we decided, fittingly, to focus our Features package on a topic that is especially relevant to the MVHS community: immigration. In Cupertino, where immigrants compose a majority of our population, the experience of being an immigrant is inextricably tied to the identities of people in our community. We heard from those who’ve had to adapt as high schoolers in a new country, those who sacrificed stable lives to pursue the American Dream and those who were significantly affected by stringent immigration policies. Our choice to cover the nuances of immigration encapsulates the most important lesson we’ve learned as journalists: that we are uniquely positioned to illuminate people’s stories, and that specifically, we have the responsibility of amplifying the authentic voices of people in our community.

To fulfill this duty, we immerse ourselves in the lives and experiences of others through thorough interviewing, researching and reporting. We are driven by a desire to make a difference, and by giving people a platform to share their experiences, we are able to invoke change by embracing what characterizes humanity — empathy. We believe in the power of journalism to showcase the richness of the human experience, and we strive to do justice to each person whose story we are entrusted to tell.

Soon, we will hand over the reins to a new team of dedicated, talented and passionate editors who we are confident will uphold El Estoque’s legacy and pave the path for future reporters to continue informing the MVHS community for decades to come. Although it’s bittersweet that our time as editors-in-chief has come to an end, we are beyond grateful to have had this privilege and opportunity to serve our community. Truly — it’s been an honor.