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.

It’s easy to stay in our comfort zones — to do the things we enjoy, the things we know. Doing what we are accustomed to feels safe: there is no fear of failure or embarrassment. But embracing uncertainty is necessary for growth. By challenging ourselves to do the things that we are most afraid of, the things we don’t know, we expand our worldview and ourselves.

We embrace uncertainty in our Features package as we examine the intricacies of human relationships. Love is complicated. For many of us, high school offers our first ventures into serious relationships — we are thrust into a new realm of the human experience, learning more about ourselves than ever before and seeing vulnerability rewarded with intimacy.

In our News section, we examined the ethics of ChatGPT. The thought that a tool can write essays by mimicking human speech is scary, but technological change is inevitable. Although we may feel ambiguous about the ethicality of the tool, we can’t completely disregard it: it’s not going away. By actively working to navigate the problems that it may initially cause, we can channel our uncertainty into finding a way to use the bot for good.

And, as student journalists, we are probably more familiar with the feeling of uncertainty than anyone else. Writing the stories that scare us — the controversial interview stories exposing corruption and the intensely vulnerable columns — allow us to make progress. It is when we embrace uncertainty that we are able to invoke the most change: to cover the topics that matter by summoning the courage that makes people listen.

Uncertainty feels different. Uncertainty is uncomfortable. But it is in moments of uncertainty that we have the most room for growth, when we can take the biggest steps towards positive change, both for ourselves and for our community.