El Estoque will accurately inform our community through well-researched, unbiased and in-depth accounts of stories of the student body and staff, local news and developments and taboo topics prevalent in and near the MVHS realm. By investigating a variety of voices and credible perspectives, we hope to foster active discussion, effect positive change and spread awareness of timely and relevant content. As a trustworthy, consistent 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 one another, 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 of reporters with a strong passion for our work and journalism as a whole.
| KATHRYN FOO, GRACE LIN AND ALYSSA YANG
LETTER FROM THE
EDITORS
Welcome back MVHS! It’s been a quick month, but we’re not slowing down to stop celebrating just yet. Those bright red lanterns we see at Ranch 99 or A202 remind us that Lunar New Year is approaching, promising its tidings of (hopefully) stuffed red envelopes. As our Features section explores the recently-founded Filipino Student Union, we remember that staying true to our roots and maintaining our culture is an important part of who we are at MVHS.
The grind to keep learning here never stops, but this time our Opinion section teaches us, specifically what we know about each other’s culture. It’s important to be cautious of how interminority racism affects our perspectives but we can also expand our worldview to acknowledge the diverse holidays that aren’t regarded for school breaks.
While we question culture that may seem new to us, we examine how communities around us may be changing as we face uncertainty. We persisted through a shortlived TikTok ban, declining enrollment and recent developments in AI entertainment technology putting our future artists at risk.
It’s important to be aware but to also recognize those around us who are positively contributing to our cultivated community. Our Arts and Entertainment section celebrates Orchestra for making it to CASMEC, while our Features section gives a shout out to our night custodian Anna Cortez and a community of passionate animal volunteers.
As we’re settling into the new year with the values we hold close, we should remember to find a balance between educating ourselves and celebrating the rich and uplifting culture we’ve created together.
Alyssa Yang
PHOTO | LILLIAN WANG
Jami Lim
Ananya Chaudhary Kathryn Foo
Alan Tai
Samika Bhatkar
COVER
PHOTO COURTESY OF JOHN GILCHRIST |
PHOTO | LIZ LIU
PHOTO | ALAN TAI
Students and staff reflect on the impact of the potential TikTok ban
BY JAMI LIM AND ARCHANA VENKATESAN
he Supreme Court unanimously upheld a federal divest-or-ban law of the social media platform TikTok on Jan. 17, stating that the platform’s ties to China through its parent company, Bytedance, posed national security risks overcoming concerns regarding violation of First Amendment rights. TikTok became unavailable to U.S. users on Jan. 18 but was reinstated on users’ devices only 12 hours later on Jan. 19, with the app citing the efforts of President Trump for its return. After his inauguration on Jan. 20, Trump signed an executive order to extend the settlement of the app for 75 days. During this time period, TikTok has been removed from app stores but users with the app previously downloaded are able to access the app while awaiting a decision on the future of the platform.
With the pending decision on TikTok’s accessibility in the U.S., senior and avid TikTok user Nathan Chiang specifically feels the ban would hinder the efforts of activists present on the platform and the positive impacts they have produced. Chiang, who uses the app daily for entertainment and information on current news, believes the ban would make the country less aware of political issues and current events globally.
“By making it so that an American company needs to own TikTok, it really narrows the perspective of Americans,” Chiang said. “I think it places Americans in an echo chamber of only listening to American ideals, versus the ability for activism. For example, things that are going on in Palestine and Gaza —
because the U.S. government is simply more pro-Israel, how are people that are more pro-Palestine supposed to speak up when the platform that it’s on is wholly American?”
Similarly, senior Tanvi Parupalli says she has been able to connect
with communities for people of color and see her experience as an Indian-American person reflected and shared by others through TikTok. She deleted the app after the 12hour ban went into effect, assuming that it was permanently banned, and has been unable to re-download it since. Parupalli says that it served as a distraction and coping mechanism when she faced social anxiety and recognizes the ban would negatively affect the connectivity built on the platform.
“It’s really important to acknowledge that TikTok gives so many people online communities that they may not have access to in real life, so if you can’t find a community on other platforms or in your life, it can be really hard to navigate what you’re going through,” Parupalli said. “There was a community on TikTok of brown creators called ‘Browntok’ where I could just relate to other brown people and their struggles growing up first-generation in the U.S. So I think that lack of community can feel a little isolating for some people, especially the LGBTQ+ community or other POC.”
However, Parupalli sees the potential for communities to be rebuilt on other platforms such as Instagram. At the
PHOTO | JAMI LIM
beginning of her inaccess to TikTok, she says she found herself reflexively reaching for the app multiple times and began to reflect on its shortform content format and addictive algorithm. After experiencing time off the app, Parupalli says that she would not rejoin TikTok if given the opportunity, since she now recognizes its negative impacts on her life.
of
“I was 100% addicted to it — to the point where it became a reflex to scroll on Tiktok for a few minutes as soon as I opened my phone, even if I had a different purpose for reaching for my phone,” Parupalli said. “When it was gone, it definitely felt like I had lost something. Because of TikTok, I felt like I wasn’t always present at the moment, and once I lost TikTok, I felt like I could pay more attention to people I was talking with and have more genuine conversations because I’m not on my phone scrolling. Now that I don’t have access to all these random people’s lives and videos, that aspect of comparison isn’t there, so I can just be a more happy individual.”
“I think there’s a certain amount of fear-stoking in terms of privacy and intelligence, and it’s not like TikTok’s the only foreign social media app that people use,” Holaday said. “So it just seems to me, there’s a certain stoking of nationalism that occurs with the TikTok ban.”
Wgood for the high schoolers.’ To me that’s virtue signaling. They’re saying that to hide ulterior motivations and so that, to me, is all negative.”
MVHS students feel they will be impacted by the TikTok ban.
*According to a survey of 103 people 35%
Instead of a ban altogether, Holaday believes protecting youth from the addictive algorithms on platforms like TikTok can be achieved by heightened awareness of social media regulation among parents and guardians. Holaday says his students have been discussing using alternative platforms in response to the ban, showing that the ban would not stop users from staying off foreign-based platforms with potential privacy risks.
While Chiang sees the potential for moving to alternative social media platforms, they believe there are aspects of TikTok that are unique to the platform and that would not be able to be transferred to other social media platforms, such as its accessibility in supporting fundraisers created and promoted by TikTok users on the platform for humanitarian causes. Ultimately, Chiang says the real devastation of the ban is not its removal of their entertainment, but of the survival of people who make a living on TikTok.
While English teacher Randy Holaday is not active on TikTok himself, he agrees that the highly addictive nature of the platform impacts his students negatively but believes restricting the usage of social media platforms should not be achieved through a ban enforced by government interference. Rather, Holaday sees the regulations of large social media platforms as a part of a larger political agenda.
“To me, what the government should be doing is putting out studies to figure out what the effects of Instagram and TikTok are on adolescents and educating parents in terms of creating limits for that,” Holaday said. “I don’t like the door that the ban opens where things can be randomly banned for murky motivations. It seems like, ‘This is not
“ IT JUST SEEMS TO ME, THERE’S A CERTAIN STOKING OF NATIONALISM THAT OCCURS WITH WITH THE TIKTOK BAN.
ENGLISH TEACHER
RANDY HOLADAY
“I think the people who the ban will really affect are people who have GoFundMe’s or medical issues and they’re going on to TikTok for people to donate to them,” Chiang said. “These people’s lives have been changed, and by banning TikTok you are killing all these people that need help. I get to complain about it, which I think is privileged, but there’s so many people that are on TikTok who make their living through it and I think it’s devastating.”
OUT OF THE
SHADOWS
FUHSD reaffirms the protections offered against the looming threats to undocumented students and staff
BY KATHRYN FOO AND SANA KARKHANIS
| ELLIE WANG
When FHS Wellness Specialist and alum ‘14 Alejandra Flores received her acceptance from Arroyo University on a sports partial-scholarship, she truly believed that her days of living in fear were behind her. Although growing up as an undocumented immigrant taught Flores to always look over her shoulder, temporary protections from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Act (DACA) in 2012 opened up new opportunities, such as moving across the country in search of a better future.
That was until President Donald Trump first came into office in 2017.
“When Trump got elected, that’s the first time we really started hearing realistic threats of getting rid of DACA,” Flores said. “Those threats and that fear got very real, so I decided to leave school, which was devastating, because you worked so hard and you feel like all of your work was for nothing. But instead of just living in that fear, I asked myself, ‘How can I figure out my resources? How can I figure out how to protect myself, my community, my family?’ So, I just started getting very involved with my community and the resources and tools that I had to make sure that I was fighting the fear with something tangible.”
which began this year — has become noticeably more inflammatory. In his first days in office, he has signed executive orders that attempt to dismantle birthright citizenship to children of noncitizens and reinstated the ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy. Furthermore, he has specifically impacted schools by prompting the Department of Homeland Security to remove guidance that previously protected schools and religious spaces from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids.
“ I HAD TO MAKE SURE THAT I WAS FIGHTING THE FEAR WITH SOMETHING TANGIBLE.
WELLNESS SPECIALIST ALEJANDRA FLORES
Trump’s drive to execute these immigration policies causes many immigrants to fear impending deportation or other serious action, including members of California’s education system. In efforts to mitigate fear caused by Trump’s new policies, California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta has issued guidelines to school districts that provide resources to legally protect immigrant communities.
134K
undocumented immigrants estimated in Santa Clara County
*According the Migration Policy Institute
Spurred by growing hostility nationwide towards undocumented communities, the FUHSD Board of Trustees passed Resolution No. 2425-15 during a board meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 14, reaffirming their support and commitment to protecting the safety of undocumented students and staff. Associate Superintendent Trudy Gross explains that district policy ensures that the FUHSD will not assist federal immigration enforcement under current legal jurisdiction.
Immigration lawyer Dan Shanfield has a multitude of experience in his field, having had opportunities working with the United Nations Refugee Agency, Human Rights First in New York and the United States State Department. Through all his cases, the emotional experiences Shanfield has had representing students through the documentation process have impacted him the most. He was especially touched by cases like Flores, involving those brought to the U.S. undocumented during their youth and forced to adapt ever since.
Ultimately Trump’s threats towards DACA during his first term went unfulfilled, allowing Flores to maintain her legal status and stay in the Bay Area. Despite the lack of action against DACA in the first Trump administration, Trump’s rhetoric towards undocumented immigrants in his second term —
“Our goal is that school is a safe place — students have a right for that to be a safe place,” Gross said. “We are not voluntarily cooperating unless there are exigent circumstances or something that we’re presented to, but we are very clear as to the procedures of anybody who comes onto our campuses.”
“These cases were also heart-wrenching because so many of these youths have so much academic, intellectual and professional promise,” Shanfield said. “They’re all worthy of having an opportunity, having been brought here as children and being essentially American, to live out their potential.”
Flores’ family was one of many drawn to the idyllic American Dream and “the opportunities that America held for her and her brother.” Now, through her position as the FHS Wellness Specialist Flores helps students in the same position as her deal
with their undocumented status.
At FHS she works on assisting students individually as well as compiling resources and educating teachers on how to approach conversations with undocumented students supportively.
“Thankfully, our district is really proactive about having resources on hand, so it’s more about letting families and staff and schools be aware of what those resources are,” Flores said.
worry to their teachers. We’re taking all that information and then determining the best ways to share that and use that in our practices.”
“ WE JUST NEED TO KEEP UP THIS FIGHT TO ENSURE THAT STUDENTS GOING FORWARD CAN HAVE THAT SAME OPPORUNITY.
IMMIGRATION LAWYER
“Making sure that staff feel confident about how they can help their students, or who they can reach out to if students or they need help is crucial. Everything starts with making sure that the information you have is accessible to everybody, and language is a huge component of that.”
DAN SHANFIELD
FUHSD has also made efforts to broaden access to this information district-wide. In an email sent to all FUHSD students and families on Thursday, Jan. 23, Superintendent Graham Clark promoted various state resources for undocumented families, and stated that the district’s “focus remains on providing education and support to every student and family, regardless of immigration status.” Going forward, Gross says the district will continue to consult local authorities and educational resources on how to approach the evolving situation with sensitivity.
“There are certain guidelines that are coming out of the Department of Education and the Santa Clara County Office of Education,” Gross said. “We will use that guidance to communicate with our principals, our front office staff members and our teachers, because we do know that students are expressing
Shanfield advises the district to be careful that their support, while good intentioned, does not breach the law in favor of aiding people during this contentious time. Rather, he believes that providing greater access to resources like legal clinics for families can help students find stability in a safe and legal way. He personally has seen the success of these clinics before, citing his previous partnership with the San Jose Mexican Consulate, where pro bono lawyers helped students apply for DACA, just as Flores did herself.
“I remember looking at the hundreds and hundreds of students who were waiting in line nervously for the promise of relief,” Shanfield said. “Now, they’re no longer kids. They’re adults. They’re married. They have children. They have work authorization, and they’ve made such a positive impact on the community, their families, their workplace. We just need to keep up this fight to ensure that students going forward can have that same opportunity, and just be legally aggressive in finding solutions for them to not live in the shadows.”
ACCESS HELP:
SAFE SCHOOLS & RESOURCES FOR IMMIGRANT STUDENTS
SANTA CLARA COUNTY OF EDUCATION
IMMIGRATION & CALIFORNIA FAMILIES
CA GOVERNER’S OFFICE
DACA TOOL KIT DOWNTOWN COLLEGE PREP FAMILY PREPAREDNESS CENTER
IMMIGRANT LEGAL RESOURCE CENTER
YOUR RIGHTS: Immigrants’ Rights American civil liberties union
FUNDING CONUNDRUM
Low-demand arts electives face difficulties with incoming Proposition 28 funding
BY JONAH CHANG, STELLA PETZOVA AND ERIC ZHOU
Dprocess, from Feb. 12-16, threaten low-enrollment electives, some of which are funded by Proposition 28. Passed in 2022, Proposition 28 currently funds sections of Commercial Art, A Choir, Advanced Treble and Advanced Drama Honors at MVHS, all of which currently have fewer than 20 students per section, another term for period.
Choir teacher Lofn Young has consistently had under 10 students per section in their two Proposition 28-funded courses, A Choir and Advanced Treble. With FUHSD’s history of cutting courses due to low student interest, they fear that the district will cut their elective sections in the future.
Despite the Music Department receiving Proposition 28 funding, Young has qualms with the district’s
handling of the money. Young says former FUHSD Superintendent Polly Bove made it possible for MVHS to have 10 sections of Music courses, regardless of enrollment. Upon Bove’s retirement, funding for two sections of Music was cut. The money from Proposition 28 funded those two sections, bringing MVHS back to 10 sections of Music. Elective teachers like Young had hoped the supplemental money could have been spent purchasing new equipment or hiring new staf, as opposed to supplanting the cut funding.
“The way that Proposition 28 was introduced as a law when it was signed was supposed to be supplemental money for arts programs to be able to thrive in the conditions that are currently marginalizing them,” Young said. “Unfortunately, a lot of school districts are finding loopholes to allow them to supplant the money as opposed to supplement the money.”
With the funding spent on the courses, both Young and Drama teacher Hannah Gould feel overworked despite the extra funding.
“I have eight diferent people’s jobs as a full-time teacher, director, producer, and lighting, sound, set, and costume director and designer and marketing executive,” Gould said. “I have to take time out of the school day. I have to plan extra field trips, I have to figure out ways to design promotional materials. That’s something I don’t get any kind of compensation for, but if I don’t do it, then I don’t have a job.”
Gould also has concerns about the distribution of Proposition 28 money. She says she received only $3,000 of extra funding, thousands less than what other elective sections received. The Music and Drama departments pooled their Proposition 28 money to replace failing equipment used by the
general school population, including the soundboard in the auditorium, leaving no money for additonal stafng. Gould attributes these struggles to a lack of transparency regarding Proposition 28 from the district, as she says decisions regarding the distribution of funding happen behind closed doors.
“It feels very strange that there is no opportunity to give input,” Gould said. “I’m sure they’re gathering information. I’m sure they’re looking at data and numbers and talking to assistant principals and principals, but there’s no conversation with the actual teachers or people who are involved in the departments.”
According to Young, in addition to the declining enrollment, music classes, as well as other electives, already face a course allocation system that works against them: the six-course selection schedule disincentives interested students to register for their classes, and it requires a 36:1 student per section ratio for Music courses. Young says Music courses are among the only courses on campus mandated to have 36 students per section. Many other courses on campus only require 32.5 students per section or under, according to Young, with the exception of P.E. being 40 students per section. They say this is an equity issue they have been attempting to bring awareness to during meetings with the teacher’s union, the Fremont Educators Association (FEA). However, both Young and Gould feel as though the union has not heeded their concerns.
against lowering the student-toteacher ratio. Belshe strongly believes this money is doing the art department a service by supplementing funding and providing additional Music sections, a stark contrast to the way Young views the funding as supplanting the district’s budget cut a few years ago.
“Every department across the board has lost sections,” Belshe said. “Music for a long time is the only department that didn’t. What Proposition 28 has done is, rather than extra sections that don’t have the students to fill it, we can pay for those districtwide with Proposition 28 money to have that. So it’s supplementing, not supplanting.”
77% of MVHS students
number of sections that FEA has to pay for.
“ IT’S ABOUT LOOKING AT THE STRUCTURE THAT WE’RE WORKING WITHIN THAT STARTS US UNDERWATER FURTHER THAN EVERYONE ELSE.
CHOIR TEACHER LOFN YOUNG
“We have this other state funding in Proposition 28 that is available that is helping to protect these jobs,” Belshe said. “We’re so appreciative of being able to have that and use it to increase the availability that we can have. We would not be able to have a choir of six kids, of eight kids without this Proposition 28. But lowering that ratio doesn’t increase the number of students that are in those classes.”
As Chief Negotiator for three years, Belshe has continuously heard music teachers’ demands to lower the 36-studentper-section ratio to 32.
do not plan to take Commercial Art, A Choir, Advanced Treble or Advanced Drama Honors
*According to a survey of 103
FEA Chief Negotiator and U.S. History teacher Bonnie Belshe stands
Even so, on behalf of the union, she believes that in the face of declining enrollment, now is “not the optimal time” to put into efect that change, which Belshe says reflects the same perspective of Union Representative Council meetings — where FEA union representatives from each FUHSD site vote on such issues. Even if the union were to move forward on changing the ratio, Belshe says the number of Music sections would not change, and instead, this could increase the
Unlike Belshe, Young believes the union and the district misunderstand how funding from Proposition 28 is supposed to be handled. In the event that the student-per-section ratio is changed to 32 for Music, Young believes this could yield at least one more section and shield the department from overstafng.
“It’s looking at the formulas and looking at the structure that we’re working within that starts us underwater further than everyone else, for us to make it up to even just to get the same amount of money as everybody else,” Young said. “We have some systemic things that we can change to at least get us of the ground at the same place as everybody else.”
Young wants their concerns about Proposition 28 and section allocation to be recognized as equity issues to combat systematic disadvantages. They champion this for all elective courses, advocating they should enjoy the same stability as general education.
“I’m trying to look at the curriculum through the same equity lens that we’re looking at other equity issues such
as race through,” Young said. “I want more people to make that transfer so that we can all feel like we’ve got a fair shot, that we’re working in a system that cares about everyone and makes sure everyone feels belonging.”
Ultimately, Gould hopes for a greater level of acknowledgement from the district regarding elective teachers’ struggles. She wants them to recognize the department’s funding, stafng and equipment needs.
“It seems like they don’t know what we do here and that they’re not really bothering to find out,” Gould said. “We’re finally getting the space remodeled, so there was some attention paid, finally. But it does feel like too little too late. It seems like there is a willful lack of understanding of the needs for stafng. I’ve tried to communicate that to so many diferent people in the district, and it does feel like people are not hearing that and have not stopped by to try to understand the problem.”
In light of her department’s ongoing efort, Gould stresses the importance of arts education, citing a cultural underappreciation for courses such as Drama. Young agrees, wanting students to recognize how successful they could be pursuing humanities fields.
“We’re in a community that really values a lot of money, STEM and engineering,” Young said. “That’s another big barrier that we’re kind of working against. ‘Oh, my parents are not gonna really let me pursue music, this is not going to be lucrative for me.’ How do we market our course well enough to show that that’s not real? How do we convince folks that that’s not true when it’s so deeply ingrained in thousands of years of that being the narrative? Music has definitely caught up. There’s so many opportunities and so many directions for people to be successful and have very fulfilling lives in the humanities.”
COURSE SELECTION
BY STELLA PETZOVA
As the course selection window approaches, students can watch videos, look at informational flyers and attend events for courses they are interested in for the 2025-2026 school year. Although the course selection process ends for students on Feb. 26, when course selection ends, administrators and teachers work throughout the semester and over the summer to create studentcentric schedules with as few conflicts as possible.
According to Assistant Principal Janice Chen, students’ course selections from Feb. 12-26 provide administration with preliminary information about course interest, allowing them to begin allocating sections to diferent classes. Course verification allows them to collect even more accurate numbers.
“We do course verification in March, where we ask students to double check and make sure their selections look right,” Chen said. “If they decide to change their mind, they can make a request to change. That shifts a little bit of our preliminary numbers and how many sections we might be looking to ofer for a particular course next year.”
Once administration is confident in their estimates for each course’s interest, Chen works with each department lead to explain how many sections they each have allocated. Department leads then create the schedules for teachers in their department, according to Belshe, who is the History department lead.
Next, a schedule-building session called “Build Day” occurs and singleton, doubleton and tripleton courses are locked into periods to reduce as many conflicts for students as possible. If a class has a low amount of interest and is not funded by Proposition 28, it will not be ofered in the upcoming year. For example, Law was not taught in the 2024-25 school year because
too few students signed up. However, it will be ofered to students again this course registration season.
By the end of every school year, course schedules are finalized and teachers know which periods and classes they will teach in the upcoming year. Over the summer, adjustments continue to address new student enrollment and scheduling conflicts.
“It’s not just a push of a button — it’s not perfect,” Chen said. “There’s a lot of conflicts that come up, and then we have to work through those individually, one by one. I do have to call a lot of students in and let them know, ‘Hey, this doesn’t work.’ Unfortunately, they have to pick one course or the other.”
When tentative course schedules are released in August, Chen says students can request to make a change, which administration works to accommodate. Ofcial schedules are released on the first day of school, after which course changes are not allowed except on a case-by-case basis, where Chen works with individual students who need to change their schedules. For that reason, she recommends that students understand their classes’ workloads before signing up for them, so disruptive course adjustments can be avoided when school starts.
“I’m sure everyone has heard of ‘balancing your plate’ a lot from us,” Chen said. “We want students to make sure they’re thinking through everything that they have going on, not just at school, but extracurriculars, and picking the classes that they’re really interested in. It’s really disruptive to teachers, students and the class to change the schedule. So it’s something we really, really try to avoid, to make sure that the impact on the classroom is kept at a minimum.”
BLOCKERS BLOCKED
Bans on puberty blockers raise medical, political and moral dilemmas REPORTING AND ILLUSTRATIONS
Trigger warning: This story mentions self-harm and suicide. Call or text 988 for support if you are experiencing thoughts of suicide or self-harm.
he U.S. Supreme Court is currently considering whether states should have the right to ban puberty blockers, medications that postpone puberty in children. It heard oral
arguments about a Tennessee law
restricting genderafrming care for minors on Dec. 4, after the American Civil Liberties Union challenged the law on the basis of discrimination.
BY STELLA PETZOVA
delay the development of permanent secondary sex characteristics — such as a deeper voice or breast tissue — in transgender minors, providing them time to explore their gender identity. Although they are generally known as puberty blockers, they simply delay its onset, and are referred to as “pubertypausing medications” by some gender health scientists. Following months of consultation with mental health professionals, endocrinologists and pediatricians, and with parents’ consent, doctors can prescribe blockers
counselor for the Trevor Project, an LGBTQ+ youth suicide prevention organization. She says talking to transgender teens in crisis and witnessing their pain firsthand demonstrates the importance of rming care.
Puberty blockers are medications that suppress sex hormones. Out of their several uses, they are notably used to treat earlyonset puberty, as well as to
“For the kids who don’t have access to puberty-pausing medications, and they have already started to notice these secondary sex characteristics, it is very distressing, and that is part of what motivated me to attend nursing school, to become a mental health psychiatric nurse, so that I can provide psychotherapy and gender-afrming support to trans people,” MacAskill said. “It is life-changing, because if a transgender person goes through puberty and isn’t able to pause puberty and think about how they want to proceed, the secondary sex characteristics are permanent.”
distress that gender identity ers from their sex assigned at
Liz MacAskill is a registered psychiatric mental health nurse and crisis
Michigan high school English teacher and trans woman Natalie Popadich, whose 12-year-old child Max identifies as non-binary and uses puberty blockers, says the medications have provided Max the comfort of living in a body that matches their gender identity, without the stress of it developing in a way that would cause dysphoria. While Democrats control Michigan’s Senate, its Republican House of Representatives has introduced bills aimed at outlawing doctors’ ability to provide pubertyblocking drugs to minors.
“Since starting puberty blockers, Max is still the same outgoing, talented and funny kid they always were,” Popadich said in an email. “We appreciate that we can get the care that our doctors have prescribed so that Max can live their life in the most authentic way possible. A ban would mean the potential dysphoria of them not feeling at home in their own body.”
Biology and Physiology teacher
Lora Lerner echoes the importance of puberty blockers as a way for adolescents to pause development for a few years while examining their gender identity and what next steps they want to take if they choose to transition, which may include hormone therapy or surgical procedures. However, Lerner cautions against treating puberty blockers like a harmless “pause button.” She believes families and teens must be aware of the potential long-term consequences of taking puberty blockers and states that since puberty is also when the brain and bones develop, in addition to secondary sex characteristics, puberty blockers could possibly have the efect of stunting cognitive development or impacting future fertility, and have been shown to compromise bone health.
“To ask a 12-year-old kid to make a decision about their future fertility is hard,” Lerner said. “You can’t realistically expect a 12-yearold to weigh that consequence against how they feel about their gender — their maturity isn’t even at that stage. A doctor can talk to their parents, but the parents might have diferent goals and ideas for their child. Sometimes medical decisions are hard to weigh. People who want to pursue this are going to have to live with a level of uncertainty.”
“ A BAN WOULD MEAN THE POTENTIAL DYSPHORIA OF THEM NOT FEELING AT HOME IN THEIR OWN BODY.
Lerner proposes that while puberty blockers are being studied more thoroughly, they should be unavailable to the general public, but individuals who want them can sign up to be part of a clinical trial. This method is similar to how other risky medications, such as experimental cancer drugs, are treated.
However, MacAskill says that due to the stigma surrounding gender-
ENGLISH TEACHER NATALIE POPADICH
affirming care, there isn’t much funding for research surrounding blockers, but she believes they are safe enough for doctors to continue to prescribe blockers. Furthermore, the American Medical Association, Endocrine Society and World Professional Association for Transgender Health support puberty blockers’ use, and healthcare providers follow thorough medical guidelines when prescribing the medications. Steps are also taken to minimize future medical risks — for example, MacAskill says bone density is monitored throughout treatment, patients take calcium supplements and are ofered fertility preservation options.
Banning puberty blockers out of medical caution could carry severe potential consequences, as shown by the increased suicide attempts among young transgender and non-binary people in states with anti-transgender laws. The suicide risk for youth in the LGBTQ+ community is significantly higher than the general population but, a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that puberty blockers and gender afrming hormones led to a 73% decrease in suicidal ideation in youth — although other studies have found no correlation between a lack of gender-afrming care and completed suicides. Lerner and MacAskill believe that balancing physical and mental
health concerns is a complex ethical dilemma with no clear-cut solution.
“It’s so important that if a patient wants to take this medication, that they see a really highly qualified professional healthcare team to assess how bad their dysphoria is,” MacAskill said. “If the patient is having severe anxiety, depression or suicidality, those concerns usually outweigh the bone density and fertility risk, because they might not live to another day or year. I think it’s patient dependent, and the potential risks do need to be weighed carefully against each other.”
Popadich agrees, describing how when Max expressed concerns over the traumatic efect puberty would have on them, their parents weighed the medical risks outlined by their endocrinologist. They ultimately decided that the mental health benefits of the medications are paramount to everything else in Max’s life.
The potentially extensive medical drawbacks of puberty blockers are part of why they’re being banned and more cautiously prescribed throughout the world. For example, a 2024 U.K. review found that studies examining blockers’ safety were of poor quality, the potential side efects were concerning and that withdrawal does not lead to increased suicides, leading to bipartisan British political support of the ban. Now, only U.K. children already receiving genderafrming care or those who are part of a clinical trial can access puberty blockers.
However, the issue of genderafrming care is more polarizing in the U.S., as bans are often formed along party lines and motivated by political ideological battles. Since 2021, 26 states, all Republican-led, have restricted gender-afrming care, while Democrat-controlled states permit and protect their use. Antitransgender sentiment is prevalent among Republican politicians and campaigns. For example, in his 2025 inaugural address, President Trump said, “As of today, it will henceforth be the ofcial policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female.” To Popadich, the negative political fixation towards transgender people is unwarranted.
“The hundreds of bills targeting trans individuals who make up such a small part of the population is mind-blowing,” Popadich said. “As often is the case, groups with less political clout are being scapegoated to appeal to the MAGA base of the Republican party.”
not even sure those people care that much about that particular issue, but it’s very useful in creating negative sentiment. My personal feeling is that they’re picking on the most vulnerable group in society, pretty much — transgender kids, who already have a really hard road in front of them.”
“ MY PERSONAL FEELING IS THAT THEY’RE PICKING ON THE MOST VULNERABLE GROUP IN SOCIETY, PRETTY MUCHTRANSGENDER KIDS, WHO ALREADY HAVE A REALLY HARD ROAD IN FRONT OF THEM.
BIOLOGY TEACHER LORA LERNER
In a time of increasing transphobic sentiment in America, Lerner says parents, schools and communities should support LGBTQ+ kids’ mental health to decrease their risk of suicide and self-harm. MacAskill agrees, stressing the importance of supporting queer healthcare organizations, such as the Human Rights Campaign and the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association, and crisis hotlines such as 988 and The Trevor Project, which can help kids in states where access to gender-afrming service is banned or restricted.
human beings who deserve respect and equitable health care.”
To Lerner, the U.K. approach of making puberty blockers a medical issue rather than a political one is a step in the right direction. She believes that, in the U.S., the issue has been politicized and made overly emotionally charged, and Lerner advocates for greater scientific education and support for LGBTQ+ youth.
“People who want you to vote a certain way understand that if they start saying, ‘There will be transgender people everywhere as a result of puberty blockers,’ they’ll stir up a lot of negative feelings,” Lerner said. “I’m
“Part of why these bans across the states are really just breaking the hearts of the healthcare providers that care so much about this is because there isn’t a ton that we can do beyond just trying to support their mental health,” MacAskill said. “Many Americans have forgotten to recognize transgender and queer folks as
TAKE OUR JANUARY NEWS QUIZ
Test your knowledge of key events last month
BY STELLA PETZOVA AND KATE YANG
2
Which event for elementary schoolers was held in Cupertino Community Hall on Jan. 19?
4 Marriage
Which country became the first in Southeast Asia to legalize same-sex marriage on Jan. 23?
1 Disaster
Which California metropolitan area was ravaged by seven wildfires starting Jan. 7?
3 Crisis
Which world leader announced his resignation on Jan. 6 due to a national political crisis?
5 Conflict
Which war reached a ceasefire and hostage exchange agreement on Jan. 19, following months of negotiations?
7 Immigration
Following his inauguration on Jan. 20, President Trump signed an executive order attempting to curtail which constitutional right?
9 Arrest
Which world leader was arrested on Jan. 15, following political turmoil caused by his declaration of martial law?
6 Renovation
Which MVHS campus building began renovation in early January, funded by the Measure G Bond Program?
8 Equality
Which proposed constitutional amendment did former President Biden declare to be the “law of the land” on Jan. 17, shortly before leaving office?
10 Earthquake
Where did a 7.1 magnitude earthquake strike on Jan. 7, killing over 120 people?
1) Los Angeles; 2) Spelling Bee; 3) Justin Trudeau; 4) Thailand; 5) Israel-Hamas; 6) F-building; 7) Birthright citizenship; 8) Equal Rights Amendment; 9) Yoon Suk Yeol; 10) Tibet Cupertino
ILLUSTRATIONS | STELLA PETZOVA
| SAMIKA BHATKAR
KAMUSTA, MONTA VISTA!
FSU Co-Presidents Jamie Alessandra Garcia and Juliana Therese Banes promote Filipino culture in a sparsely Filipino-populated environment
BY SAMIKA BHATKAR AND APRAMEYA RUPANAGUNTA
When she was in first grade, senior Jamie Alessandra Garcia introduced herself as Filipino, expecting a warm welcome that her other classmates received. Instead, she was met with unfamiliarity. Since then, throughout elementary and middle school, Garcia has always felt a disconnect from her culture. When she began high school and met her now close Filipino friend and
senior Juliana Therese Banes, she began to explore her cultural identity and decided to start the Filipino Student Union with Banes junior year.
“I didn’t know many other Filipino students growing up,” Garcia said. “I met Juliana in my sophomore year, and we bonded over being Filipino. Then, my sister started joining Filipino organizations in college and we had just traveled to the Philippines, so I
got the idea of starting a club. Juliana is one of my few Filipino friends, so I asked her if she wanted to do this together.”
Growing up, Banes and Garcia noticed that, even though there is a large Filipino population in the Bay Area, MVHS lacks both a Filipino community and Filipino representation. As a result, Banes recognizes that Filipino culture is often misunderstood by her peers and she continues to focus on educating them about Filipino history and traditions.
“It’s really nice to share another part of Asian culture, especially Southeast Asian culture, since at MVHS, a big portion of students are East Asian,” Banes said. “Language-wise, Tagalog is really similar to Spanish and sometimes when we say words in Tagalog, some people think we are speaking Spanish and are Hispanic.”
For many mixed-race Filipino students at MVHS, Banes and Garcia realized that FSU has become a space where they can connect with others and celebrate a shared aspect of their identity that they might not have explored otherwise. As a Filipino, Japanese and Taiwanese thirdgeneration U.S. citizen, sophomore Kennedy Ancheta says she grew up feeling disconnected from her Filipino roots. She appreciates the safe environment that FSU facilitates for her to explore this side of her heritage.
“I only felt connected to my Filipino side whenever I would go to family gatherings for my Filipino side,” Ancheta said. “Joining this club made me learn more about the culture and different experiences that people have had in their family. For example, my family does a lot of karaoke and singing and dancing together, but other Filipino students at FSU have had different experiences. One person shared that when they were a kid, they had a Filipino mythical creature that they would be scared of.”
As co-presidents of the club, Garcia and Banes aim to ensure that students of mixed race, like Ancheta, feel equally welcome. Being half-Chinese and half-Filipino, freshman Sydney Wong
PHOTO
says she values how FSU provides underclassmen with older figures to look up to and welcomes non-Filipino and mixed-Filipino students to learn about their culture.
“Oftentimes I’m surrounded by other Chinese people, so I get to hear a lot about my Chinese side and the traditions we do,” Wong said. “But there are not many Filipinos here at school. So being in a club where I can talk to other Filipinos, makes the connection whole between the two parts of me. So I like the fact that it’s a little space for this small minority of people just to hang out and connect with one another.”
and movies.
“I ended up watching more Tagalog movies, which was pretty funny, and that was a smaller aspect of connecting with my family,” Garcia said. “When meeting my family from the Philippines and Australia, I could see how they could speak the language really well, and they could understand certain quirks about Filipino culture, like the love teams, that I couldn’t get and just made me want to connect better with it.”
“ IT’S REALLY NICE TO SHARE SOUTHEAST ASIAN CULTURE SINCE
AT MONTA VISTA, BIG PORTION OF STUDENTS ARE EAST ASIAN.
SENIOR JULIANA THERESE BANES
Usually chosen by Garcia or Banes after discussing it with their officer team, a typical meeting includes officers presenting an in-depth aspect or tradition of Filipino culture followed by a casual activity, such as a quiz or share out. Specifically, FSU has hosted meetings on Filipino karaoke, popular Filipino figures in pop culture like Bruno Mars and Saweetie, how Filipinos start celebrating Christmas in September and Ancheta’s personal favorite: Filipino folklore monsters remembered during Halloween.
In particular, Garcia especially appreciated the FSU’s meeting on karaoke, noting it as a cultural staple that she recollects partaking in as a child. She had hoped the activity would allow club members to build closer relationships with each other. However, her personal favorite meeting was when the officers watched Filipino movies, as she was enamored by the idea of love teams — a recurring actor and actress pair that appear in various television shows
Overall, Garcia and Banes believe FSU doesn’t just exist to represent a community of Filipino students, but also serves to educate the MVHS community about a group that doesn’t receive much cultural awareness. Garcia is proud of being part of a tight-knit community and she and Banes hope the underclassmen Filipino community carry on the club.
“There’s a lot of freshmen that have joined this year, and it’s nice because they bring their friends as well, and we’ve definitely grown a lot as a club,” Banes said. “We have graduating seniors, and they have siblings, who are our underclassmen, and have their family rejoining the club that way. Overall, we’ve just been building a community with our shared experiences, and as seniors, we really hope that this club can continue in longevity.”
QUIZ YOURSELF!
QUESTION #1
In what month do Filipinos tend to start celebrating Christmas? (Hint: It’s a “-ber” month)
QUESTION #2
What popular Filipino dessert is traditionally served on Noche Buena (Christmas Eve)?
QUESTION #3
What language influenced Tagalog when the Philippines was colonized in the 1500s?
QUESTION #4
What is the name of the Filipino dish made of marinated meat cooked in vinegar, soy sauce and garlic?
QUESTION #5
How many islands does the Philippines have?
,Spanish, Adobo and 7,641
Answers: September, Leche Flan
PAWS & PURP SE
Animal Assisted Happiness volunteers share about their passion for animals
BY ANGELA POON
As his fingers glided over the dirty golden coat of the dog, junior Vikram Aditya Srikanth couldn’t help but notice its ribs jutting out of its thin build. Eight years ago, when he was a 7-year-old waiting for the school bus on weekday mornings in India, he noticed the same few stray dogs lining the street. Their scrawny
scratching their ears, never getting bitten once.
Since he was a freshman, Srikanth’s natural compassion for animals led him to volunteer at Animal Assisted Happiness, a farm organization that uses animals to aid people with disabilities, emotional challenges and other impairments. AAH trains its animals to soothe visitors and provide a means of humananimal bonds.
TH PERM
Volunteering at AAH changed the way Srikanth viewed animal needs.
“Before, I thought all that mattered was making sure that they weren’t going to die,” Srikanth said.
“But as I learned more about them, I realized that the animals have social needs as well.
For example, the guinea pigs all live in pens, and when there’s only one
of them, they get really lonely. There’s deeper things that we need to fulfill for them and the amount of care you can provide can go extremely high depending on how much effort you want to put in.”
Srikanth enjoys his work at AAH so much that he recommended it to his friend, junior Abhi Kotari, who began volunteering there shortly thereafter. Kotari works mostly during the summer, volunteering between three to five times each week. Contrary to Srikanth, his passion for helping animals began after volunteering on the farm and realizing he loved it.
“It’s just a great atmosphere and I love animals,” Kotari said. “I love what Animal Assisted Happiness does and everything that goes into it because it’s not just for the animal’s sake, but also for other people that might be facing challenges.”
While the work is mostly straightforward, Srikanth and Kotari acknowledge there are challenging aspects of working at AAH, such as when animals escape and volunteers are in charge of putting them back in their pens. Despite these difficulties, both express love for their jobs because they learn important life skills while having fun taking care of the animals at the farm.
“Sometimes the bunnies escape, and that’s an issue that we have,” Kotari
Junior Abhi Kotari leads a mini horse on the farm during a training session.
the animals by cleaning up their droppings, giving them water, feeding them and cleaning their pens. During mobile visits, AAH staff bring their animals to a separate location to meet a wider range of people. An example is MVHS’ Furry Friends event, where therapy dogs are brought to the rally court before finals week each semester to help students manage their stress.
One of the many people that AAH has impacted is sophomore Tara Brumand, who attends Furry Friends at MVHS every semester. Her most recent experience in December marks her third involvement in the event. Brumand says she loves interacting with different breeds of dogs and observing their distinct personalities. Ultimately, she believes that the event provides a nice segue into finals week each semester.
“It’s one of my favorite parts of the pre-finals experience,” Brumand said.
physical and mental break for me.”
The work environment at AAH is starkly different compared to school, which Kotari finds calming.
82% of MVHS
students
would return to another Furry Friends event
*According to a survey of 77 people
He enjoys having his tasks set out for him and actively working to go through them one by one. On the farm, Kotari assigns jobs to volunteers for their two-hour slot, whether it’s working with animals or keeping the farm clean.
“I don’t have a preference for jobs, so I just help out where I can,” Kotari said. “A lot of the time, Vikram and I would volunteer together and
believes he was able to simultaneously help animals and humans as his care for animals allows them to further care for the people they assist.
“I’ve seen really beautiful things that the animals can do,” Srikanth said. “I remember one of the pigs on the farm had communicated with someone who was non-verbal for over an hour. It was really amazing because I don’t think a person could have recreated that moment.” FEATURES | FEBRUARY 2025
PHOTO BY VIKRAM ADITYA SRIKANTH | USED WITH PERMISSION
A LOVE FOR
LEGO LEGO
BBSenior Jayden Peng describes his LEGO building journey BY ETHAN EISLER AND SIH YU (MELODY) LIN SCAN
lue waves with frothy white edges crest over tiny wooden boats trapped in the sea. The scene is a recreation of Hokusai’s famous painting “The Great Wave off Kanagawa.” However, on closer inspection, the scene doesn’t quite have the same texture as the original wood block painting. That’s because
this isn’t just any recreation of Hokusai’s painting — it was created by senior Jayden Peng using only LEGO. Fans posted dozens of comments on the LEGO website in support of Jayden’s design,
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submitted to the LEGO Ideas platform, where he would go on to receive over 10,000 votes supporting his creation. Jayden’s earliest supporters were his older cousins, who passed
PHOTOS COURTESY OF JAYDEN PENG |
their LEGO sets down to him. However, it wasn’t until the pandemic, when Jayden found himself with excess free time, that he began designing his own sets.
As Jayden continued to design more sets, he began posting them to the LEGO Ideas website, where users can submit their digital LEGO designs to garner support from other LEGO fans. If a design reaches 10,000 supporters, it is reviewed by the LEGO company, and it selects the best designs to turn into official LEGO sets.
JAYDEN’S JAYDEN’S
Jayden has submitted around 20 of his designs to the LEGO Ideas website, seven of which have received the required 10,000 supporters to be considered by the LEGO company. Some of these designs include a turtle, the Temple of Time from the “Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild” and a recreation of Hokusai’s famous “The Great Wave off Kanagawa,” although none of them became sellable sets.
Jayden’s mom Eunice Peng says Jayden was always interested in LEGO, and that as his interest evolved, he challenged himself to slowly build harder designs and to test out different techniques, creating models of buildings that he and his family had visited or found appealing.
“I think Jayden’s mind works in a way that he can see things spatially, and building LEGO has allowed him to express himself that way,” Eunice said. “Building LEGO is not necessarily a very social activity, and so it’s not the same outlet for him in terms of social interaction. However, there are a lot of amazing communities out there, all sorts of platforms where you go to meet people who love LEGO, and he’s been able to connect with people in that way instead.”
Throughout Jayden’s LEGO building journey, he has served as his own manager and director for most of his creations. The minimum age to publish content on LEGO Ideas is 16, making Jayden one of the youngest creators on the platform when he first started creating builds, something that Jayden’s dad John Peng said Jayden
did all on his own.
“Jayden really jumped into designing LEGO full force,” John said. “When he got into it, he actually started to win to get into the semi-finals, which was kind of unexpected for me. It was honestly quite impressive, and he did it with virtually zero help from me, all by himself.”
BUILDS BUILDS
THE TEMPLE OF TIME
In the future, Jayden hopes to major in product design and believes that his skills in LEGO building could aid in his career. While he is still unsure where LEGO might take him, Jayden believes that his passion for LEGO nevertheless served a meaningful purpose in his life.
“Building LEGO is a good way for me to visualize my thoughts,” Jayden said. “I just take the pieces and build whatever is in my head. For some people, it might be drawings, others use paint, but I use
of description your *According
“I TRIED TO MAKE IT LOOK NOT LIKE LEGO, BUT SOMETHING RATHER FROM A DIORAMA OR SOMETHING. AND IT TURNED OUT VERY WELL.” — JAYDEN
THE GREAT WAVE OFF
KANAGAWA
“THE ANGLES WERE TOUGH. LEGO IS BLOCKY AND THE WAVE HAS TO BE SMOOTH. THERE ARE THESE BRICKS CALLED HINGES WHICH COULD BEND AND I USED A TON OF THOSE.” — JAYDEN
PHOTOS COURTESY OF JAYDEN PENG | USED WITH PERMISSION ILLUSTRATION | SIH YU (MELODY) LIN
Night custodian Ana M. Cortez examines how working at MVHS has impacted her and her family BY RADHIKA DHARMAPURIKAR AND LIZ LIU
PHOTO | LIZ LIU
PROGUARD MIDWEIGHT BLUE NITRILE EXAM GLOVES
Cortez goes through 50 pairs of gloves every week and considers them essential when it comes to her work.
2:14 p.m. It’s almost time to leave for work, yet night custodian Ana M. Cortez finds herself faltering by the doorway. Even though she’s already said her goodbyes, leaving her children is never easy. It will be morning when Cortez sees her family again.
On a typical workday, Cortez’s day begins at 6 a.m., when she prepares her children for school. She works at MVHS from 3 to 11:30 p.m. and goes to sleep around 12:30 a.m. As a result of the late hours night custodians work, College and Career Adviser
gotten good ideas from teachers on what my children could do.”
Cortez says Calderon played an integral role in helping her daughter Jasmine Cortez Rodriguez register for college after she graduated high school. As someone who registered for college but did not attend, Cortez is grateful that her daughter’s educational experience will be more extensive than her own. She is also appreciative that Rodriguez has a quiet environment where she can concentrate on studying, something Cortez lacked in high school.
SCAN FOR MORE COVERAGE
Rogelio Calderon believes that their efforts are often unnoticed and thus under-appreciated. However, Cortez enjoys working at MVHS, learning custodial skills and professional development techniques from management, and also appreciates the school’s environment.
“I love this school,” Cortez said.
“The janitors would do their jobs, but the kids were more wild,” Cortez said. “There was a lot of graffiti in the bathrooms. It wasn’t welcoming. It didn’t feel like a safe place. I think if I had this type of environment like MVHS where everybody is so focused, I would have probably pursued a college education.”
Cortez says she would have loved to have had a high school environment like MVHS. She believes MVHS’s emphasis on the importance of education has impacted her own views. For example, Cortez believes a longtime hope of hers — more future career opportunities — is achievable through a strong education. As a result, she’s reinforced the importance of
education onto her own children.
“My mom just wants what’s best for all her kids,” Rodriguez said. “She wants us to do greater things. She checks up on us with our school life and personal life. She’s involved in our interests and if I feel like giving up or just quitting something, she tells me, ‘You’ll get there’ and ‘Try again.’”
Rodriguez says she shares the lessons she’s learned with her four younger siblings. Proudly calling herself the “third parent,” she spends much of her afternoons cooking and caring for her younger siblings, helping them with homework or personal challenges. Rodriguez credits these experiences, along with the influence of exceptional teachers throughout her life, for inspiring her dream of becoming a teacher. Most of all, she credits Cortez for the ceaseless support that led to her current enrollment in college. Calderon agrees, acknowledging the importance of strong, unwavering support in a family.
“Ana’s family is very lucky to have her,” Calderon said. “She is a very welcoming person and has a generous heart, and she is someone that you feel safe and comfortable around. When you’re able to feel safe around someone, that says a lot about an individual and who they are as a person.”
vs.
OPPRESSION OPPRESSION
Students and staff explore the implications behind interminority racism
BY ZAID NAQVI AND MEGHA MUMMANENI
ILLUSTRATION|ALETHEIAJU
Following his return from China in December 2019, senior Jerry Wang was labeled a “virus spreader.” He was surprised that his supposed friends were the ones making these crude remarks, especially considering the background of those perpetuating the hate — other ChineseAmericans and IndianAmericans.
Wang considers this experience a form of internalized racism from his Chinese-American friends and interminority racism from his IndianAmerican peers; interminority racism is a form of prejudice where members of one minority group are discriminatory towards members of another minority group. The issue is particularly prevalent in the Bay Area and MVHS, where 79% of the student body is Asian American and the overall minority enrollment rate is 92%.
place in society, fostering tension. Lu describes the false stigma that arises from this as the scarcity mentality — a way of thinking that focuses on what someone is lacking.
“ A LOT OF RACISM THAT YOU SEE NOWADAYS HAS REALLY STEMMED FROM THAT SOURCE OF WANTING TO FIT IN WITH PEOPLE OF POWER.
SENIOR JERRY WANG
Similarly, the model minority myth, or the idea that Asian Americans are doing well today and must have benefitted from an elevated status among people of color is also considered by Lu to be an existing ideology present in ethnic groups. He says that the model minority myth goes hand-in-hand with the scarcity mentality, further enabling discrimination.
Within the school community, sophomore Ruchika Varanasi points to an incident from two years ago, where a video of an Asian student at MVHS saying the N-word was sent to staff members.
“There’s definitely no sensitivity towards that,” Varanasi said. “That word means a lot to black people. This is their word. It makes me especially disappointed to know that people who are also Asian are saying this word. There are Asian slurs. You wouldn’t like it if someone said them. So why are you saying that then?”
In the context of anti-blackness within the Asian American community, English teacher Derek Lu has observed many say that this interminority racism often stems from the idea that job opportunities and social acceptance are limited. As a result, minorities are sometimes pitted against each other as a way to protect their own
“I know many AAPI parents who wrongfully believe that other people of color are lazy, poor or homeless because they didn’t work hard enough,” Lu said. “They believe there are unfair advantages for being black or brown and that helping out people of color means taking away from their spot.”
On the contrary, Varanasi argues that sometimes members of minority groups who have experienced racism might project it onto other groups for validation. She says that this further demonstrates how discrimination from majority groups enforces a cycle
OPINION
of oppression, where marginalized groups subconsciously perpetuate the hate they face. Wang shares a similar perspective, also acknowledging that racism inside these minority groups can be attributed to a power struggle insinuated by majority groups.
“A lot of racism that you see nowadays has really stemmed from wanting to fit in with people of power and wanting to be that person who can sit up with them on the pedestal,” Wang said. “I think that’s why it has really spread from this issue of wanting to be like them, holding the same views as them, having internalized racism, to spreading towards larger groups, even within minority communities.”
While the MVHS curriculum provides ample time to discuss white hegemony in Critical Race Theory units during classes such as Honors American Literature, a lack of sensitivity to racial stereotypes is evident in occasional incidents on campus. Thus, Varanasi concludes that a focus on interminority racism is necessary since it is a prevalent issue that often goes unspoken.
Overall, Wang believes that creating change requires people to refocus their perspective with the help of experiences such as his return from China, as an opportunity to learn about overlooked forms of discrimination.
87% of MVHS students
have either witnessed or experienced interminority racism
*According to a survey of 116 people
“I could’ve used that experience to stand up for myself and talk to them,” Wang said. “To ask them, ‘What are your thoughts behind this and why would you behave like this?’ And we could have a discussion about why things like this shouldn’t be normalized. Treat others with respect and look at them because they’re all really just human beings like you are.”
AIIS HERE
FUHSD must weave Artificial Intelligence literacy into our district’s curriculum
While FUHSD strongly suggested that teachers add an artificial intelligence policy to their syllabi, according to an MVHS survey only 24% of teachers promote and allow the use of AI in an educational setting. The message is clear: AI is not welcome in our classrooms. Yet, whether it be a quick search for book quotes or asking for a solution to a chemistry problem, 83% of MVHS students still use AI despite the policies. As a result, AI is shaping the way students approach education, and it’s time teachers adjust classroom teaching methods to accompany these advancements.
for teachers; students can benefit from ethical AI usage to deepen learning and understand more complex topics. An AI tool like NotebookLM can generate a study guide, briefing documents and frequently asked questions based on text, slideshows, documents and more. These resources allow students to recall information actively, and NotebookLM’s podcast ability further helps students who have an easier time listening to information.
which AI can be incorporated into the curriculum.
We believe that the skills taught at school and the work assigned, should not be completely replaced by AI. Rather, it should be used to assist students in creative thinking and find a balance between AI and traditional education. A brilliant aspect of AI is its versatility — using AI isn’t just talking to a chatbot. Several educational platforms use AI to create an interactive learning environment. If teachers can implement these tools into their curriculum, it could benefit the education of students and ease the workload of teachers.
For example, SchoolAI is a platform that simulates a classroom environment using AI. While a common concern about AI in classrooms is its potentially uncontrollable usage, SchoolAI directly combats this through its feature “Mission Control,” which provides teachers the ability to observe student actions. The tool also has other features like exit tickets and personalized spaces that give teachers variety in how their classes function — at the simple click of a button. SchoolAI is one of many platforms that provide teachers with convenient shortcuts in a friendly manner.
AI’s versatility is also not just useful
The flexibility of AI is why it can be such a strong resource, and the reason why schools should use its strengths to their advantage.
However, we should question whether students are simply using AI to assist their learning rather than making it the sum total of their work. By continuing to have conventional assessments, such as in-class writings and tests using the old paper and pencil, of course, we can ensure that students continue to develop skills such as critical thinking throughout their schooling and that artificial intelligence is not being misused as a resource. Additionally, while teachers need to adjust their teaching to make room for such innovations, it is important to note that AI is not perfect. Although AI is rapidly advancing and ironing out its bugs, its current state can misinform unsuspecting users, especially with fake sources and quotes.
If we want to be able to expand the capacity for the use of AI, it needs to come from proper education about how to use the tool. A good example of this is the recent district-wide advisory on AI; however, we can do better by hosting more of these sessions for not only students but also for educators, so they understand the different AI tools available, as well as learn different ways in
While it is easy to be afraid of AI and the changes it brings, we also have to remember the numerous other inventions that have impacted our ways of life and thinking drastically. For example, similarly to AI, the calculator also sparked controversy when initially introduced as many believed it was replacing students’ ability to perform basic mathematics. But, if we take a look at today, almost all students at MVHS have a grasp of basic math, and the calculator is used simply as a tool to make tasks simpler. Whether it be using NotebookLM and SchoolAI or simply teaching our students how to ethically and responsibly use AI, educators must take a step into the intelligence age and further our adaptability skills.
BREAKS
REAKING DOWN THE
MVHS students and staff discuss how the school calendar could be structured to accommodate a diverse set of holidays
BY YIXUAN (JOYCE) LI AND ERIN LIU
Bbefore the Lunar New Year’s arrival on Jan. 29, MVHS students enrolled in the Chinese language program were busy at work, creating a variety of decorations — from paper door banners to upside-down 福 (fú, meaning fortune) characters — to adorn classroom doors throughout campus in celebration of the holiday. However, even as the school campus filled with festive spirit to welcome the holiday, students and staff found themselves attending school on the special day instead of enjoying the festivities with an officially recognized day off.
While school breaks are often planned around Christian and U.S. Federal holidays such as Christmas and Thanksgiving, widely holidays cultural
backgrounds do not receive the same recognition. Thus, the disconnect between school holidays and the diverse range of holidays MVHS students celebrate forces many to choose between academics and traditional celebrations. Though she is still able to spend time enjoying her cultural holidays, sophomore Pragti Gupta recognizes the internal struggle she faces during holidays like Diwali, often finding herself neglecting her culture in favor of her schoolwork.
“I feel guilt-tripped by my parents and my friends because they’re always like, ‘Come on, it’s a holiday, you can study later,’” Gupta said. “And I’m like, ‘No, I can’t.’ So they’re sitting there helping me with my tests while they could be celebrating outside, and it just feels wrong to be doing that.”
Like Gupta, many students often find themselves faced with
requests with the need to consider state regulations and logistical challenges that come with adjusting the academic calendar. According to Chinese teacher Zoey Liu, the school is not always able to provide students with time off, and MVHS Principal Ben Clausnitzer emails the staff prior to major cultural holidays to inform them. In the message, he also suggests that teachers lighten students’ workloads to allow them to celebrate.
“We have the awareness, but we technically don’t have any breaks that align with those major traditions or holidays,” Liu said. “I understand why, because if our district starts giving holidays for, for example, Lunar New Year, then other ethnic groups will start advocating for their own holidays. And if we add all of them together, that’s going to be multiple days — maybe even weeks — off.”
California state laws require a minimum of 180 instructional days in the academic calendar, which means time allocated for additional breaks will inevitably take away from existing breaks. This presents a dilemma: Which holidays should be prioritized, and whose input should be considered in making these decisions?
To Liu, a determining factor for whether a break is necessary on a specific holiday is how important family reunions are to its celebration.
Like many holidays, one of the most important parts of the Lunar New Year is to get together with
family, with travels around the holiday marking the world’s largest annual human migration. However, while California law dictates that public schools must close for holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas, which share a similar principle, thus allowing families to travel, Liu highlights that visiting her family in China during Lunar New Year is not even something she can consider due to the lack of a break.
According to U.S. News and the MVHS school profile, Asian students constitute 79% of the school population, with a 29% Chinese and 41% Indian demographic — cultures in which Diwali and Lunar New Year hold profound significance and are commonly celebrated. Given that a substantial portion of MVHS families observe these traditions, junior Mariam Ahmad emphasizes the necessity for school policies to better reflect the diversity of the community, recognizing the cultural and religious significance to ensure that all groups feel their traditions are valued. For instance, she speaks to the representation of her own Muslim traditions, namely Ramadan.
“
Teachers’ Union.
However, Ahmad and Gupta believe that the voices of students and parents should be prioritized over broader district-wide policies, and that the addition of a structured way for students and families to express their needs could lead to more balanced decisions. Liu agrees that the process may not be fully representative of the school community, as the district’s teacher and administrator demographic differs greatly from the student demographic. However, she also acknowledges two concerns with adapting the current process and schedules: It would take too long to survey the thousands of people in the community about when they want to have breaks, making it impractical, and any resulting decisions the school makes to recognize certain holidays may become politically complex.
JUNIOR MARIAM AHMAD SINCE THIS COUNTRY HAS BECOME SO DIVERSE, IT WOULD BE NICER FOR THE SCHOOL TO CONSIDER ADDING OTHER CULTURE’S HOLIDAYS AS WELL.
“Ramadan is very important to me, and I’m guessing for others, their holidays — like Christmas, Diwali, Hanukkah — are just as important,” Ahmad said. “I’m not saying we should add 100 different holidays, but when a holiday is so important to a large portion of the student body, I think that justifies why we should have time off for it.”
Currently, decisions about school holidays are made by district administrators and a vote by the FEA
“If the school decides to do something to show representation for Lunar New Year, it almost sends the message that they value the Lunar New Year, but not necessarily Diwali or other cultural festivals because they didn’t do anything for those holidays,” Liu said. “So then it goes back to the same question: Whose culture do you choose?
If, from the school’s point, we say that there will be a school wide rally to honor this, then it becomes a kind of political question of ‘Why choose that?’”
Ultimately, the question of how to balance school breaks with cultural inclusivity remains complex. Ahmad acknowledges that compromises will have to be made in order to create a functional schedule, including potentially foregoing breaks on her
the diverse traditions of their students in a way that feels both fair and inclusive.
“Since this country has become so diverse and you see people from so many different backgrounds, it would be nicer for the school to consider adding other culture’s holidays as well,” Ahmad said. “By recognizing these major holidays that are being celebrated by the community, they could be more inclusive and that would foster a sense of belonging for the students.”
Learning to love the gray area between platonic and romantic
BY JILLIAN JU
brother what in thr [sic] WORLD” “platonic should not belong in that sentence”
“ive never even been on top of any of the bros”
I should’ve known that explaining the concept of platonic cuddling to my friend would be a hard sell — after all, it sounds like a complete paradox. Holding someone lovingly and tenderly? Platonically? Anything platonic is defined as being nonsexual, and “being on top of someone” — even when it’s just friends cuddling — seems like the complete opposite. It wasn’t just cuddling — we also talked about platonic hand-holding, but I wasn’t able to convince him that was possible either. But I don’t blame him — we grow up internalizing social cues about what kinds of behaviors are friendly, and what might indicate romantic tension. It’s human nature to categorize, but the urge to draw the line neatly between platonic and romantic interactions can limit our understanding of what love comprises. There’s a lot of gray area in our relationships, but in situations that have both romantic and platonic elements, it can often feel more stable or
responsible to choose one side of the binary. When this happens, romantic love is seen as more legitimate and fulfilling, even if it’s harmful to the people involved.
I grew up with constant reminders about the looming presence of romance. From family members joking about “finding a boyfriend” to my mother speculating about future grandchildren, I understood that a large part of my life would be defined by romantic
INS TEAD OF WORRY ING ABOU T
WHICH L ABE LS TO
USE, CONSIDE R
WHAT YOU B OTH
ENJOY AB OUT THEM
— D OES THIS HAVE
TO BE ROMAN TIC?
thought that adverse experience would cause me to avoid dating for a long time — longer than an average academic weapon does — but as the months passed, I realized that how I felt about romance wasn’t the point. Rather, I needed to bring myself to a point where my relationships, romantic or not, were genuine and reciprocal. Romance can still be crucial and rewarding, but the tunnel vision toward it means that we miss out on other meaningful forms of connection.
yourself. The more you understand yourself — your wants, your needs, your emotional touchstones — the easier it will be to find people who bring out the best in you. Sometimes, that process of selfdiscovery comes with a side of platonic cuddling.
As we approach Valentine’s Day, it’s important to have patience for that sort of gray area. Yes, ambiguity gets a bad rap — situationships are derided for their lack of clarity — but as long as
AS A LAZY PERSON
BY JONAH CHANG
Throughout elementary and middle school, I was lazy and proud. Every day after school, I’d race through my homework, finishing within an hour, and play video games the rest of the day to reward my brief effort. My parents, unimpressed, called me out on multiple occasions. My defense: “I finish my assignments so fast, you never see me working. My laziness is efficiency in disguise.” For years, this reasoning was sound.
I ended my first year of high school unscathed and optimistic, feeling unstoppable. However, everything changed in 10th grade. My “efficient now, lazy later” strategy failed under the weight of demanding courses, including World Literature and Chemistry Honors. Suddenly, I’m learning to take breaks and embrace laziness
assignments became a constant burden rather than quick tasks I could easily check off a list. Productivity was no longer a momentary push of effort but a never-ending battle.
Every night, I’d go to sleep a little later, struggling through homework and studying, yet the assignments kept piling up. I’d waste hours staring at a blank document or worksheet, unable to find motivation and often becoming distracted. Each time I drifted off task, I’d consciously feel guilty, telling myself I’d “run out of time” and “regret this.” Nevertheless, I couldn’t bring myself to focus. On weekends, I’d list in my planner the work I needed to catch up on, only to barely finish half of it. As a lazy person, I struggled to balance my desire for downtime and my need to feel productive. I began viewing laziness as my greatest weakness, a flaw I sought to overcome. Desperate, I worked on all my assignments for hours, determined not to fall behind. Still, unfinished homework, upcoming tests and soon-to-be-due projects loomed over me. Late at night, I’d collapse into bed, unable to enjoy rest that, in my opinion, I had not earned.
written felt wrong. I resorted to total rewrites, obsessively rewording and restructuring, but nothing worked. After an hour, my draft looked completely different yet remained unfinished.
DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH MYSELF
One Thursday night, knowing I’d be incapable of relaxing before completing my homework, I resolved to work until I was done. My primary goal was to finish the essay draft I had started earlier. However, it didn’t take long for me to slow down. My focus shifted from drafting to nitpicking. Suddenly, every sentence I had
I remained glued to my computer, driven by my need for progress and unwilling to rest until the draft was perfect. However, all that had come from my effort was a deeper loathing for the product. Eventually, I gave up, exhausted and stuck with an unfinished draft, accomplishing nothing.
Ironically, my push for productivity led me to be as unproductive as I would have been if I had instead given up. That night, I realized my approach wasn’t working — not because I wasn’t trying hard enough, but because I was trying too hard. So-called “laziness” wasn’t the problem — my inability to take breaks was. I used to believe rest was something I needed to earn, perpetuating the idea that downtime is inherently indulgent, but I understand now that rest is essential.
It’s common at MVHS to mislabel downtime as laziness. However, when we constantly push ourselves to “do,” we forget how to simply “be,” neglecting rest and self-care. Ultimately, efficiency isn’t about speed — it’s about sustainability. Without time to de-stress and recalibrate, we inevitably burn out. Therefore, like effort, rest is part of the work process. Finding balance is key.
Downtime is a fundamental pillar of productivity. It’s time we embrace it as such.
ORCHESTRATING CASMEC
Chamber Orchestra plays at the California All-State Music Education Conference
BY CORINNA KUO AND SANIA NADKARNI
As members of the MVHS Chamber Orchestra take their spots onstage under the bright lights of the California AllState Music Education Conference, sophomore and second violinist Tara Brumand feels a twinge of nervousness. All of the work and preparation the group has been putting in since the beginning of the school year has led up to this performance. As they begin to play Igor Stravinsky’s “Concerto in D,” Brumand lets her nervous energy carry her through the set, concentrating on the details of each and every piece.
CASMEC is an annual music conference that brings together distinguished music educators and talented young musicians. This year’s conference ran from Jan. 15 to 19 in Sacramento, with the Chamber Orchestra performing on Friday, Jan. 17.
High School Symphony Orchestra at CASMEC this year, had also attended CASMEC in eighth grade, remembering it as a transformative experience due to the people she met. This year, she enjoyed not only playing with familiar faces but also meeting other talented and passionate youth musicians.
“You get to meet players from all over the state, and they’re all really dedicated players who love music and love their instrument,” Luu said. “It’s great to see people from different backgrounds just enjoying and getting to play music together.”
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This was the first time an MVHS orchestra had been invited to perform at a CASMEC conference. However, junior and cellist Elspeth Luu, who was also accepted to and performed with the All-State
MV cellists pose for a photo after their CASMEC performace.
PHOTO COURTESY OF ELSPETH LUU
| USED WITH PERMISSION
Likewise, Brumand recalls first arriving at the conference and walking past other groups rehearsing. Watching them all write down notes from their conductors, she felt motivated by their dedication and commitment to their ensembles. She was also surprised at the over 7,000 people attending the conference.
“There were so many students, lines and lines everywhere, and there were also a lot of guest adults, like esteemed music teachers and
famous musicians,” Brumand said. “It was really cool to see them being involved with the rehearsal process. It was just really inspiring to see that there are so many talented musicians just in our little section of California.”
While CASMEC allows student musicians to showcase their talent, it also provides music directors with the opportunity to learn from fellow educators. With this in mind, instrumental music director John Gilchrist put together a series of pieces, including Tchaikovsky’s “Souvenir de Florence” and Kevin Day’s “Solace in the Wind,” that spanned a wide range of skill levels from beginning to professionallevel music. Gilchrist focused on showcasing the talent of his musicians while also making it attainable for other educators to recreate.
“We do that so that we can showcase a variety of different skill levels for the audience, which is mainly educators, so they can listen to the music and say, ‘Oh, hey, this is really great. I would love to play this with my orchestra back home,’” Gilchrist said. “If we just did super, super high-level music,
| USED WITH PERMISSION
PHOTO COURTESY OF JOHN GILCHRIST
it would be really hard to prepare, but it would also seem inaccessible to a lot of other music educators.”
However, the group agrees that their main highlight from the performance was performing with guest musician and guitarist Yvette Young, who wrote the work “Three Pieces for Electric Guitar and Strings.” Originally from the Bay Area, Young started playing violin in an orchestra before transitioning to guitar. Brumand recalls how willing Young was to share her musical journey — many members of the orchestra related to her struggles and evolution as a musician, looking up to her as an inspiration.
“Yvette Young is such a down-to-earth, humble person,” Brumand said. “She’s so, so talented. Working with her was kind of like making a new friend. I feel like she was
MV Chamber orchestra practices with guest performer, Yvette Young, the day before performing.
PHOTOS | SANIA NADKARNI
so willing to share about herself, and she was so sweet. She kept telling us how great we sounded, and we’re like, ‘The real talent in the room is you.’”
The natural feeling during their practice carried into their performance and extinguished the nerves Brumand had felt coming into the performance. Brumand said the group shared a feeling of unity that allowed the orchestra to appreciate the value of the moment. While performing, Luu reflected on all the work and effort put into crafting their performance.
“Sometimes when you’re on stage and you perform, it’s like,
ARTS & ENT
‘Wow, that’s what we’ve worked so hard for,’” Luu said. “You work really hard in class, but now you get to share it with all the people who are in the audience. Even though sometimes it doesn’t always go the way you wanted it to, just getting to share that and all your hard work is really rewarding.”
PHOTO COURTESY OF JOHN GILCHRIST | USED WITH PERMISSION
ENTER
MENT TAIN
MVHS students and staff explore the effect of AI’s growth on entertainment
BY OWEN LIU AND BENJAMIN ZHANG
HI,I’MYOUR NEWFRIEND!
Chatting away on her computer, sophomore Jasmine Teoh grinned as she waited for a response from Captain America. Of course, her texting pen pal was not the actual Steve Rogers, the actor Chris Evans or even a random cosplayer — it was a robot.
From the ridiculously genericsounding dialogue by AI chatbots to soullessly robotic AI music, artificially generated entertainment was far from enjoyable to critics when it was first introduced to the general public. However, Teoh — who recently stumbled upon Character.ai, a website where users can chat with millions of fictional characters — feels that AI has been improving in this domain. After interacting and role-playing with the software, Teoh was alarmed by the realism and human attributes in the program. While the experience was appealing and fun, the abilities of the AI also starkly contrasted previous limitations that Teoh supposed artificial intelligence would have.
“I think it’s quite fun to chat with AI bots just to see how they react or what they create,” Teoh said. “In Character. ai, if you want the program to pretend to be Captain America and talk to it, the really high-quality bots will stick to being Captain America the whole time. It’s very uncanny.”
“Human or Not?,” another game Teoh plays, revolves around trying to decipher the difference between an AI and a real human being. After talking with someone for 60 seconds, the player decides whether their interaction was with another human or an AI. While Teoh has had previous experience talking to AI chatbots for fun during quarantine, they were often robotic and artificial; in this game, however, she found some bots to be surprisingly realistic.
text. There was one conversation that I had that I was so sure it was a human. When it was revealed that it was AI that I was actually talking to, I just remember being so shocked. I was like, ‘Really?
This person seems so human.’”
MVHS alum ’22
Dylan Yang, who worked extensively with AI during an internship with Nvidia, commented that the development of AI’s ability to become more and more humanlike presents a challenge at the technical level. Oftentimes, “guard rails” for the AI to follow are hard to create.
“ I JUST REMEBER BEING SO SHOCKED. I WAS LIKE, ‘REALLY? THIS PERSON SEEMS SO HUMAN.’ SOPHOMORE JASMINE TEOH
Teoh agrees — and recalls a recent K-pop music group made entirely of AI, which people didn’t realize until much later on. She sees this as an example of the many ways AI entertainment may become a larger part of people’s lives in the future.
“They just talk so realistically, so much like a human,” Teoh said.
“They use all the text and slang that a human would use in the
“That’s one of the problems with chatbots,” Yang said. “Sometimes, despite our best efforts, there’s not an ideal filter on them to prevent them from saying things you maybe don’t want them to say. That’s especially true when you’re presenting the AI as a kind of virtual person or persona.”
Similarly, junior Shrey Vishen — Director of Ethics in MV’s Artificial Intelligence Club — explains that though entertainment is a perfectly valid use of AI, users need to set boundaries, and more importantly, refrain from being emotionally attached to the software. Like Teoh, role-playing and interacting with AI is all too familiar to Vishen, but he elaborates that in the future, more and more regulations will need to be set up to prevent AI from overriding human work as it seeps into the entertainment industry.
“It seems gloomy to talk about, but I think developing something with AI can be dangerous,” Vishen said. “I don’t think it’s a bad thing, but you should be careful about actually being emotionally attached. At the end of the day, it’s just a bunch of computations in a data center.”
“AI can grow to become the perfect entertainer — fabulous skin and hair and perfect singing voices — they can basically iron out everything a human might worry about,” Teoh said. “If they accidentally get hurt and they can’t perform, or they have a voice crack, or they get sick, AI doesn’t have to worry about any of that. If we use too much AI in the entertainment industry, real people who have basically devoted their entire lives to entertaining the public will be pushed out by perfect AIs who can basically just do no wrong.”
The potential of AI taking over the entertainment industry seems to be increasing, as noted by Vishen, who comments that this development of AI within entertainment is a reflection of the increased usage of AI within our daily lives. Despite the criticism that many seeking a career in entertainment seem to have of AI, its future within the entertainment industry — and everywhere else — seems to be inevitable. Yang ultimately believes that disapproval of AI is a sign of how much it has changed daily lives.
“There has definitely been some backlash in some corners against AI,” Yang said. “But I think the reason why it’s become such a big topic of conversation is because of the number of people that have found AI useful and have started using it more themselves. That’s going to continue because people are still finding different applications and different ways to use it that go beyond just a chat interface.”
Horror movies are often overlooked despite their relevant social commentary
BY SAGNIK NAG CHOWDHURY
With Oscar nominations released and the buzz from the recent Golden Globes lingers, a persistent trend in commended films becomes apparent — there are genres and themes that live in the spotlight and ones that are left in the shadows with little to no recognition. Amongst the most overlooked is the horror genre. Despite its increasing popularity and cultural relevance, horror films rarely receive the recognition they deserve from award boards and prestigious film institutions. It’s time for critics and audiences alike to reassess their perception of horror and acknowledge its role in addressing pressing societal issues.
Since the start of the Academy Awards in 1929, only 18 horror films have received Oscars, with only six of those films receiving nominations in the “Best Picture” category. Only one of those six — “Silence of the Lambs” — took home the Oscar in 1991.
The widespread snubbing of horror films can be attributed to several factors, a significant one among them being the misconception that horror films lack intellectual or emotional depth. Critics often dismiss horror narratives as formulaic or reliant on shock value, ignoring sophisticated storytelling techniques, cuttingedge visual effects and powerful performances that define many of the genre’s most compelling works. Horror has proven time and again to be one of the most socially relevant genres in cinema, using symbolism to
engage with contemporary issues in ways that few other genres do.
Recently, rather than sticking to formulaic “haunted house” or “ghost spirit” plots, horror movies have branched out and diversified to cover more relevant and necessary topics. A pivotal film to break this mold in recent memory was “Get Out,” released in 2017 and directed by Jordan Peele. “Get Out” was able to tackle social issues such as systemic racism and cultural appropriation through the plot of a black man meeting his white girlfriend’s family, eventually finding out their family secrets. At the 90th Academy Awards, the film received numerous awards, including nominations for Best Motion Picture, Best Director, Best Leading Actor and Best Original Screenplay. Since the recognition of “Get Out,” more and more innovative horror films have come out each year.
This year, two horror films broke through the awards season noise and proved that the horror genre, revitalized as ever, can be just as profound and impactful as any other film. One standout was “The Substance," a chilling yet emotional story about an aging actress who discovers a way to reverse her age in order to stay relevant in a youthobsessed Hollywood. Beyond the scares, the film explores heavy themes like ageism in the entertainment industry and it clearly struck a chord, earning five Golden Globe nominations including Best Actress for Demi
Moore, who gave a chilling performance that effectively portrayed the themes and message the film was trying to convey, partly due to her own experience in the industry. Recently, it was also nominated in the Academy Awards for categories such as Best Picture and Best Leading Actress. Another hit was “Smile 2,” focusing on a famous female pop singer who is haunted by visions of a “smile” curse while grappling with trauma from her past. The film takes a unique approach to dealing with mental health, shedding light on the struggles of coping with trauma. It also covers feminist themes, playing off of the idea that women are often told to “smile.” However, this has not always been the case. Many horror movies in the past have been overlooked and received little to no recognition despite the messages they were trying to convey. Take Peele’s “Nope,” for example — the film, about siblings facing a mysterious UFO while struggling to survive, tackles social issues such as the human’s obsession with spectacle,
dehumanization and trauma, only to receive reviews headlined “Peele’s ‘Nope’ Might Be Year’s Worst Film” and “Jordan Peele’s ‘Nope’ is a slow, dull and repetitive disappointment.” This pattern of dismissing horror’s contributions persists, with many films failing to gain traction with critics who still view horror as “lesser” cinema.
Because of a sharp uprise in horror films that are skillfully addressing issues present in our everyday lives, audiences are realizing that horror isn’t just about jump scares, evil spirits and haunted houses, but can provide meaningful social and political commentary. A prime example of this is how MVHS uses Peele’s 2019 film “Us” in the Honors American Literature curriculum to discuss topics such as racism and class hierarchy. Despite many students' stigma or unwillingness to view a horror movie in class, teachers and students alike believe that the film is a strong supplemental material and essential to understanding the concepts. The inclusion of horror films in academic settings highlights their ability to serve as powerful cultural supplemental resources, capable of illuminating social issues in ways that resonate with students and scholars alike. If educators can recognize the genre’s intellectual merit, it begs the question: Why do critics and awards institutions continue to disregard it?
As the horror genre continues to grow in popularity, it’s time for audience members and critics
to rethink how they view horror.
Instead of dismissing horror as mere entertainment, its role in confronting societal fears, challenging norms and
sparking meaningful conversation should be celebrated. Horror isn’t just about scares — it’s about substance. And that deserves recognition.
"Get Out," "Smile 2" and "The Substance" are films that cover societal issues.
PHOTOS | UNIVERSAL STUDIOS AND MUBI STUDIOS
MVHS students celebrate Lunar New Year through Chinese calligraphy and paper cutting
BY ALYSSA YANG
INEW YEAR, NEW DECO! TRY IT YOURSELF!
t’s that time of year again — red decorations are everywhere you look; themed events and items are temporarily available in Overwatch 2 and Pokémon Go; and San Francisco’s Chinatown is coming alive with lion dancers and stilt walkers for its annual parade. Surprisingly, the Lunar New Year that so many East Asian cultures celebrate isn’t based on a lunar calendar. Rather, Spring Festival in China, Seollal in South Korea, Tết in Vietnam and other holidays celebrate the beginning of a new lunisolar year — a calendar that has a flexible number of lunar months, periodically resynchronizing with the solar year.
The phrase “Lunar New Year” often brings red envelopes to mind, but food, decorations and other traditional customs remain just as important, as they symbolize luck, hope and cultural identity. For instance, lion dancing and firecrackers double as entertainment and a means of warding off evil spirits. People celebrate with foods such as rice cakes and steamed fish due to puns and phrases that promise good luck and abundance.
In many cultures, the festivities extend until the first full moon of the new year, meaning traditional yellow apricot blossoms for Tết or diamondshaped calligraphy for Spring Festival may stay up for weeks, even months. By now, you may have noticed calligraphy blessings and intricate paper-cut designs (“窗花” in Mandarin — literally “window flowers”) around campus, crafted by MVHS’ Chinese language students. For instance, Chinese 2 and AP Chinese created paper-cut decorations, while Chinese 4 wrote calligraphy blessings. These decorations are not only beautiful and symbolic but also easy to make — a simple, accessible way to spread joy and good fortune.
HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN PAPER WINDOW DECORATIONS
Draw these patterns onto your paper, cut them out, then unfold to see your final result. Try creating your own patterns as well!
BRUTAL AMERICA
“The Brutalist” is a raw take on the American dream
BY SAGNIK NAG CHOWDHURY
As director Brady Corbet’s latest film, “The Brutalist,” opens with a blur of New York City’s skyline, accompanied by a cacophony of overlapping voices and city traffic, it’s hard for viewers to find a focal point through all the commotion. The audience catches glimpses of the main character László Tóth, played by Adrien Brody, as he breaks out of a crowded room and into the sunlight, catching glimpses of the Statue of Liberty. Rather than showcasing the monument in all of its glory, it presents the structure upside down. Essentially, that is what “The Brutalist” is: uncovering the American dream’s distortion by turning it upside down.
captivating dialogue. With a solid screenplay that has little to no dull moments, the dialogue of the film provides a plethora of new perspectives on topics like the immigrant experience, architecture and human philosophies of love and ambition.
4.5 out of 5
The period drama had a wide release on Jan. 24, 2025. The film is set in the U.S. in the early 1900s and follows Hungarian architect László Tóth’s journey as an immigrant, separated from his family in hopes of achieving a better future, and after extensive struggle, he is picked up by wealthy businessman Harrison Lee Van Buren as a contract worker. The film shows how Tóth becomes increasingly obsessed with his art, driving him to madness, affecting both him and his family.
The movie carries a 215-minute runtime, but the extensive length is hardly noticeable due to its
Despite many strong aspects, the narrative in the second half of the film loses its cohesion as more characters such as Tóth’s wife and niece are introduced, jumping between plot points and making it hard on occasion for the audience to follow along. However, this doesn’t detract from the overall viewing experience, as the screenplay quickly utilizes its dialogue to get the story back on track.
Brody’s wide range of emotions shines on screen, visible from the opening scene onwards as he joyfully weeps at the sight of the Statue of Liberty. Pearce’s performance as the antagonist embodies the dichotomy of selfishness and selflessness, as the audience is able to see how his subtlety and kindness to Brody’s character gradually morph into control and dominance.
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Whether it be Tóth and Van Buren’s interactions with each other or extended monologues from different characters providing insight into their personas, audiences are engaged with both the content and the delivery.
Of course, the dialogue would be nothing without a stellar cast bringing it to life. With renowned actors such as Adrien Brody, Guy Pearce and Felicity Jones, “The Brutalist” is a masterclass in acting.
Despite following a very straightforward plot, “The Brutalist” serves as a case study of the immigrant pursuit of the American dream, as well as masterfully depicting class hierarchy and the exploitation of the lower working class through the relationship between the Tóths and the Van Burens.
“The Brutalist” is ambitious and captures two of the most definitive forms of expression in the 20th century: cinema and architecture. The movie twists the American dream, providing unique social commentary. The American dream is beautiful, but it is just as brutal.
PHOTO | ERIC ZHOU
PHOTO | ERIC ZHOU
PHOTO | ALAN TAI
PHOTO | ERIC ZHOU
PHOTO | KATRINA LIN
frosty fun
frosty fun
MVHS students and staff recount their memories playing winter sports
BY LEAH DESAI, ETHAN KELLOGG, DYLAN NGUYEN, AMBERLY SUN, ALAN TAI, ELIZABETH YANG AND ETHAN
YANG
hockey away from home
MVHS ice hockey players play for Saint Francis High School
BY ETHAN KELLOGG AND ETHAN YANG
Clad in gold and brown, the Saint Francis High School ice hockey players weave through the rink as their sticks clack with their opponents. However, some players on the team don’t always wear those colors. That is because SFHS ice hockey is not a ‘pure team’ — many players come from other schools in the area, including MVHS.
Juniors Gillie Ross and Christopher Lamfalusi are two MVHS students who play for the SFHS ice hockey team. Though they also play in clubs, they chose to join high school hockey in the Sharks High School Hockey League to have fun playing in a different environment.
If a student’s school does not offer ice hockey, they can join another
school’s ice hockey team as long as they go to a school in the other school’s ice hockey district. SFHS first opened their ice hockey team to players from other schools in 2018, according to Head Coach Noah Temple. This year, the SFHS district in the Sharks High School Hockey League expanded to include MVHS, allowing MVHS students to play for SFHS. Ross initially
played for Pioneer High School as a sophomore, but switched to SFHS this year because she believes the team is stronger. Now, 25 of the 33 players on the varsity team are from schools other than SFHS.
“The reason we’re trying to provide a high school team experience is because a lot of hockey players in the Bay Area only get to play for club teams,” Temple said. “If you are a hockey player and you’re in Monta Vista, you do not have an opportunity to play high school hockey. There are not 24 skaters at your school that would be able to form a team and then go compete against other high school teams.”
in. Lamfalusi recalls that tryouts were a fun experience for him, despite his mother’s anxiety that he would not make the varsity team.
“My mom was like, ‘You need to go show them you’re not a JV player,’” Lamfalusi said. “I was like ‘In what world am I going to be put on JV?’ I went to the first practice and I smoked everyone, and then I was like ‘Yeah, I’m definitely on varsity.’ But my mom was super stressed.”
78% of SFHS players
are from schools other than SFHS
* out of 33 players on the SFHS team
Temple says the challenge with the SFHS team is to bring people who played on various teams together. Oftentimes the students on the SFHS team come from the San Jose Junior Sharks, a youth hockey club, and contact High School Hockey Coordinator Shane Galaviz to learn which district they are zoned in. Afterwards, they contact the coach for their high school hockey district to join the team.
After contacting Temple to play for SFHS, the players attend tryouts to determine which division to play
As both club and high school hockey players, Lamfalusi and Ross noticed the two leagues have vastly different environments. Club hockey is divided by gender while high school hockey is coed. Lamfalusi and Ross both agree that club hockey is much more competitive than high school hockey as well. Temple believes that part of the draw of high school hockey is a chance for students to play hockey in a lower stakes setting.
“High school hockey is where everyone just goes to mess around, get fancy goals, show off for the ladies in the stands,” Ross said. “It’s a lot more fun — there’s less pressure. Obviously, it still sucks when you lose, but club hockey is a lot more intense, a lot more serious. People that are typically playing at my level are planning to go to college playing NCAA DI to DIII.”
SFHS district schools
Lamfalusi believes that, while club hockey players have similar skill levels to one another, there is a larger skill gap in high school hockey. He says that some players on the JV team are beginners who want to learn how to skate and play hockey.
“People who aren’t as good at hockey take it more seriously, and the better a player is, the less seriously they take it,” Lamfalusi said. “Most people that I know are higher-level players, so when you see them in high school hockey, they’ll just mess around. They’ll try and have fun trying to score some goals and then the worst players are always all mad and they take it really seriously.”
Ross enjoys the extra time on the ice that playing high school hockey provides, and Lamfalusi enjoys playing with and getting to know a different team. While Lamfalusi says he would happily play for MVHS if they had a team, he doesn’t mind representing SFHS.
“I do wrestling also, so when I see SFHS tournaments, I don’t know if I’m supposed to root for them,” Lamfalusi said. “If it was MVHS versus SFHS, I’d root for MVHS, but SFHS versus other schools, I’d root for SFHS. I definitely feel loyalty or pride in playing for their team. It’s nice having another team to root for.”
gliding on ice gliding on ice
MVHS students discuss their experiences with recreational ice skating
BY ALAN TAI AND ELIZABETH YANG
TTThe sharp blade slices across the glistening ice, leaving behind a crisp, sinuous trail. Junior Nandini Karthik holds her breath in the frigid air of the ice skating rink as she launches into a spin, turning the world into a blur of motion and sound.
outside world and whatever I have to do at home or school.”
Ice skating is a uniquely attractive activity for many MVHS students, with its balance of artistry and athleticism drawing in all kinds of people, according to Karthik. Statista reports that 11.44 million Americans ice skated
Many MVHS students embrace the challenging
aspects of ice skating, along with the joy that comes from being completely immersed in the sport.
Although some students are introduced to recreational ice skating through their parents, it is ultimately the student’s own personal interest in the sport that keeps them active. For both Lynbrook High School sophomore Stanley Tan and Karthik, it was skating with someone familiar that helped maintain their interest in the activity. As for senior Emily Lin, it was her own mental fortitude that kept her active in the sport, despite the challenges skating presented when she first started.
“I threw a lot of tantrums when I was little,” Lin said. “There were a lot of tears and a lot of bribing. But other than that, I feel like mentally, I knew that I wouldn't get better. I wouldn't improve if I quit. So I just kept trying
PHOTO | ALAN TAI
and trying and I kept falling down, but I kept getting back up. I think that's what really helped, was the mentality of ‘I'm not going to improve unless I actually try.’”
After getting back up, MVHS students have always been ready to practice. To Karthik, the Axel jump is the hardest to perform as she must take off forward, rotate in the air and land backward. The Camel Spin is another challenging move, where she spins on one leg with her other leg up in the air at an angle. Through performing moves like this, both Karthik and Tan enjoy the freedom of recreational skating. Tan adds that ice skating is one of the few sports that allow him to make up his own moves with creative liberty.
“It's the fact that I get to be creative with it,” Tan said. “I can make up my own moves on ice. Compared to other sports like volleyball, where there's only three maneuvers I can do, on ice skating I can do combinations, I can do choreography, I can spin, I can jump — it's really fun.”
instructor at the Cupertino Ice Center, teaches young children to skate in addition to adults. He says these interactions help with developing skills that will be useful in the future, making these memories all the more worthwhile.
“I coach people aged five all the way to adults around 80 years old,” Tan said. “You really need communication skills as well as leadership skills. If you see a child crying on the ice, how are you going to console them and comfort them? And communicating with those adults too is something to consider — for example, if they're confused, you can't really get too mad at them because they’re still learning.”
Since ice skating is something that cannot be practiced at home, Tan believes it can be a bit difficult to track improvement over time — even improvements in physique may not translate into gracefulness on the ice. Karthik adds that the mental perseverance that the sport requires as well as its own difficulties can often discourage skaters from ice skating in the future.
However, despite the challenges, Karthik says that the joys of ice skating make the experience worth it.
“I think everyone can do the sport,” Karthik said. “If you're scared of doing it or whatever, you shouldn't be scared to fall because you definitely will. I have numerous experiences of falling every single practice, but if you work hard, persevere and have that goal, you should just practice, practice, practice and keep going at it.”
the slopes the slopes hitting hitting
“You get to have the resort to yourself,” Sharma said. “Even if it’s just 10 minutes, you still get to ski down there all by yourself and you have space and freedom. You’re not constrained like you have been for the past hour because there were so many people surrounding you.”
At around age 10, Sharma initially started skiing due to the influence of his parents, but grew to love the sport on his own. He has fond memories of
Sharma’s favorite part of skiing is the thrill of speeding down slopes. His thick puffer jacket provides a layer of protection that ensures he won’t get cold or injured, which proves helpful in his need for speed.
“One thing about me is I don’t turn like I’m supposed to,” Sharma said. “I love just going down a slope and not stopping while going full speed. It’s very exhilarating.”
I -CHU CHANG
Face bruised and legs sore, Chinese teacher I-Chu Chang regretted her first experience on the slopes during graduate school, where she joined a student-arranged trip in Philadelphia. With only one experienced skier in the group, Chang remembers the commotion she caused when she tried to ride the ski lift, (jamming the lift for the entire day). On the way down,
“I couldn’t stop,” Chang said. “There was a pole right in front of me, and I knew that I was going to hit the pole, but I couldn’t do anything about it. The pole ended up hitting me on the side of the face, and it really hurt. When we went back to our dorms the next morning, when I woke up, I couldn’t move. That was the scariest
Although Chang swore to never ski again
BY I-CHU CHANG | USED WITH PERMISSION
was better at balancing, which turned out to be really helpful for me when I ski.”
After several icy trips and fun memories, with her most recent ski trip being to Lake Tahoe, Chang is now confident in her ability to carve her way down the slope. With one sport under her belt, she plans to tackle new sports like snowboarding, hoping for a smoother experience compared to her first time skiing.
Growing up in Massachusetts, French teacher Sarah Finck has been around the snow her entire life. Finck specifically enjoys participating in cross-country skiing, an alternative form of skiing done on flatter ground without a chairlift or other travel assistance and is, according to Finck, a full-body exercise.
“I think skiing is similar to what people might say about hiking,” Finck said. “You are out in nature, it’s very quiet, there’s fresh air, you get exercise and the world is covered in white. It can be very magical.”
Finck recalls early memories of the school bus taking her and some of her classmates from their elementary school to a local mountain to learn how to ski. During high school, she became a member of the school ski team and placed well within her state. With her competitive experience from high school, Finck joined the Dartmouth
unsupervised, she gradually started to improve with the help of her husband after moving to Oregon. Now, she finds skiing more enjoyable than other sports due to an abundance of factors.
“If I play basketball, I sweat a lot, but since skiing is pretty cold, I don’t sweat as much,” Chang said. “After I started yoga, I also
“I’m a little worried about snowboarding because I’ve heard people say that beginners injure their wrists or bruise themselves,” Chang said. “I’m debating whether I should try it out, but I like to play hard. I enjoy the risk.”
College club skiing team and later raced in the Junior Olympic qualifiers, where she represented herself.
“I wasn’t skiing to have my school win or lose, it was always me independently, but the time spent with those people are good memories,” Finck said.
After moving to California, Finck still made it a goal for herself to head up to the snow and continue skiing. Occasionally after school on Fridays, Finck would make the drive up to Lake Tahoe to spend the weekend skiing. However, the transit was less convenient than what she was used to in Massachusetts.
ime, and maybe I’ve lost my confidence in driving in the snow, but I don’t want to be on the roads trying to go over the pass into Tahoe during a storm,” Finck said.
Finck has already taken her 3-yearold daughter to the snow multiple times. In their most recent trips, Finck has attached a small chariot to herself to help daughter to enjoy the snow with her and her husband.
“This year, she called herself Santa, and we were the reindeer,” Finck said. “She was excited that we were pulling her along. So I’m teaching my love for skiing and passing it on to my child.”
PHOTO
PHOTO COURTESY OFSARAHFINCK|USED WITH PERMISSION
SAANVI GOYAL
Senior Saanvi Goyal started skiing in elementary school, first taking lessons at Boreal Mountain California around age 5. She would accompany her parents on day trips with their neighbors, where they would watch a rented movie on the drive there, and ski until nighttime before making the drive back.
“One of my favorite things is definitely going skiing with friends,” Goyal said. “I really love when you have a good skiing day and you’re just able to have some fun seeing nice views and being able to hang out with people that you know.”
resort recs! resort recs!
north star north star
PROS:
- Variety of food options
royal gorge royal gorge
PROS:
- Biggest accessible cross country resort
- Beautiful views
- Limited crowds
CONS:
- Not as much of a variety of runs
- Instructors can be limited
heavenly heavenly
PROS:
- Beautiful views of the horizon
- Abundance of trails and a variety of runs
- Available for skiers of all levels
CONS:
- Lift tickets can be expensive
- Experience is dependent on quality of snow and weather
- Food options can be limited
- Family-oriented
- Helpful instructors
CONS:
- Crowded runs
- Not as steep
PROS:
- Includes activities besides skiing
- A large variety of slopes
- A nice amount of amenities
CONS:
- Often very crowded
- Disorganized line system
# 24k MAGIC IN THE AIR
Senior guard Clara Fan, a 4-year member of the Varsity Girls Basketball team, scored her 1,000th career point in a non-league game against Menlo-Atherton High School on Saturday, Jan. 25. Fan reached the milestone late in the fourth quarter with an uncontested fastbreak layup and an assist from her teammate, sophomore Allie Rummelhoff. Fan says the two have been working on this play throughout the season.
For Fan, scoring 1,000 career points wasn’t always one of her goals. However, after seeing MVHS alum ‘24 and former teammate Vivian Ong score her 1,000th point during the
Senior and guard Clara Fan scores 25 points in the game against Menlo-Atherton to reach 1,000 career points
BY LEAH DESAI AND SANIA NADKARNI
2023-24 season, she was inspired to do the same.
“I was so proud of her and it was just a great experience as a team because we were all cheering for each other and it was just a really supportive environment,” Fan said. “1,000 became a goal at the beginning of the season when I knew I had to step up for my team.”
Though scoring the 24 points needed to reach the milestone was daunting, Fan’s teammates supported her throughout the game. Sophomore and guard Rachel Bergendahl says that the team tried to help her as a whole.
“Once she got warmed up she was
shooting really steadily, but all of us wanted to find her and get her the ball so she could get the 24 points,” Bergendahl said. “When she did, we were all just really excited for her.”
After the game, Fan celebrated the win with her friends, family and teammates. She posed for photos with numerous homemade posters and even stood in the middle of a dance circle rehearsed by her teammates before the game.
“I appreciate their support so much and I love them so much,” Fan said. “Without all their assists and their support on and off the court, it wouldn’t be possible.”
CROSSWORD @elestoque
BY ALYSSA YANG
ACROSS
Saunter
Purple-haired “Squid Game” player
Aired again
Like some profiling that minorities face (pgs. 24-25)
A type of skiing Finck enjoys (pgs. 48-50)
Loggerhead or Leatherback, for example
Cartoon explorer with a sidekick named Boots
Taxi
Person you have a love-hate relationship with Meh
All there
Omnivorous fish native to South America
Sounds of hesitation
Fourth-down play
“High” figure in a tarot deck 2024 horror movie nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards (pgs. 36-37)
Honolulu’s ___ Palace
Trailing behind Online memos
They rotate on Broadway
“No more TikToks after
(pgs. 04-05)
Ancient character
each year
Sacred bird of ancient Egypt representing wisdom
Get off ___-free Stitches
Match outcome with no winner or loser
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A. YANG: We’re back at it with some crosses to keep you guessing. Take your time!
