Chronicle the harvard-westlake
Studio City • Volume 30 • Issue 2 • Oct. 14, 2020 • hwchronicle.com
Activist fosters dialogue
By Melody Tang
make, that we don’t get it 100% right. And so we need to have the conversations with people who have questions and concerns and can offer those questions and concerns in good faith. I was disappointed in the ‘wokeathw’ [account] because it didn’t seem to be contributing to the kind of good faith that enables the work to be done together.” Some of the account’s posts were factually incorrect or misleading. One post claimed that the school has “refused to have any conservative speakers,” despite the fact that the school hosted President Trump’s original Secretary of Labor nominee, Andrew Puzder, in 2018. Another post claims Associate Head of School Laura Ross endorsed the 1619 Project, when, in the video the account posted, she only mentioned the year 1619 as the year that enslaved people were brought to America. Two separate posts criticized middle school dean Jon Carroll for praising two female activists
New York Times bestselling author and social entrepreneur Wes Moore spoke to the community about his childhood experiences growing up in Baltimore, Maryland, during an online webinar Sept. 18. He said his upbringing informed his work in social advocacy and eventually led him to become the CEO of Robin Hood, an organization that works to fight poverty in underserved communities in New York. After the webinar, student moderators, deans and teachers then led small group discussions to evaluate the lessons presented in Moore’s speech during the following Community Flex Time on Sept. 29. Over the past few months, many seemingly disparate issues, such as the coronavirus pandemic and police brutality, have exposed the same truth about racial inequality in the United States, Moore said. “We see how these two twin crises expose a real singular truth, and that is the role that race plays in our society, in our work, in our mission and how undeniable it is,” Moore said. “Dealing with COVID is about much more than the discovery of a vaccine, and dealing with inequitable policing is much more than the elimination of chokeholds.” Moore said his personal life and his mother’s perseverance shaped his view of the world around him, especially after realizing how much his mother had struggled after his father passed away from acute epiglottitis when he was a child. “As tough as I thought I had it, or as tough as I thought my sisters had it, the person who really had it toughest was my mom because she was now going to raise three kids on her own,”
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KYLE REIMS/CHRONICLE
‘Wokeathw’ responds to anti-racism initiatives
By Ethan Lachman and Kyle Reims
Certain members of the community, dissatisfied with the school’s new anti-racism and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, created the Instagram account @wokeathw in early September to highlight what they claim are pitfalls of allegedly damaging curriculum changes. The anonymous owners of the account described the school’s anti-racism work as “a fashionable but destructive agenda.” In an email exchange, the account’s founders said the “Woke at Harvard-Westlake Project” is run by many members of the community, including students, faculty and parents from a variety of backgrounds. Though the account has received criticism from some students, the founders said their mission has garnered widespread support from those too fearful to speak up, drawing comparisons between the school’s implementation of its anti-racism policies
and the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union. “We’ve received encouragement from several members of the school, both faculty and admin, who are afraid they will lose their jobs if they do not pretend to be enthusiastic about HW’s new mission,” they said. “The situation is grimly analogous to the story about Stalin’s speeches; everyone is afraid to be the first person to stop clapping.” The account was first active Sept. 7 and posted 11 testimonials before going silent for over two weeks. However, two news sites, The Daily Wire and Red State, each ran articles discussing the account Sept. 21, though the creators said they knew nothing about them until their publication. Following these stories, the account’s comment sections were filled with support, the majority of which came from accounts lacking connection to the school, according to the creators. Ben Davidoff ’20, one of the account’s few followers from the school community, said he supports both the founder’s message
and the fight for racial and social equality. “I think to a certain extent, the measures that [the administration] put in place start to hit the academic integrity of [the school],” Davidoff said. “And they start to compromise certain things in favor of more representation, I guess, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but that’s the trade-off that they’re making. They’re giving some here and taking some there.” President Rick Commons said the school remains open-minded and flexible when finding the best approach to its anti-racism work. However, he said he was discouraged that the account misrepresented and criticized the school anonymously, as that prevented the opportunity for further growth. “As important as the DEI and anti-racism work [are], it’s also important for us to hear concerns and questions and different perspectives that are offered in good faith,” Commons said. “We’re going to find that, in this really difficult progress that we’re trying to
Updated iHW app asks students, faculty to disclose their location data
By Hannah Han
The administration and the IT department worked in conjunction to update the iHW app on Aug. 18, adding an automatic check-in and check-out feature that tracks whether or not users are present on campus. Students and faculty primarily use iHW to view their daily schedules and upcoming assignments. After receiving multiple notifications asking them to enable location tracking, some upperclassmen raised concerns about the potential privacy issues the app poses. Head of Communications and Strategic Initiatives Ari Engelberg said the tracking feature allows users to check in and out of campus
automatically, expediting the attendance system. He said iHW does not track users’ specific locations; it only knows if students are within the “geofences,” or virtual geographic boundaries, constructed around the perimeter of the school. “I think there’s a bit of a misunderstanding about what the iHW app is really doing,” Engelberg said. “If you’re on campus, [the app] doesn’t actually keep track of where on campus you are. And it certainly doesn’t keep track of where you are when you’re not on campus at all.” Engelberg said the location information gathered by the app, though limited, may prove useful during the pandemic. “We decided to expand the
functionality to all students to help with contact tracing in the era of COVID-19,” Engelberg said. “Knowing when someone came onto campus and left campus is helpful if there is a need to trace contacts in the event of a positive case of COVID-19 on campus.” In a Chronicle survey, 102 out of 138 respondents said the app has requested them for their location data. Joy Ho ’21 said she began receiving notifications from iHW at the beginning of the school year and believed the app was asking her to disclose her precise location. “When I first started receiving the [notifications], they said that • Continued on A2
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SEND ME YOUR LOCATION: The new iPhone iOS update tells students when iHW is using their locations, though the school does not access this data.