Westminster

news5Panther Prowler • Feb. 12, 2021 Westminster Clinic continues serving community

Sera Mohammed Staff Writer Cynthia Gao Managing Editor

Standing in the shade of two bright blue Easy-Up tents, a group of high school volunteers hand out free boxes of fresh produce and healthy groceries to a middle aged woman holding her young child by the hand. Behind her, a long line of patients stretches through the parking lot and around the corner of the Thousand Oaks United First Methodist Church, where the Westminster Community Care Center sets up every Wednesday evening.

The free clinic, established in 1994, is a non-profit, private community care center that serves Ventura County’s working poor and uninsured citizens, embodying a philanthropic spirit of giving back to the community and helping those in need. The clinic is entirely driven by motivated volunteers, including many high school students who are exposed to experiential healthcare education and learn important skills about empathy and leadership. Emily Ho, senior and student manager at Westminster Clinic, speaks on how her experience with racism inspired her to volunteer. “The clinic also largely serves an elderly Latinx population, and volunteering here [allows] me to help people who weren’t fluent in English gain healthcare. That’s kind of important to me because my Chinese family has experienced medical racism here in the US, and I wanted to help prevent that for the patients of the clinic,” Ho said.

Every week on Tuesdays in Oxnard and Wednesdays in Thousand Oaks, the clinic offers basic non-invasive health care, as well as health supporting programs and services, to over 100 patients on a first come, first serve basis. Volunteers interact with the patients to learn their medical history and take vitals. Every year, students like Darlene Barillas who demonstrate exceptional patient care and leadership skills are appointed to be managers of the clinic. “A typical night at the clinic is coming in and setting up the main room where volunteers take their patients’ vitals and ask them questions and setting up the doctor rooms where patients go in and see the doctor” Barillas said.

Several programs and workplaces have been shut down or modified due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Westminster Clinic was not spared. Andrea D’Souza, junior, explains the precautions being taken. “In regards to COVID, we now take larger precautions and wear masks, face shields,and gloves. I still volunteer there now, but with greater safety measures,” D’Souza said. Even programs hosted by the clinic have been altered to ensure the participants’ safety. “Now we have doctors who do telehealth, which is where doctors can communicate with the patient through the phone or a laptop...many of the programs we usually had in-person are now over the phone or aren’t occurring.” Barillas said.

Even though COVID-19 has interrupted normal proceedings, volunteering

Mask Up- Emily Ho (left) senior and student volunteer manager at Westminster Free Clinic, assists Dr. Sullivan (right) while he checks on a patient (middle). “Westminster actually is a temporary clinic we set up in a church. So a typical day at Westminster starts at 3:30 PM for me, when I first arrive and start setting up the doctor’s rooms, nursing tables, patient sitting area, and more with the aid of the student interns...We keep the patient intake flow going until we’ve seen all the patients that could register,” Ho said. Karen Escalanate Dalton/With permission at the clinic still has the same value and impact on the volunteers. “I can’t give a lot of details because of HIPAA, but I really bonded with one patient. With them, I saw just how important one prescription of medicine was for preserving their health and wellness for the time frame they didn’t have health insurance,” Ho said.

Unity Conejo informs audiences with town hall

Karyss Amato Staff Writer

Unity Conejo held their second town hall meeting titled “Gender 101” on Jan. 31 as a webinar on Zoom to inform the CVUSD community on gender identity.

During the town hall, Megan Goebel, the founder of Unity Conejo, and Dr. Jessica Bernacki, the founding psychologist from the UCLA Gender Health Program, covered various topics pertaining to gender education. The overall goals of this town hall meeting were to give an unbiased clinical perspective to help the community understand the concept of gender a little bit better. “There’s always the argument with children being too young to understand their gender and express themselves but that’s not the case, it’s just the vocabulary that they don’t always have,” Goebel said.

The main discussion of the meeting revolved around the importance of kids having the choice to understand their own gender, which might not be their assigned gender, and being able to express it. The Town Hall emphasized the idea that regardless of how someone identifies, it’s vital to use their preferred pronouns and name, as well as make them feel safe and accepted. Michael Lindroth and Ava Ahlberg, juniors, are the co-leaders of the student sub-committee. They felt that the town hall was very successful. “Through town hall, we wanted to educate people with regards to the concept of gender and the importance of acceptance,” Lindroth said.

Although Goebel and Bernacki were the only speakers at this town hall, many more people were involved in the planning process. To prepare for this meeting, Lindroth and Ahlberg, publicized the event by posting a flyer on their social media accounts and participating in prep Zoom sessions.

Unity Conejo maintains their optimistic attitude to make their mark in the community regardless of the backlash that they receive after these meetings, including hostile emails and questions from community members. “We’re going to get some more backlash but that’s what we’re really trying to change but the change is for the better,” Ahlberg said. Another goal of Unity Conejo is to grow the community to make people more open-minded, so that the LGBTQ+ community can feel welcome and listened to. “I’d love to help people try and see you know that this is so much more than an opinion, it’s actually a real thing. It’s sort of feeding into the hate, we’re trying to reverse the view of that and try to help our community see that it’s actually a really great thing,” Goebel said.

Rachel Goldstein/With permission

Cultural appropriation makes its blemish on society

Dhruv Patel Ad Team Sarena Kabir News Editor

Many people have been unable to identify the difference between cultural appropriation and appreciation. Cultural appropriation is when people steal traditional objects from a culture and use it to their own benefit. On the other hand, cultural appreciation is where the person respects and understands the traditional objects, giving it the honor it deserves.

Cultural appropriation happens with many cultures, serving much disrespect to those being exploited. There have been several instances where individuals have adopted traditional clothing and religious symbols into their daily lives, unaware of the cultural significance they possess.

Many prominent companies have used different ethnic items for their products without recognizing or respecting the history and value behind the ethnic items. SHEIN is an online clothing store that is known for stealing traditional South-Asian clothes and promoting them in their shop. SHEIN started passing off traditional clothing, known as a “salwar kameez” for most, as “Floral Print Longline Top & Pants Set,” manipulating the clothing item, and in turn the culture, into profit. The point of wearing a salwar kameez is to bring out the beauty of a SouthAsian woman and to represent the modesty that pertains to a woman. SHEIN taking this traditional garment that carries so much importance is a blatant disregard to the history and significance that come with the salwar kameez.

Not only is cultural appropriation found in fashion, it is also found in the music and entertainment industry, more specifically revolving around religion. BLACKPINK, a K-pop girl group, used a statue representing the Hindu god Ganesh in their “How You Like That” music video. This Ganesh statue was used as a prop and was further tarnished by the god being placed on the ground, producing a severe amount of disrespect to Hindus. While BLACKPINK may have apologized for the appropriation, they still are gaining money for the music video.

Cultural appropriation also affects other cultures, including African and Indigenous cultures. In African culture, box braids have been known to signify a woman’s maturity and readiness in life. However, many non-black celebrities, such as Kendall Jenner, Paris Hilton and Fergie, have been seen wearing box braids for beauty, while in many cases a black person wearing box braids would be mocked or made a fool out of. This shows a double-standard in society as black people are slandered for expressing their culture.

Appropriation can send a message to the people of that culture that their traditions are only good for profit since that is what they are being used for. This creates a negative effect on that culture, causing people to become more self-conscious and ashamed of their traditions. People need to take the proper steps to respect and honor cultures, not appropriate them.

Prasheetha Karthikeyan/Prowler

Beware of warmongering in media Carter Castillo Features Editor

The United States military has a history of utilizing media to help push warmongering sentiments. Yet as the country continues in the age of social media, the military has upped its campaigning to promote their pro-war and pro-military stance.

Superhero movies are perhaps some of the most sensationalist pieces of media in history. The latest Avengers movie, “Endgame,” grossed about $2.7 billion and shattered countless box office records. The hype surrounding the film dominated social media and the TV airwaves, and the film received massive praise, as did many of its predecessors. Unfortunately, many superhero movies glorify war in order to encapsulate a sensational plot filled with action sequences.

A good portion of Marvel movie plots revolve around a war, and there are clear heroes and villains in such conflicts. These struggles are sensationalized and promote the notion that war is the best method of action. For example, Captain America represents a more direct picture of blind nationalism towards the United States.

This is not to say that being Marvel’s number one fan is inherently wrong, rather it should come with understanding the influence that the military industrial complex has in the creation of these films.

One recent controversy in the summer of 2020 involves the military creating Twitch streaming accounts and subsequently banning people who would criticize their involvement in the Middle East and other parts of the war. Not only was the military banning people a violation of their freedom of speech from a government institution, but it represents a more sinister problem: the military is targeting the youth with their propaganda and covering it with innocuous media. By creating a Twitch account the military is not only actively trying to target its message toward younger people, but they are also painting the institution as a fun and happy place that is emblematic of the average citizen.

Clearly the military is trying to court potential recruits and supporters for their cause. They are able to do this by controlling the narrative about their institution and painting it as benign to society and not giving potential recruits all the information that they would need to make a balanced opinion on it.

The military is already funded with trillions of dollars from the federal budget, there is no need for them to continue overstepping its grounds. As consumers of media, people need to understand the underlying propaganda that they face on a daily basis.

Carter Castillo/Prowler

The AP Art History course is far from diverse

Nandini Patro Staff Writer

In the spring of 2020, I signed up for the AP Art History course with high hopes. I was looking forward to the “investiwzgation of diverse artistic traditions of cultures,” which the course and exam description so relentlessly emphasized. I am halfway through the course and can confidently say that the word “diverse” was tossed in solely for effect.

My family comes from India, and when hearing of my course, they were curious if artworks from the Indus Valley, one of the earliest civilizations in history, would be studied. I decided to check the course description and found two content areas dedicated to Asia. That meant that one-fifth of the course was focused on Asia which seemed reasonable until I found almost four content areas are dedicated to Europe. Not only this but the Asian content areas have roughly 40 less artworks (out of 250) than the European content areas.

Initially, I thought perhaps Europe was simply more artistically inclined. But after doing some research, it was clear I was wrong. There were plenty of artworks created in Asia and earlier than the majority of the European works. The course simply targeted Europe, therefore taking away all meaning in the word “diverse”.

Our seventy-five minute classes are filled with variations of European art, focused on what typical eurocentric art was, the religious admiration of Christ. I’m not saying these works aren’t important, but it has become redundant, especially when other culture’s artworks could be incorporated into this time. A diverse curriculum should go into equal depth on different cultures. In this course, we’ve gone into vast detail of European religion studying more than one hundred artworks, yet a grand total of four artworks in India.

I have been lucky enough to go to Europe and view many of the works we study and they are breathtaking. However, there are breathtaking works of art in other parts of the world and students will never know that because they are not exposed to them in the course.

I think a course, specifically AP Art History, should be well rounded and able to teach students about more than just one part of the world. Either the course itself needs to fundamentally shift to reflect the “diversity” it claims to have or the course should be relabelled as “AP European Art History” to let students know exactly what they signed up for. Students deserve to have the knowledge of artistic forms from all across the world, something that this class doesn’t provide.