Issue 6, 1/29/16

PALO ALTO UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT PALO ALTO HIGH SCHOOL 50 EMBARCADERO RD. PALO ALTO, CA 94301 NON-PROFIT ORG U.S. POSTAGE

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The Campanile

Vol. XCVIII, No. 6

Palo Alto High School • 50 Embarcadero Road, Palo Alto, CA 94301 • www.thecampanile.org

Scott leaves lasting impact on Paly

Science teacher to be remembered for his optimism and passion for teaching students

Friday, January 29, 2016

Gunn and Paly plan joint dance JARED STANLEY

STAFF WRITER

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COURTESY OF PALO ALTO HIGH SCHOOL

DAMI BOLARINWA/THE CAMPANILE

Left: Portrait of Kenyon Scott. Center: Scott’s siblings tell stories about Scott and his lasting influences on them. Right: Scott’s daughter performs a sketch at the memorial.

DAVID TAYERI

STAFF WRITER

S

tudents, colleagues, friends and family of science teacher Kenyon Scott gathered at Palo Alto High School in the Media Arts Center on Jan. 23 to celebrate the life of a man who was loved by so many in the Paly community and beyond.

Every seat was filled, and many stood or sat on the stairs as hundreds convened for the memorial. Almost all attendees wore blue and gold, the colors of Scott’s alma mater, the University of California, Berkeley.

The ceremony began with students Jer Samos, Emily Read and Spencer Wycoff and Paly Choir teacher Michael Najar performing “What I Got”

by Sublime, Scott’s favorite band. Sa-

mos, Wycoff and Najar played guitar while Read sang.

The heartfelt performance was followed by the speeches of two of Scott’s colleagues, Principal Kim Diorio, and math teacher Arne Lim. They recounted the quality of Scott’s character, his ability to brighten everyone’s day and his love for teaching.

Scott, Lim and journalism teacher Esther Wojcicki were all hired

by Paly in 1985 and remained close friends throughout the years.

“Kenyon will always be remembered for his enthusiasm and infectious intensity for life,” Lim wrote in an email to the Palo Alto Weekly.

“Always optimistic, his spirit lifted everybody in the room. [He] didn’t have a mean bone in his body. And his laugh was hearty and contagious.”

After Diorio’s and Lim’s speeches, friends of Scott spoke about their experiences with him, ranging from stories about college to road trips to rounds of golf. Every story had a common theme: Scott’s incredible sense of humor and natural friendliness.

Kenyon will always be remembered for his enthusiasm and infectious intensity for life.

Arne Lim Math Teacher At the memorial, one of Scott’s former colleagues, from a job previous to his teaching career at Paly read comments from the Palo Alto Online post about his passing. Students

wrote about how grateful they were to have had a teacher like Scott, who genuinely cared about his subject matter and each and every one of his students.

Scott’s three siblings took the stage next. They too told stories about their beloved brother and his lasting influence on the lives of those who knew him. His younger brother described how Scott saved his life on a camping trip by hiking 12 miles to get medical help after his brother was bit by a rattlesnake.

Scott died of natural causes at his home on Jan. 6. He is survived by his two daughters, Emily and Elizabeth.

Scott’s Paly family will miss him, but more importantly will honor his memory by living each day with the same passion he had.

espite the crosstown rivalry, Palo Alto High School and Henry M. Gunn High School students will be coming together for a joint dance on Feb. 26, from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. at the Mitchell Park Community Center.

Paly Associated Student Body (ASB) and Gunn Student Executive Council (SEC) sent out a survey, proposing themes for the dance.

The survey listed Safari, Metallic, Electronic Dance and Hippie as possible themes.

On Feb. 18, ASB and SEC confirmed that the theme will be “Highlight the Night.”

“This means the base theme is essentially white out but also with neon highlights,” Student Activities Director Matthew Hall said. “If they want to do the white theme they can do that, or if they want to do the neon theme they can do that.”

The logistics of the dance are still being worked out, as the event is one month away.

“We are working with our event coordinator on the logistics of the DJ — do we get black lighting, do we get white lighting, that sort of thing,” Hall said.

Each school is in charge of different aspects of the dance, but will be A3

DANCE

Policy revised in order to Board split over Cubberley school proposal counteract cyberbullying Community engages in discussion over McGee’s Cubberley plan District will be able to investigate student social media use with parental authorization ALICE ZHAO

STAFF WRITER

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recently revised Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) School Board policy on student records will allow the district to access students’ social media activity, provided that there is a student complaint concerning potentially threatening online activity and that the district notifies the parents and students involved.

Board Policy 5125, which recognizes the importance of keeping accurate, comprehensive student records and complies with state law requirements, has been updated to reflect the new Assembly Bill 1442.

The bill requires California school districts to notify students and parents or guardians when accessing a student’s social media activity due to student allegations of either cyberbullying, posts containing potentially suicidal material or any other dangerous online activity.

According to AB 1442, if the district is notified of social media activity that may pose a threat to any student, PAUSD will need to provide student and parent notification in order to be able to access a student’s social media.

The revision of BP 5125 was brought up in the Jan. 12 School Board meeting and was approved during a subsequent meeting this Tuesday.

A revision of state education laws and an incident last year prompted the revision of student records policy.

The incident involved a student who threatened another student with violence over social media. The victim contacted the district, which told the police and resulted in both parties conducting separate investigations.

According PAUSD Superintendent Max McGee, the district’s need to notify students and parents before conducting an investigation is the main element of the revision.

My whole message on suicide prevention has been about the importance of being vigilant and looking out for each other.

Max McGee Superintendent “I think [students and parents] will appreciate the notification requirement,” McGee said. “This really concerns when there is problems or complaints; we are not intending to start a monitoring system for students’ social media, [the district is] not trolling social media to see what students are saying.”

PAUSD looks into a cases involving social media exclusively after student complaints have been filed.

McGee stresses students’ roles in counteracting harmful or even dangerous online communication. “[The district] hopes that students will come to us,” McGee said. “If [a student] reports something on social media, whether it be cyberbullying, [connotations of suicide], or if it SOCIAL MEDIA

A3

JEREMY FU

ONLINE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

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n the face of a highly emotional debate among parents at a Palo Alto Unified School District School Board meeting, a majority of the board indicated its intention to reject Superintendent Max McGee’s proposal for a new PK-12 school at the Cubberley Community Center.

Board members Ken Dauber, Terry Godfrey and Melissa Baten Caswell deemed the third high school is unnecessary. However, board president Heidi Emberling and trustee Camille Townsend support McGee’s proposal. The plan was inspired by the Enrollment Management Advisory Committee (EMAC), which proposed opening a more innovative high school last year. If approved, the school will aim to stimulate parallel advancements in project-based education at Palo Alto High School and Henry M. Gunn High School.

Dozens of parents spoke passionately at the Tuesday meeting about their students’ experiences. One parent set the tone for the discussion, after bursting into tears while explaining her daughter’s experience at David Starr Jordan Middle School.

“I didn’t come here with famous quotes, but I did bring one quote from my seventh grade daughter at Jordan,” parent Yanhong Lin said.

“She said, ‘The time I learned the most was from a 5-minute YouTube video on fossil fuels.’ If you asked me to come and present to you last year, I would have told you that there is no reason to look into a new school. But, things have changed.”

With the board split over creating a new secondary school, select mem-

JEREMY FU/THE CAMPANILE

Superintendent Max McGee discusses his plan to start Cubberley Secondary School.

bers will vote on a committee next month. Townsend, a member who will vote, said the creation of a new secondary school will help foster innovation at Paly and Gunn.

If you asked me to come and present to you last year, I would have told you that there is no reason to look into a new school.

But, things have changed.

Yanhong Lin Jordan Middle School Parent “I believe a significant number [of students and parents] believes that we should explore alternate options in education,” Townsend said. “You don’t need to commit to anything until you explore it. We’ve got to take this energy from the community any capitalize on it. ” However, as the peak number of students is projected to arrive in two years, before the Cubberley school will be completed, Godfrey believes focus should be placed on existing schools.

“I don’t want to see a high school at Cubberley,” Godfrey said. “I think

we should focus on making sure that all 4,000 high school students get the same rich experience rather than making a smaller school that only houses maybe 500 to 600 students.”

Paly and Gunn currently enroll 1,979 and 1,886 students, respectively, figures exceeding maximum enrollment recommended by EMAC, which claims learning efficiency falls when enrollment is above 1,700. According to Caswell, larger schools do not necessarily affect learning.

“There is no cut and dry that after you hit a certain size the schools don’t work anymore,” Caswell said. “If we can create more connectedness and smaller learning communities, we will have greater engagement.”

Before next month’s vote, McGee hopes Palo Altans will keep an open mind to all possibilities, in order to not unnecessarily forget all options.

“We need to be more comfortable with ambiguity,” McGee said. “So many individuals are quick to rush to judgement and have their minds made up and the solutions figured out before they solve the problems.

Lets figure out what the problems are before we determine the solutions.”

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NEWS TO KNOW

The Campanile

NEWS PAUSD reviews student survey results

New survey allows teachers and administrators to obtain effective feedback from students GREG EUM

SENIOR STAFF WRITER

COURTESY OF LEO CORREA

@NPR Health Group Says Zika Virus Will Spread Through The Americas. @WSJ Of the 204 Bay Area startups that received series A funding last year, just 8% – 16 firms – were led by women

@ABC Snow cleanup is underway as the East Coast tries to get back to normal after #Blizzard2016

@AP Grand jury investigating Planned Parenthood indicts 2 anti-abortion activists who made videos

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@ESPN The 1-seeds will meet in the Super Bowl for the 3rd straight season. It only happened once in the previous 19 years.

@SkyNews Study: If carbon dioxide emissions continue, Persian Gulf will one day be too hot for humans

@HuffingtonPost Ben & Jerry’s co-founder gives Bernie Sanders his own unofficial ice cream

@CNN Iowa poll: @realDonaldTrump builds his lead over @TedCruz

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@TheEconomist A city where 40% live below the poverty line is suffering from brown, lead-poisoned water

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he results from the Student Input Survey that students took last December were released after a delay with the servers.

The results, which are given only to the surveyed teachers and the Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) administration, were supposed to be finished the first week of January, but many problems came up while translating the raw data into a recognizable and readable format.

The survey, which was negotiated in the spring of 2015, is in its first cycle of a two-year pilot program.

Paly administered this survey to all students in the school days before winter break in order to standardize the way the teachers receive feedback from their students.

This new survey system enabled the administration to see the results and data, not just the teachers.

“First off, there’s a lot of data,” Principal Kim Diorio said. “There’s a lot of constructive feedback that I hope the teachers can gain insight from, and hopefully either continue their good work or improve on things that need improving.”

“This was created and agreed upon by the Palo Alto Educators Association (PAEA) that there would be ten likert-style ques-

tions and two open-ended response questions as a way to systemize the feedback procedure for students to give feedback to all of their teachers by adding the same questions,” Diorio said. “Before, teachers had their own ways of receiving feedback from students, but there wasn’t a mechanism for sharing the results with the administrators. It should give teachers a sense of what the students said about them in terms of their own specific class, the same class but with different teachers and the departmental averages.”

Hopefully, it can be a conversation starter with some of our teachers, and we’ll go from here

Kim Diorio Principal The standardization of the surveys; however, did not always work, because several questions in the surveys were not applicable to every class.

“Many electives or classes that follow other formats, such as project-based learning or flipped classrooms, instead of the traditional courses have differences in how they assign homework,” senior Przemek Gardias said. “The survey questions about homework did not apply to some of my classes because these classes either utilize online home-

P

alo Alto High School’s Visual and Performing Arts Department is opening the semester with three performances: Art in Unusual places, The Pops Concert and Macbeth.

Planned by Paly Art, Art in Unusual Places included instrumental music, singing, acting and visual pieces such as drawings in places people would not usually see art.

“Last year we were doing a musical at the time so we did scenes and dances from the musical in front of the social sciences building and in the library,” Paly Theatre Director Kathleen Woods said.

In its second year running, Art in Unusual Places hoped to make art more accessible to all Paly students.

“It’s about getting art out of the theater out of the choir room out of the art room and bringing it out onto campus,” Woods said.

Various Paly art groups performed their pieces during brunch and lunch from Tuesday to Friday.

administrator in charge, will be able to directly see what the students say about the class and their teacher is very attractive,” Diorio said. “It’s up to the PAEA, but I personally really liked this standardized survey system.”

The administration is currently looking over the recent feedback and will address any concerning aspects.

“I hear things when I visit classrooms or when people meet with me, both good and bad,” Diorio stressed.“Hopefully, it can be a conversation starter with some of our teachers, and we’ll go from here.”

ASB planning for new events such as International Lunch and interschool winter dance JOSH BRIGEL

STAFF WRITER

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ollowing the success of the revised Winter Rally, the Palo Alto High School Associated Student Body (ASB) looks forward to an interschool dance, Prom and various new schoolwide events in the upcoming months.

At the rally on Jan. 14, it was announced that the annual Prom dance would be held at the Design Galleria in San Francisco in mid April.

The Winter Rally featured a staff versus student soccer game, which replaced the traditional basketball game due to the current reconstruction of the big gym. The staff won the game with a score of 3-2, and the rally also featured a performance by the Paly Dance Team.

“Prom is being held at the San Francisco Design Galleria,” Junior Class President Noa Ben-Efraim said. “The ASB officers who are planning Prom are visiting the location soon. It’s a four-story building with a spacious atrium in the middle. We actually have capacity up to

900 people. Last year we actually ran out of tickets.”

Prom dinner has changed each year and this year it will be served as standing hors d’oeuvres. The dance event will take place over four hours from 8 p.m. to 12 a.m. Once again, buses will be provided and mandatory for those attending Prom in order to combat student drinking.

Ben-Efraim was very happy to see the student body out on the football field showing their school spirit during the Winter Rally, especially because of the complications due to the construction of the big gym.

“Having to plan events around construction is a really big theme in ASB this year, and not being able to hold the traditional senior versus staff basketball game was just another hurdle,” Ben-Efraim said.

“The soccer game was very visual and so much fun to watch from the bleachers!”

Earlier in the semester, it was announced that Paly will have a joint winter dance with crosstown high school, Henry M. Gunn High

Paly Art, Choir, Theatre set to display new art in coming months STAFF WRITER

work or do not even assign regular homework to students.”

Although there had been a delay in getting the results finalized, Diorio expects that the following survey sessions this May should run more smoothly.

Diorio believes that if the end results are as promising as those of this new survey session, then the District will seriously consider keeping this form of student input surveys after the two-year pilot program is completed.

“We can tweak the questions, but the idea of a standardized system of feedback and the idea that I, as the

Prom to be held at Design Galleria in April

Visual and Performing Arts to begin working on performances AVI TACHNA-FRAM

DAMI BOLARINWA/THE CAMPANILE

Feedback from the survey given to students in December is now available to teachers.

Choir is also working on an event: the Pops Concert. The theme for this year’s Pops Concert is the Bay Area.

“Every year it’s a different theme.” junior Nadia Leinhos said. “Last year it was soul and the year before that it was old school. This year I think it might be a little bit trickier because you have to do research on where our artist is from because we’re only doing artists from the Bay Area.”

[“Macbeth”] going to have a contemporary look and feel to it.

It’s done with the style of “House of Cards” and with that emphasis on politics and power.

Kathleen Woods Theatre Director So far some of the song selections include Train songs, performed by the Madrigal Choir, a Steve Miller Band medley, performed by the Concert Choir, and other songs by artists from the Bay Area most of which are rock songs from the 70’s.

According to Leinhos, the Pops Concert is a great opportunity for

choir students to perform in a more relaxed environment.

“It’s the laid back concert, it’s not as much work to learn the music, the music is a little bit easier, and it’s more upbeat than the formal professional choir performances,” Leinhos said.

The Pops Concert will be held on Feb. 11 and Feb. 12 at the Haymarket Theater.

Paly Theatre is currently rehearsing a version of “Macbeth” set in modern day Scotland which will be the last major production in the Haymarket this school year.

“It’s going to have a contemporary look and feel to it,” Woods said.

“It’s done with the style of ‘House of Cards’ and with that emphasis on politics and power.”

Setting “Macbeth” in modern-day Scotland means that the characters from the play will be modern-day figures. For example, “Macbeth” will be the president of Scotland and the witches will be members of Scotland’s underclass.

“Macbeth” will be performed Feb. 25-27 and March 4-6.

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This year’s Prom will be held at the San Francisco Design Center Galleria on April 16.

School. This is the first of its kind in recent history at Paly and it is open to all grades. The dance will take place during late February with the theme of “Highlight the Night.”

The theme was derived from student input, and encourages students to wear neon clothing to the dance.

“I think the joint high school dance is going to be a lot of fun,” Ben-Efraim said. “It’s held at the

Mitchell Park Community Center and we’re hoping the attendance will be really high.”

For the upcoming semester, ASB will implement an International Lunch and run the traditional second semester club day for those who wish to join any new clubs.

Further into the semester ASB will bring back the intramural sports tournament from last year.

UPCOMING EVENTS FEB

INTERNATIONAL LUNCH

FEB

CLUB DAY 2

FEB

POPS CONCERT

FEB

PRESIDENTS WEEKEND

FEB

PALY STUDENT FILM FESTIVAL

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5

9

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On your food, put on toppin’s

Go club hoppin’

This concert will be poppin’

AMERICA. Never stoppin’

Oscars, we coppin’

Friday, Janurary 29, 2016

The Campanile

NEWS

A3

Paly, Gunn Gov. Brown pitches $112.6 billion fiscal plan joint dance The largest budget plan in state history places emphasis on education and healthcare CONTINUED FROM A1

hosted by both. There will be a variety of activities available to students if they choose not to participate in dancing.

Guest passes are still available at both schools. ASB is planning on having the price of a ticket be five dollars for students with ASB stickers and 10 dollars for those without.

Tickets will be sold at the door for 10 dollars.

“I highly recommend everyone to come out to the dance, because it is the first joint Gunn Paly dance in a while” Gunn SEC Treasurer Tone Lee said.

ASB is planning this dance based on student feedback from homecoming. Students did not want to wait on long lines in order to enter the dance, and as a result, ASB is going to try and simplify the process.

This dance will definitely help alleviate some of the Gunn-Paly rivalry and will bring a brighter and friendlier future for our two schools.

Tone Lee Gunn SEC Treasurer “We learned some things from this year’s homecoming dance where we had 800 plus people and selling tickets at different prices, having to check ASB cards and ID’s created too much of a line” Hall said ASB learned that Paly students would rather pay an extra five dollars and be able to enter the dance right away, instead of waiting on line and being able to pay less. Many Paly students are looking forward to the dance and planning on attending.

“This dance will definitely help alleviate some of the Gunn-Paly rivalry and will bring a brighter and friendlier future for our two schools” Lee said.

COURTESY OF RICH PEDRONCELLI

Gov. Jerry Brown discusses his proposed budget plan for 2016-17 at a press conference on Jan. 7 in Sacramento. His $122.6 billion plan would be the largest in California history.

COLE HETCHMAN

STAFF WRITER

E

arlier this month, Gov. Jerry Brown proposed a new California budget plan worth $122.6 billion, the largest in state history.

Focusing on fiscal restraint, Brown would distribute his budget on education, healthcare and state infrastructure, while also strengthening the state’s flood prevention program, the Rainy Day Fund, and gradually paying off its debts.

The plan would increase the state’s funding per student to $10,591 in 2016-17, increasing the 2011-12’s funding by around $3,600.

In fact, the plan has designated a total of $71.6 billion for schools — 51.6% higher than the funding for schools at the depths of the budget crisis in 2011-12.

Along with the budget, Brown introduced a tax on health insurance

users to replace the old tax, which will expire in June. The new tax is expected to produce $1.35 billion annually.

The proposal requires the support of at least two-thirds of California lawmakers; Brown anticipates the backing of Republican lawmakers will be difficult, yet crucial to the budget plan and tax.

Brown would distribute the funding from his budget on education, healthcare and state infrastructure, while also strengthening the state’s Rainy Day Fund and gradually paying off its debts.

Since its introduction, the tax proposal has received criticism from Republicans, with many finding the proposals excessive and unnecessary.

“Frankly, it’s inappropriate to suggest new taxes or tax increases when we have a surplus,” Assembly Budget

Committee’s Vice Chairwoman Melissa Melendez said in an interview with San Jose Mercury News.

Brown says that with the new tax, there would be numerous benefits, including a 10 percent increase in spending for developmentally disabled Californians.

However, advocates of the developmentally disabled disagree with Brown, with a similar arguement to the Grand Old Party, saying the budget “does almost nothing to stabilize the crumbling services system that 300,000 people with developmental disabilities rely on.”

They also said that if efforts to pass the tax fails, the results would be detrimental to the assistance of disabled California residents.

Many parents and educators, including Elena Shea, president of the Sixth District Parent and Teacher Association, which includes Santa Clara, Santa Cruz and Monterey counties, approve of the proposal.

“I think people have forgotten how deeply education was cut not too many years ago, so it’s nice to get that money back, and hopefully it can go up from there,” Shea said.

The plan will be dedicated towards increasing and expanding transportation by repairing and preserving damaged highways and roads .

These expenses would be funded a by a $65 annual fee for drivers, an 11-cent diesel tax and a 6-cent gas increase as well as $500 million annually from California’s greenhouse gas cap-and-trade system.

Senator Jim Beall, who also leads the Transportation Committee, is pleased with Brown’s efforts, saying he is glad that Brown “has put the issue on the table” but it is “probably going to take a different twist from what the governor is proposing.”

Many Californians are anxiously anticipating the results of the proposed budget and tax, which has a deadline of Jan. 29.

PAUSD ammends student social media usage policy Updated Board Policy 5125 aims to ensure the online safety of students in the district

KAI ODA/THE CAMPANILE

CONTINUED FROM A1

poses a threat to another student in any way, I think people would want us to investigate it. My whole message on suicide prevention has been about the importance of being vigilant and looking out for each other.”

Our goal is to respond to any imminent danger a student has to [him or herself] or to others. If a student self-harms or harms others, it is imperative that [the district] steps in and that students step in and say something.

Dr. Max McGee PAUSD Superintendent If further investigation of an incident of dangerous social media activity is warranted, the district plans to involve the Palo Alto Police Department in order to ensure the safety of the students involved.

With social media becoming increasingly integral to student-to-

student communication, the district hopes that the revision to Board Policy 5125 will maintain the safety of students both online and offline by detecting signs of potentially threatening activity before it becomes a larger issue.

“Our goal is to respond to any imminent danger a student has to themselves or to others,” McGee said. “If a student self-harms or harms others, it is imperative that [the district] steps in and that students step in and say something. If [the district] knows about it, then we will certainly do whatever we can to help a student or keep him or her safe.”

Junior Thibault Collignon agrees that the district is being responsible by getting involved in student-reported incidents of cyberbullying.

“I think that the district’s intervention, only if reported by a fellow student, is necessary in order to prevent a student from causing harm,” Collignon said. “I would definitely support the idea that social media should be used as an efficient tool to prevent harmful situations within the student body.”

Friday, January 29, 2016

The Campanile

A4 NEWS City initiative aims for eco-friendly methodology Climate and Sustainability Summit participants meet to discuss concerns regarding environmental awareness PETER MAROULIS

NEWS & OPINION EDITOR

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he City of Palo Alto will outline policies and procedures to be taken in the coming months in order to turn the local community into a more eco-friendly environment.

National unrest over climate change and internal civic concerns over gas power and traffic congestion inspired the City Council to appoint Palo Alto’s first-ever sustainability officer, Gil Friend, two years ago. Friend has been tasked with developing environmentally conscious city stratagems and most recently has masterminded the Climate and Sustainability Summit, which was held at David Starr Jordan Middle School on Jan. 24. The event was an open forum for Palo Alto residents, mediated by city officials. Guest speaker Mark Mykleby, a former Colonel in the Marines and environmental leader on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave the event’s opening speech.

“We need to make some bets for the next few years, which will hopefully open up new possibilities,” Friend said, referring to “an energy audit of homes, water heaters, leaks in driveways and efficiency improvements.”

Friend maintained that the goal of the sustainability plan was not only to present Palo Alto with an environmental boon, but also help improve everyday living in the city.

“We want to create better services with better economics and better environmental outcomes for our customers,” he said. “This is not a matter of trading off money with environmental benefits; it’s a matter of designing sound programs that pay out.”

During a keynote presentation at the Summit, Friend outlined several goals, including shifting “from natural gas to all electric systems when feasible,” driving “radical resource

PETER MAROULIS/THE CAMPANILE

Those who participated in the Climate and Sustainability Summit focused on new techniques to curb gas-use practices at the meeting at David Starr Jordan Middle School.

efficiency,” “reducing subsidies” and channeling “local and external investment.”

By encouraging the use of electric cars, electric office appliances, electric water heating and public transportation (inside and outside of Palo Alto), as well as championing eco-friendly business establishments in the city, proponents of the Summit hope to cut annual carbon emissions by 43 percent by 2030. The Jan. 24 meeting was intended as a launching pad for ideas and constructive criticisms by the community to kick off the program.

Palo Alto resident Jeff Greenfield, who attended the Summit, praised Friend’s initiative.

“It’s a good start in the right direction,” Greenfield said. “It’s a first start

and they’re getting public insight for adjustments.”

Greenfield also felt that the benefits of the proposed sustainability program justify even a raising of city taxes.

“There’s no subject I am more passionate about and care more about than sustainability,” Greenfield said.

“Sustainability is important enough that I would pay more for it.”

To temper fiscal concerns, Friend and his team have done financial analysis in order to determine the necessary steps to be taken in funding the project.

“We’ve identified about 18 different ways to finance this work, from general funding and utility [companies] such as Palo Alto Utilities to third party capital,” Friend said. “If

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you think sustainability is expensive, you’re doing it wrong.”

A City Council meeting, prompted by Friend, was held Monday. The meeting was designed to revise the city’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction plan. Palo Alto’s 2007 Climate Protection Plan looked to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 15 percent by 2020, a mark which has since been surpassed.

The State of California has set an optimistic pace, looking to curb gas emissions by 80 percent between 1990 to 2050, which Palo Alto is on track to do, having already reduced 37 percent of emissions since 1990. Having achieved such efficiency in reducing carbon emissions, Friend and other city officials hope to achieve the statewide 2050 goal 20 years early.

“To get to the California goal of 80 percent reduction in 2050 or anything more dramatic, we clearly have to transform transportation and our relationship with natural gas,” Friend said.

Such transformations would include those outlined in the Sustainability Summit, which are ultimately aimed at vastly reducing residential natural gas use.

Palo Alto is already one of the most environmentally conscious cities in California, having won accolades from GreatNonprofits for supporting green charities and organizations.

Yet, city officials are not content to rest in the wake of their successes, and continue to push for emissions reductions and electricity improvements to better the community.

2016 Super Bowl to come to Santa Clara Authorities prepare for security hazards ANNA MORAGNE

STAFF WRITER

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COURTESY OF THE HUFFINGTON POST

Kosuke Morita, the head researcher of the Japanese team, poses with updated periodic table featuring his discovery of element 113.

KIRAN MISNER

STAFF WRITER

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he seventh row of the periodic table has officially been filled after a discovery of four new elements from 2011 was verified by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) on Dec. 31.

The monumental discovery of the elements with atomic numbers 113, 115, 117 and 118 was recently found by scientists from Russia, Japan and the United States. The Riken Institute from Wako, Japan made history after finding element 113, making Japan the first Asian country ever to discover and name an element. The duo of teams from the Joint Institute of Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia and Livermore Laboratories in Livermore, Calif. receive the credit for discovering elements 115, 117 and 118.

All four of the elements were created synthetically in a lab, meaning that they cannot be found in nature.

Due to their molecular structures, the elements are unstable and only last a few fractions of a second before decaying into different elements.

The elements were created using a particle accelerator, a machine which fires charged particles close to the speed of light. The particle accelerator shoots out the nuclei of two different elements, making them slam against each other. When the atoms collide, the nuclei will form a new element for less than a second before undergoing radioactive decay, a process which takes apart the synthetic element.

While the finding of these element has filled the periodic table with elements, Kosuke Morita, the head researcher of the Japanese team, says that his team will not stop research. “[We want to] look to the uncharted territory of element 119 and beyond,” Morita said in an interview with The Guardian.

The next order of business for these research institutes will be to establish names for new elements.

These elements previously had placeholder names and predicted properties on the periodic table of elements.

Because of restrictions the IUPAC has placed on naming elements, each of the four will be named after a mythological concept, a mineral, a place, a property or a scientist.

While the discovery changes the way the periodic table is formatted, the finding will not change chemistry classes at Palo Alto High School — at least for now.

“For us at Paly, the discovery won’t really affect us because the elements are so radioactive that they would only last a few seconds, “ Chemistry teacher Samuel Howles-Banerji said.

“Plus, we had already known of these elements, but their names and properties were just unidentified.”

Howles-Banerji also believes that the discover will not bring another outburst of more discoveries.

“While the finding of new elements is good for science, it won’t propel more discoveries to happen because other elements don’t last for a long time and are hard to find,” Howles-Banerji said.

Instead, Howles-Banerji hopes that the discovery will teach a valuable lesson to students and younger aspiring scientists.

“Often the way science is taught, [teachers] make it seem that there’s only answer or way, but that’s not true,” Howles-Banerji said. “Science is not fixed. It’s dynamic and always changing.”

the entire Bay Area will be affected by Super Bowl 50, which will take place at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara on Feb. 7.

Over two million people will be coming to the Bay Area for this event, though only about 70,000 will be attending the game.

With Stanford University hosting practices for the Denver Broncos in the week prior to the Super Bowl, even more people will visit Palo Alto specifically.

The Palo Alto Police Department has been planning to increase its security and police presence in order to ensure that public safety is maintained and traffic controlled during the entire week.

“We will have increased staffing and a modified schedule for our officers and dispatchers and have specialty units on standby,” Charles Cullen, the Technical Services Director for the Palo Alto Police Department, said. “We will also staff the Emergency Operations Center during Super Bowl week.”

The Palo Alto Fire Department is expecting to receive 20 percent more calls than usual in the week prior to and the weekend of the Super Bowl.

Stanford hospital has also been preparing for an increase in patient influx during this year’ Super Bowl weekend.

The Palo Alto Police Department has been planning to increase its security and police presence in order to ensure that public safety is maintained and traffic controlled during the entire week.

“Both Stanford Health Care and Stanford Children’s Health will be fully staffed and prepared for any ad-

ditional adult or pediatric cases that may result due to the Super Bowl and its various activities,” Erin Weinstein, Stanford Health Care’s director of Media Relations, said in an interview with Palo Alto Weekly.

In the week prior to the game and the weekend of, there will be many parties and increasing numbers of people around town causing a lot more traffic than usual.

“We anticipate the restaurants and bars downtown will be very downtown will be very busy,” Cullen said Local officials have also been taking El Nino into consideration and the problems it could bring to the Super Bowl such as flooding and power outages.

One of the more serious issues that the Super Bowl is bringing to the Bay Area is an increase in human trafficking. The Super Bowl is sometimes thought of as the largest human trafficking incident in the United States. Many victims of sex trafficking are brought to the location of the Super Bowl every year for fans and tourists.

This year the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is attempting to crack down on sex trafficking during the Super Bowl by reaching out to the victims and offering them a way out.

Authorities are also concerned about potential terrorist attacks that could cripple or completely shut down communications. In a recent memo that was leaked to the NBC News4 I-Team, the FBI expressed concerns of having fiber-optic cables destructed.

However, Super Bowl security have been doing practice runs of protocol in the event of a terrorist attack since November.

“We want to take all the precautions that we can to ensure that we have the bases covered,” FBI Special Asst. Agent Bertram Fairries said in an interview with ABC 7 News.

The Campanile

Friday, January 29, 2016

NEWS

A5

Supreme Court to reargue, re-vote Santa Clara County to on 2013 affirmative action lawsuit open LGBTQ office Likely outcome of voting on case to be against University of Texas YAEL BEN-SHACHAR

First county in nation to have a LGBTQ office MACKENZIE GLASSFORD

STAFF WRITER

STAFF WRITER

he Supreme Court is rearguing a former case, Fisher v. University of Texas (UT), involving Abigail Fisher, who after being rejected from UT, sued the university claiming that she was discriminated against for being white.

The court first argued this case in 2013 and decided to bring the case to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, a federal court with jurisdiction in Texas. In this second look, the Supreme Court will determine the constitutionality of affirmative action, and the decision could possibly limit or even put an end to affirmative action at all public universities.

UT law professor, Lino Graglia predicts that four of the nine Supreme Court Justices will almost certainly vote in favor of Fisher. Four other justices will vote in favor of UT, leaving the deciding vote is speculated to come down to Justice Kennedy.

At this point, Justice Kennedy seems to be who seems as if he is leaning towards voting against affirmative action.

“In other race cases, [Kennedy] ... has generally been tough on racial discrimination,” Graglia said. “A lot of times these cases today come down to how Kennedy votes.”

Fisher, the plaintiff, first sued in 2008 after she was rejected from UT, claiming that her right to equal protection under the 14th Amendment was violated.

“I hope the justices will rule that the UT is not allowed to treat undergraduate applicants differently because of their race or ethnicity,” Fisher said in a statement.

The UT does use race as a factor in the admission process, but it does not give racially diverse applicants a specific numerical boost. Therefore, the school believes that its consideration of race in the admissions process is

anta Clara County established an office of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) affairs on Jan. 8, making it the first county in the nation to establish such an office. While other jurisdictions, such as Washington D.C. and Philadelphia employ advisory commissioners and mediators from the LGBTQ community, no other county or state has an entire office specifically dedicated to serving the LGBTQ community.

“I am proud to say that Santa Clara [County] is now the first county in the nation with an office exclusively dedicated to serving the LGBTQ community,” District Supervisor and the county’s first openly gay elected official Ken Yeager said in a statement. “While our country and this county have come a long way in recent years, it is clear we can be doing more to serve LGBTQ individuals and ensure improved outcomes for this community.”

The primary functions of the LGBTQ Office will include training County staff and community stakeholders on LGBTQ issues, offering guidance to County departments seeking to properly serve LGBTQ individuals and ensuring all County departments and are following the best practices when it comes to treatment of LGBTQ residents. They will also identify further gaps in services to LGBTQ residents and develop resources to address them. Additionally, they will promote and collaborate on LGBTQ community events, including those that foster dialogue and increase access to services for the most disenfranchised members of the LGBTQ community. The office will follow the County’s efforts in serving ethnic minorities, veterans, women and immigrants.

County officials estimate that LGBTQ people account for 4 percent of

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COURTESY OF NEWSWEEK

Fisher speaks outside the Supreme Court after the court revisited her lawsuit.

legal because it is in accordance with the Grutter v. Bollinger Supreme Court case, a previous case involving affirmative action. This case set precedent for colleges to consider race in admissions as long as the admissions process was holistic.

“Under the Supreme Court’s existing precedent, the University’s commitment to using race as one factor in an individualized, holistic admissions policy allows us to assemble a student body that brings with it the educational benefits of diversity for all students,” Gregory L. Fenves, the president of the University of Texas, said in a statement in court. “Our admissions policy is narrowly tailored, constitutional and has been upheld by the courts multiple times.”

Depending on who the court sides with, the admissions process could drastically change; there could be much less diversity at universities if the court votes in favor of Fisher.

The court has argued whether or not racial diversity is important for the past three decades. Some believe that affirmative action is justified because it encourages diversity, which creates a better learning environment.

“We are persuaded that to deny UT Austin its limited use of race in its search for holistic diversity would hobble the richness of the educational experience,” Judge Patrick E. Higginbotham of he United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, said during court proceedings.

However, others believe that admitting people based on race could cause less qualified students to be accepted, which would mean they might not be as successful at that university.

“There are those who contend that it does not benefit African Americans to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well,” Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, said in court.

The court has yet to make a final decision, and there is even a possibility that the case will go to the Court of Appeals. Either way, it is likely that once a decision is announced not only will the UT be affected, but all public universities in the United States.

Diversity is prized at many colleges around the nation, however, it could be put at risk depending on the Supreme Court’s decision.

the Santa Clara County population, which totals 1,894,605 people, based on 2014 U.S. Census numbers. A Gallup survey released in March that looked at LGBTQ residents of the country’s top 50 metro areas found that the LGBTQ population in the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara area was 3.2 percent, or 3,368 residents age 18 and older.

The department will be staffed with two full-time workers: manager Maribel Martinez and management analyst Ashley Scarborough. Martinez has been the founding director of San Jose’s Cesar E. Chavez Community Action Center for the past eight years. Under her lead, the center launched youth mentoring programs, created a community garden and tackled issues such as poverty and homelessness.

“Access to resources and a responsive government are essential to the longevity and well-being of LGBTQ communities, especially those whose identities intersect multiple areas of marginality,” Martinez said in a statement. “We can look to Santa Clara County and its leaders as trailblazers for inclusive justice.”

Martinez has also previously worked with nonprofits on issues including mental health services, health care, neighborhood safety and education reform.

“Over the years, the county has led efforts to address the needs of many communities, including the LGBTQ community,” County Executive Jeff Smith said in a statement. “Under Maribel’s leadership, we are confident the new office will support the needs of the LGBTQ community.”

Before accepting her position for the county, Scarborough worked for the California STD/HIV Prevention Training Center in Oakland. She brings with her extensive experience in research, analysis, project management and engagement with diverse communities, according to a press release made by the County.

Friday, January 29, 2016

A6

The Campanile

OPINION

On-campus game rooms should be provided MADS MCCLUSKEY

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STAFF WRITER

alo Alto High School needs a place for students to relax and de-stress, a place where they can enjoy free time without distracting others. The solution to the constant problem of stressed out students is simple: a campus game room.

According to an article by Health Fitness Revolution, games, while extremely entertaining, also contribute to reducing stress and improving brain function in students.

Students who are not focusing on homework and instead talking with friends or playing games on their phones would no longer be distracting focused students in the Media Arts Center, library or any other available quiet study space.

The library can become very busy and noisy, which easily distracts studying students. Though librarians try to quiet the noise, it is usually in vain. Instead, these unfocused students could be playing games, talk and listening to music — all stress reducing activities — in the new game room.

The subsequent question becomes: would this really work and would it be popular? Currently employed practices have proven that yes, it would be extremely popular. Starting earlier this year, puzzles have been left out in the Math Resource Center (MRC) and library. These puzzles are almost never left untouched.

Games can help brain function in two ways: improve cognitive skills and speed up response time.

“The puzzles in the MRC are really fun,” junior Stella Carpenter said. “I enjoy going in with my friends whenever we have a few spare minutes and talking and working on the puzzles. It would be so fun to have more puzzles or games at Paly.”

One issue with these puzzles is that they take up space and distract focused students. The MRC offers textbooks and a quiet space for students to focus and study. Sometimes finding textbooks in the library can be challenging, however the MRC makes them readily available. However, with the

puzzles and groups of rowdy people there, just like in the library, students are having a harder time focusing on school work.

If the puzzles were moved to the game room, more space would open up in the library and other quiet spaces for students who need to study.

Another reason for necessity of the game room, while seemingly unrelated, is sickness. Missing school is difficult for all students, and once behind, it is very hard to catch up. An estimated two-thirds of sick leave in employees is stress-related, according to a study by Willem Van Rhenen and Roland W. B. Blonk.

Laughter is one of the best solutions to stress; it releases endorphins in the brain and leads to white blood cell production. Releases of endorphins promote trust, empathy and compassion.

“Laughter not only releases the tension of pent-up feelings and helps a person maintain perspective, but it also appears to have actual physical effects that reduce stress hormone levels,” The American Accreditation Health Care Commission said in its in-depth report, Lifestyle Changes.

Another perk of the game room would be cognitive brain growth.

Games can help brain function in two ways: improve cognitive skills and speed up response time.

Cognitive abilities are what allow us to remember things, pay attention, speak or perform just about any task.

Board games help the brain build and retain cognitive associations through problem solving. Problem solving skills are crucial for school, especially in subjects such as math or science.

Fast-paced games such as Slap Jack or Speed help the brain learn to recognize patterns and react to them, according to an article by Health Fitness Revolution.

These heightened responses translate into any timed test. The faster a student can respond to a question, the more questions they can thoroughly answer.

Also, no one wants to spend a lot of time on homework; by improving the brain’s response time, a student would spend less time on homework and more time doing things they enjoy.

Coloring books are also a very simple solution. While coloring books may seem to be exclusively for younger children, they train the brain to focus on one task at hand.

Because coloring stimulates the same areas in the brain as meditation,

peace of mind and relaxation can be achieved through coloring.

“The relaxation that [coloring] provides lowers the activity of the amygdala, a basic part of our brain involved in controlling emotion that is affected by stress,” psychologist Gloria Martínez Ayala states in her article “Coloring Isn’t Just For Kids” that.

The first step toward a game room at Paly would be finding a place on campus to put this room. Luckily, Paly now has an abundance of space.

Since a new Math and Social Studies building were recently built, Paly has two open buildings –– the 300s building and the 700s building –– both with available classrooms to utilize. Clearing one room for games in either one of these buildings would be extremely easy and beneficial for students.

“Having a game room at Paly is a good idea because [students are] always looking for a way to get away from all the stress and work and relax,” junior Deepali Sastry said. “There’s definitely a need for a place like this It’s nice that the game room is on campus so [students] don’t have to leave.” Having this game room would be very beneficial to the student body, and allow them to better focus.

the curriculum be expanded to touch on different forms of expression in the English language. Ultimately, English language classes have failed to recognize the literary importance of a more auditory medium: the concept album.

While the concept album has been around for a while now, with albums like The Who’s “Tommy” or The Beatles’ “Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band” making their mark on the pop music canon. These albums never truly approached the concept album from a more literary perspective. For The Beatles’, “Sgt. Pepper” was a nice way to tie their album together without ever really telling a proper story.

While it is true that The Who did attempt to tell a story with “Tommy,” it ultimately ends up being a rather shallow fairy tale closer to the Lord of the Rings tales told by Led Zeppelin, than say Bob Dylan. The concept album has truly come into its own with the evolution of rap and hip-hop in the last 30-odd years, with Prince Paul’s “A Prince Among Thieves” being one of the first that comes to mind.

The album traces the path of the main character Tariq on his odyssean quest for rapping success, where he gets into the pimp game and lands behind bars before he gets shot at the end of the album.

“A Prince Among Thieves” was a brilliant project, but the rap concept album has already evolved far past that, most recently and notably with Kendrick Lamar’s critically acclaimed “To Pimp A Butterfly,” which was recently nominated for 11 Grammys.

“To Pimp A Butterfly” feels as much like a book as it does an album.

Not only does it have a very distinguishable story arc, but it also sees the main character, Kendrick himself, deal with depression, among other tribulations, as he wrestles with his demons, most notably “Lucy” (a euphemism for Lucifer) who repeatedly converses with him throughout the album.

The album is one which could easily match F. Scott Fitzgerald line for line in terms of symbolic content, and one which is in many ways much more relevant, significant and relatable than

a book that was written close to 100 years ago.

Ultimately, English classes need to embrace the concept album as part of the literary canon and have students analyze concept albums for their symbolic and metaphorical content.

Add concept albums to English curriculum

ANTONIO KIESCHNICK SENIOR STAFF WRITER

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oo often it seems that analysis of English literature is restricted to a very conservative view defined more by classics than anything else. We get Shakespeare, or we get Hemingway. Sometimes, it seems as if there is little else to analyze in English classes. It says something that perhaps the most experimental piece we read in high school is T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” a poem written around 80 years ago.

The thing is, these classes have remained relatively narrow-minded in their definition of literature, failing to recognize that literature does not simply consist of a specifically formatted way of writing: a paragraph, or a series of paragraphs, on a sheet of paper. I should note that this is in no way an indictment of any English teachers at Paly, who have done their jobs magnificently, but rather a suggestion that

English classes have failed to recognize the literary importance of a more auditory medium: the concept album.

One need only to look to the positive response to the teaching of “To Pimp A Butterfly” at High Tech High School in New Jersey, which culminated in Kendrick Lamar himself visiting and performing parts of his album for the students. If concept albums were to be included in curricula, teachers would finally have the opportunity to teach a piece of literature whose author is genuinely idolized by this generation. It would be a misstep if they were to ignore such a golden chance.

Friday, January 29, 2016

The Campanile

OPINION

A7

More English electives needed to fit student interests UMA CHOUDHURY STAFF WRITER

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hile everyone is worrying about how many Advanced Placement (AP) or honors classes are on his or her transcript, English electives often become a low priority. However, English electives are just as important as more focused-upon courses because they enable students to hone their critical thinking skills while exploring potential topics of interest.

These skills are essential for success in college and beyond.

When teachers create English electives, they combine the key aspects of a rigorous English curriculum with common interests, creating an environment in which all students can thrive.

English teacher Erin Angell created and has taught the popular English elective Escape Literature for the past two years.

“I created this class so it could be the perfect amalgam of passion between my interests and my student’s [interests],” Angell said. “This class covers both fun and serious material.”

If the English Department offered more intriguing classes such as the already implemented Escape Literature, students would be more motivated to learn and challenge themselves in English disciplines.

Adding more electives could also help spark new interests for students who are unsure of what they want to pursue.

Some believe that having a total of nine English electives is plentiful enough. Others feel confined to the offered electives. Junior Morgan Keller believes that a greater variety of courses would allow students to pursue their English interests.

“I think that adding more electives for subjects would be a really helpful idea because then students could choose classes that match their

interests more and therefore be more excited about learning,” Keller said.

Adding more electives could also help spark new interests for students who are unsure of what careers they want to pursue in the future, a function that some English electives currently serve. For example, Film Composition can influence students to go into the film industry. Humanities can inspire people to pursue philosophical activities. The more electives available, the more students will get motivated to try new activities.

Admittedly, adding new electives is a challenge for the English Department, as scheduling logistics is difficult and there are a limited number of teachers who can teach the courses.

There also remains the possibility that fewer than 60 students will sign up for a class, not meeting the enrollment requirement for the creation of a new class.

However, there are a variety of solutions to these aforementioned is-

sues. First, by not offering the electives that are frequently cancelled due to low enrollment, there will be the opportunity to add more appealing classes to the mix. Shakespeare/ Chaucer is an example of an English elective that has consistently not attracted enough students to meet the minimum enrollment requirement, but has still been renewed every year.

Second, the English Department should propose two new replacement electives based on student interests.

Including courses that appeal more to the students will increase the likelihood that these courses will be run successfully and will fuel the students’ passion for the subject.

With unpopular electives eliminated, the relevant material from those courses can be transferred to either an ongoing class or to one that is being added.

Since small classes such as Shakespeare/Chaucer will get canceled, some of the curriculum in these

courses can get added to a different one.

In order to ensure that new courses will captivate students’ attention, the English Department could require teachers to give out a student interest survey that allows students to vote on different options for future electives.

By gathering this data, the English teachers will know where the interests of students lie, and based on that, offer courses that will cover them.

Electives that have been discussed

by English teachers in the past range from Travel Literature and Media Studies, to a fantasy and mystery mixture and Graphic Novels.

As next year’s course enrollment period approaches, many rising juniors and seniors are excited about having the freedom to choose an English elective class of interest. By giving the option of a student-voted elective, English teachers will find a surge of dedicated and eager learners in their classes.

Paly should have more options for semester-long elective classes

ASHLEY ZHANG

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STAFF WRITER

f one were to ask Palo Alto High School students what classes they take, the responses would be fairly similar — math, history, English, science, a foreign language and one to two electives.

Despite Paly’s diverse population its students’ broad interests, a limiting 7-period schedule does not allow students much time to explore new topics, especially after completing necessary credits for graduation.

By offering more semester courses instead of year-long ones, students would have many more opportunities to take new classes and discover their interests, thus making them more well-rounded with a wider mindset.

Although Paly does offer a wide variety of electives ranging from Business Law to Glass Blowing, most of these classes are year-long classes, which restricts the number of electives one

can take during the four short years of high school.

While some students may wish to be introduced to a certain topic, they may not have enough interest or time to take the class for an entire year. Semester classes offer students the opportunities to gain exposure to a new topic, even if one does not want to pursue the subject in the long run.

In addition, many students who change their schedules during the second semester are often left with a prep period if they are unable to find a class that fits their schedule.

Although preps may be useful and productive for some, others find that their time could be better filled with another class, especially for those who already have preps for other reasons.

When Paly sophomore Cameron Akioka decided to switch classes at the beginning of the second semester, she could not find an alternative that she liked that was also convenient for her schedule.

“I originally wanted to take Interior Design instead of Business Law for my second semester class, but all the space [in the class] was filled, and I would have to switch my whole schedule,” Akioka said. “More semester courses would be beneficial not only for me, but also for the counselors that are struggling to find the right classes for students.”

As exemplified by Akioka’s case, the addition of semester-long electives would not only speed up the course transfer process by providing a broader variety of courses for students to choose from, but students would also ultimately end up in a class that would best benefit them and their interests.

Additionally, if a class requires a prerequisite course, semester classes allow students to take the prerequisite course and the desired course in the same year.

By minimizing the amount of break time between the two courses,

students can retain the information learned more effectively before taking the latter course.

Sophomore Xander Sherer believes that taking Beginning Journalism the semester before joining a publication allowed him to transition more easily than he would have if he had taken it the prior year.

“Overall, I would say that Beginning Journalism was very helpful in my transition, and without it I would probably be very lost,” Sherer said. “It was really helpful to take the class the semester before joining [my publication] because you always forget stuff over the summer, and without some practical applications of the information, it is easy to let what you learned slip out of your mind. As the saying goes, ‘use it or lose it.’”

Although some may argue that semester-long classes don’t allow enough time for teachers to delve into important topics, sophomore Miguel Moreno believes that a semester was an adequate amount of time to learn the necessary amount of information in his U.S. Government class.

“U.S Government, albeit a semester class, was able to cover information in detail in a short amount of time,” Moreno said. “Ranging from topics such as Due Process and Equal Protection to elections and ideologies, U.S. Government was able to utilize different methods to enrich the material learned.”

By offering more semester courses, students would have many more opportunities to take new classes and discover their interests.

High school should be a time for students to discover their passions in order to pursue them in the future. By offering more semester-long courses, Paly would provide the flexibility necessary for students to dabble in many different subjects to find their interests, thus benefitting them both in the short and long run.

Friday, December 11, 2015

The Campanile

A8

EDITORIALS

CCC should provide more internships Language laning system

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n their high schoolcareers, many Palo Alto High School students may ponder the possibility of participating in an internship, and for good reason. Internships, whether during summer break or the school year, allow for students to gain hands-on experience in any field they choose. Students learn necessary “soft skills” in the workplace, such as teamwork, communication and problem-solving, which are hard to learn inside the traditional classroom. Furthermore, students can use internships as an opportunity to narrow down what major or career they might pursue in the future, as well as expand their professional network.

Because internships provide high school students with so much valuable knowledge and experience, The Campanile strongly believes that the College and Career Center (CCC) should place a larger focus on publicizing and connecting students with internship opportunities.

Many students who have connections or independently sought opportunities in the past have completed internships in areas from research to business to technology — any career field piques their interest.

As of now, the CCC offers information on a few internships, such as Get Involved PA, which relate to the area of community service. However, there should be a much wider spectrum of career fields in which the

CCC provides students access to, as service may not be the type of internship every student is looking for.

Information on a more comprehensive group of internships should be gathered and publicized to students so that a larger portion of the student body can attain this experience. This can be done through an online internship list or database for student access on the CCC website or Naviance, and can include the name of the internship, experience needed, time commitment and whether there is a salary or community service hours that students will receive. Then, advisory meetings where teacher advisors discuss the importance of internships and introduce the new database and its uses would be put in place, effectively publicizing the resource to students.

Additionally, the CCC should send out a periodical email to parents asking if they know about any opportunities for students through their employers or colleagues, and allow them to contribute to the database. Many times, parents have more connections or chances to learn about internships through their own respective networks, and would add very valuable contributions to the database.

One on one help with selecting and applying to internships through appointments should also be provided by the CCC. This way,

students can receive personalized assistance with narrowing down their choices in terms of the internships they want to apply to, as well as maneuvering the application or interview process. These appointments would also allow for students to get to know the staff of the CCC better, and form relationships before they start more frequent visits to the CCC for the college application process.

The Exploratory Experience course is also a great option for students who are interested in internships during the year. The course allows for students to pick a field they are interested in, and find a mentor who will provide them the opportunity to directly observe the jobs of people who work in the field, and also gain hands-on experience in the field. Students can earn five Career Technical Education credits for each semester they take the class, as long as they work 4 hours a week.

This is yet another great opportunity for students, and the CCC should help promote it to students through emails or advisory periods.

The Campanile urges the CCC to consider adding more resources to help connect students with internships in areas that they are interested in, thus making the opportunity for students to gain the valuable knowledge and experience that internships bring a reality.

ought to be re-evaluated

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oreign language classes at Palo Alto High School are the prime example of the adverse effects of poor laning: typical language classes include native speakers, students wanting to learn, exchange students and students merely trying to fulfill graduation requirements.

Despite attempts to properly lane native speakers, they are often placed in lower level classes — typically due to a lower-than-expected grammar level — or in higher level classes that are still not difficult enough to challenge these students.

It is for this reason that The Campanile recommends altering means of laning and encourages students to challenge themselves. Instead of laning students primarily based on their grammar skills, we believe that the language department should administer holistic placement tests and place students with ease of learning in mind.

Beyond relying on a placement test, native speakers should take it upon themselves to, instead of using their talent to circumvent requirements, push themselves and take high-level classes or learn a new language.

We maintain that students who challenge themselves, be it through taking high yet appropriate level lan-

guage courses or by learning a new language, will benefit themselves as well as their fellow students.

The Campanile applauds the introduction of a new language elective, Spanish 5, which will meet outside of school hours to guide students in project-based learning. This will include writing articles and short stories, producing podcasts and more.

This elective should be extended to additional languages and its style of education ought to be incorporated further into traditional courses.

But the language department has failed in providing for its non-honors and underperforming students.

Due to low enrollment, French 4 and Advanced Placement (AP) has combined into one class. Though these classes have been like this for a while, we believe this approach is no longer beneficial. This creates an environment that inherently creates a bigger gap between students who feel too challenged versus students who find the class too easy.

The Campanile also believes that curriculum should place more emphasis on conversation skills. While all language classes are supposed to focus on reading, writing, listening and speaking, we believe that there should be more emphasis on explicitly teaching conversational skills.

Expansion of Academic Resource Center would be beneficial to students

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ucked away in Palo Alto High School’s expansive library building lies the modestlysized Academic Resource Center (ARC) — a place in which students can engage in peer-on-peer tutoring, study in a quiet environment or borrow textbooks. Those seeking tutelage in a specific course may come to the ARC and request a tutor, who typically will have taken said course or have experience with the course curriculum.

ARC tutoring is especially attractive as tutors may receive extra credit or community service hours and tutees receive individual instruction at no charge. It is a powerful resource and remains the first line of academic assistance outside of class for many students.

Additionally, the ARC provides a wide variety of textbooks without the library’s generally bustling tenor, allowing students who prefer to work in silence a locale at which to do so.

Beyond its more immediate benefits, ARC tutoring is also one of the biggest promoters of peer learning — a strategy which has been endorsed by the Single Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA) — at Paly. In fact, the SPSA specifically names the ARC, referring to the center as “creating a culture of students helping students.”

However, despite its popularity and alignment with the educational goals outlined in the SPSA, the ARC remains located in one of the smallest divisions of the library building.

In addition, it is only staffed with one supervisor at any given moment, precluding tutors from tutoring in

the library. It is difficult to establish tutoring sessions during particularly popular tutoring time windows — namely Tuesdays and Thursdays at lunch, as well as Tutorial — as the limited space and seating in the ARC fills up quickly. Not to mention, the quality of tutoring decreases as more distractions and outside sources start to interfere. Since the ARC has such a positive impact on Paly’s academics, The Campanile believes that measures need to be taken by the administration in order to maximize this impact.

The ARC is irrationally small considering the services it provides.

Expansion to another room within the library and addition of another supervisor would prove extremely beneficial for students and supervisors alike. This expansion is extremely feasible, especially considering that the room which was previously the English Resource Center has no specific designation, is seldom used and could easily be repurposed in order to become another useful branch of the ARC. The extra supervisor would help also help by improving tutoring logistics to make scheduling more convenient for the staff of the ARC, and the larger venue would allow tutors and tutees ample opportunity to meet in the Center.

Paly’s administration should recognize how large of a contribution the ARC makes to student achievement and school climate and expand it accordingly. With increased staffing and size, the center could easily accommodate more beneficiaries while simultaneously ameliorating Paly’s atmosphere.

JANUARY’S TOP TEN LIST Top Ten Things To Do While Watching the Super Bowl 10) Complain about the officiating.

9) Argue with your friends about which jersey looks better.

8) Ask repeatedly why they’re kicking the ball because you know absolutely nothing about football.

CATHERINE YU/THE CAMPANILE

The Campanile Editors-in-Chief Miranda Chen • Stephanie Cong • Owen Dulik Lauren Klass • Mischa Nee • Nikhil Rajaram Online Editor-in-Chief Jeremy Fu News and Opinion Editors Claire Dennis Peter Maroulis

Lifestyle Editors Aiva Petriceks Carissa Zou

Sports Editors Kai Oda Ethan Teo

Business Manager Rachel Farn

Design Editor Bo Field

Photography Editor Dami Bolarinwa

Yael Ben-Shachar Abira Berezin Josh Brigel Susana Cacho Kate DeAndre Greg Eum Joanna Falla Maddie Feldmeier Mackenzie Glassford Eli Gwin-Kerr Danny Hammerson

Staff Writers

Jamie Har Cole Hechtman Antonio Kieschnick Edward Kim Grace Kitayama Masha Konkov Christina Le Will Leighton Tiffany Liang Anant Marur Madeline McCluskey Nicholas Melvin

Kiran Misner Jacqueline Moore Anna Moragne Josh Ng Thomas Rauner-Swan Gillian Robins Margaret Rosenthal Bethany Shiang Thomas Smale Adrian Smith Jared Stanley Talia Stanley

Photographers

Abira Berezin Daniel Hammerson

Avi Tachna-Fram David Tayeri Annalise Wang Sarah Wang Clay Watson Jessica Wong Catherine Yu Samuel Yun Ashley Zhang Alice Zhao

Jacky Moore Jordan Schilling

Editing Consultants

7) Compare your forehead to Peyton’s.

Evelyn Richards

6) Dab with Cam.

5) Watch all the commercials.

4) Hope that Beyonce doesn’t cause another blackout during the half time show.

3) Yell “Goooaaal” every time a touchdown is scored.

2) Eat Buffalo wings and don’t share.

1) Be happy the Patriots aren’t playing.

-Samuel Yun and Christina Le

Elisabeth Rubinfien

Advisor Esther Wojcicki Letters to the Editors: Email all letters to editors to theeds16@googlegroups.com The Campanile prints letters on a space-available basis.

We reserve the right to edit submissions.

The Campanile only prints signed letters.

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For more information regarding advertisements or sponsors in

The Campanile and their size options and prices, please contact The Campanile Business Managers by email at campanile.ads@gmail.com.

Note: It is the policy of The Campanile to refrain from printing articles that misrepresent or alienate specific individuals within the Palo Alto community.

The policy of The Campanile is to publish editorial content that represents at least half of the staff.

L FESTYLE The Campanile

Friday, January 29, 2016 LIFESTYLE

SSS Bucket List

What to do as a second semester senior before graduating.

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How DJ Khaled changed my life

GET YOUR VOTE IN T

homas Jefferson once referred to voting as “the rational and peaceable instrument of reform.” Yet this important tool and responsibility is often overlooked. As many Palo Alto High School seniors will soon become eligible to vote in their first election, their birthright may seem unimportant.

However, voting is not just a right; it is a responsibility. Casting a ballot gives credence to our democracy, that the government is representing the will of the majority. Voting is one of the easiest and best ways to enact concrete change and take responsibility for being a part of society. In order to vote effectively, voters must become aware of current events. Easy ways for new voters to become

involved include watching the primetime debates, checking out each candidate’s website or signing up for campaign email lists.

The online registration process is fairly simple. The information needed is a birth date, the last four digits of one’s social security number and California driver’s license or identification card number. For those who have not gotten a license yet, it is still possible to do most of the registration online but with an extra step of mailing in a printed, signed copy of the forms. Additionally, you can register to vote before you are 18 years old, as long as you will be 18 years old by the election date.

HILLARY CLINTON

DONALD TRUMP

From a cameo on Saturday Night Live to learning popular dance moves on The Ellen Show, it would be hard for those paying attention to either popular culture or the presidential race. The former Secretary of State of the Barack Obama administration previously ran in the 2008 primaries and lost to Obama. Clinton has also served as First Lady to husband and former President Bill Clinton and then as a senator from New York. She has a liberal approach to issues such as immigration and gun control. Clinton’s more conservative stance on the death penalty suggests that though there are issues with the punishment, it should be not be abolished. Clinton’s presidential campaign has not been without mishaps; most notably an email scandal in which Clinton used a personal email address rather than an official State Department email while serving as Secretary of State. Some fear Clinton has not reached out enough to the wide range of voter demographics she needs to win the election, and others worry that she will run into the same issues that she encountered in the 2008 primaries.

BERNIE SANDERS

Are you feeling the Bern? Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has certainly been bringing the heat to his campaign, gathering support for his Democratic Socialist agenda from the younger voting population after being considered the underdog of Democratic candidates. Sanders, though independent in the Senate, is running as arguably the most left-leaning candidate in the Democratic party. He is currently the longest serving independent member of Congress, combining his two terms in the Senate with his years of experience in the House of Representatives. From his opposition to the Keystone Pipeline and other acts to address climate change to his support for a single-payer health care system, Sanders is focused on bringing a political revolution. He also plans to attempt to eliminate tuition to public colleges. Controversies with Sanders’ policies on gun control have been brought up, specifically for his moderate views and his vote in favor of a law protecting gun manufacturers from lawsuits.

Despite his growing popularity among younger voters, skeptics feel Sanders is too extreme and that an implementation of his ideas would be impractical and unfeasible.

MARTIN O'MALLEY

Martin O’Malley may not be in the spotlight of the Democratic nomination race, but O’Malley brings a unique perspective. Serving two terms as mayor of Baltimore and another two terms as governor of Maryland, O’Malley is considered experienced, despite not being as well-known. At 52 years old, O’Malley is the youngest of the three Democratic candidates and is thought of as a fresh face to a new Democratic generation.

O’Malley has demonstrated his opposition to the death p e n alty through his experience as Maryland governor. Additionally, O’Malley holds liberal views on the majority of campaign issues, from economic stances to social issues. However, many people do not believe that O’Malley could win the bid, let alone the election as a whole. He has had lackluster performances at debates and O’Malley has been a Clinton supporter in the past, never speaking against her during his campaigning process.

Most of America would not have even thought about the presidential election until now if it not for the media craze surrounding Donald Trump.

His brash, no-nonsense attitude has taken the media by storm, as all eyes turn to Trump’s next move. The billionaire, real estate mogul and reality TV personality, despite lacking any experience in elected office, has led the Republican polls by a wide margin since July, according to a Huffington Post poll. Trump’s business experience and brutal honesty provide a contrast to establishment candidates, such as Jeb Bush, who is currently battling dwindling poll numbers. Trump’s platform is epitomized by his appealing slogan, “Make America Great Again!” and focuses on policies such as tax reform and building a wall along the Mexican border to combat illegal immigration. Critics, however, worry that his unapologetic rhetoric and frequent political incorrectness could present a problem in diplomacy. Others are skeptical of his conservatism, as he previously supported Hillary Clinton in her 2008 campaign for president.

Trump recently grabbed the media’s attention after receiving a heavily publicized endorsement from 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin.

Some believe that Palin’s support will secure more more right-leaning voters, but comics such as those on Saturday Night Live have enjoyed mocking Palin’s passionate speech.

TED CRUZ Following disappointing poll numbers early on in the race, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas has now nearly risen to the top of the party and many Republicans believe he is the man who can take down Trump. Cruz most recently made headlines after Trump questioned his eligibility for president as a natural born citizen, since Cruz was born in Canada to an American citizen. His experience in the Senate includes authoring numerous bills, such as a repeal of the Affordable Care Act and support for the Keystone Pipeline. Cruz is a far right-leaning conservative, popular among evangelical voters for his efforts to protect traditional marriage and his policy proposal that only Christian refugees be allowed into the United States. He has been heavily criticized for his religious leanings, and his strong opposition and doubts towards evidence of climate change.

MARCO RUBIO

Though one of the youngest candidates in the election at 44 years old, Marco Rubio brings remarkable experience along with a youthful outlook, as he currently serves as a Florida Senator. Rubio’s views are fairly far to the right, as he is a proponent of the death penalty and strongly opposes taking in Syrian refugees and implementing gun laws. Rubio shies away from the strong stances many of his conservative opponents’ take on immigration, preferring to take a moderate approach involving multiple measures to curb the issue. Rubio draws attention to his liberal immigration views that contrast most Republican candidates through bringing up his family’s immigration story from Cuba quite frequently. He has gone back on a previous bipartisan immigration bill he worked on. Rubio has not established an obvious base of demographics, and many believe this may hurt him in the months to come. Others believe that he will be the best candidate to attract Hispanic voters. Critics feel as though Rubio will have to rely on a blunder by some of his direct competition to have a real shot at the people, and that he does not have a strong demographic to rely on.

MICHAEL BLOOMBERG

Recent speculation infers that there may be a new piece to the election puzzle. Billionaire and former New York City mayor, Michael Bloomberg, may be looking to enter the ring as an independent candidate, planning to finalize his decision in March. Bloomberg is known outside of politics as the founder of an organization of financial media platforms and is currently the seventh richest person in the nation. He has changed parties several times, beginning as a Democrat prior to his terms as mayor, then switching to a Republican affiliation for six years, until finally settling as an Independent. Thus, he offers a moderate stance and may serve as an alternative between polarizing candidates on either side, such as Donald Trump and Bernie

JOANNA FALLA

STAFF WRITER

Sanders. Bloomberg is socially liberal, supporting gay marriage and abortion rights, while remaining fiscally conservative. Additionally, his combination of political and business experience is unrivaled, yet his inability to appeal to a large demographic of voters on either side may be his downfall. Some analysts see his Wall Street connections as a hurdle. His biggest potential hurdle may be history, as no independent candidate has ever won the presidency. Bloomberg’s presence in the campaign race could potentially drastically affect the outcome of the election, as he may split Democratic and Republican votes.

Record label producer, party animal and motivational speaker?

Khaled “Another One” Khaled, better known as DJ Khaled, is a music producer who has made a variety of albums such as “We the Best,” “We the Best Forever” and “Suffering from Success.” Although his influence as a music producer continues to create the ultimate hype, DJ Khaled is now getting recognition for a different reason.

His presence on Snapchat has gained him millions of followers and immense popularity. Khaled’s combined use of motivational quotes, disregard for the jet ski police and surprisingly healthy lifestyle has changed the nation for the better.

Khaled often uses the phrase “the key to success” as a way to help his followers be their best selves (!!!MAJOR KEY!!).

As people hear about how cocoa butter is the key and outdoor speakers are the way to go, he begins to shape the future doctors and lawyers of the world.

One of Khaled’s main values is the ability to not let “them” stop him.

Khaled preaches to fans that “they” should not stop his followers from riding with him through the journey of more success. Who are “they,” you ask? According to Khaled, it can range from the police, the haters or the local iguana invading his backyard retreat.

Many adults would try and argue with DJ Khaled’s flawless logic and understanding of how the world works, they are missing one crucial part to all of his stories that ensures that all the acumen he provides has a 100 percent success rate. “I promise you” is said on an average of two times per Snapchat story, which clearly proves that once you become one with the Lion Order, the journey to success is ahead.

In fact, adults should be thanking Khaled for his positive impact on their lives. He promotes healthy eating by documenting what his personal cook, Chef Dee, has deemed acceptable to be eaten by DJ Khaled himself, which is usually egg whites, turkey sausage, hash browns and water (which they don’t want you to have).

Khaled also constantly switches workout regimens from jet skiing and spinning to his most recent interest, the elliptical.

While Khaled makes sure that everyone is physically fit, he also teaches us to give back. A popular theme on his Snapchat story includes Khaled shouting his thanks to fans and gives a reminder to #stayhumble. What makes Khaled so genuine is his lack of bodyguards which has no relation to his lack of importance, but rather demonstrates how trusting he is towards his fellow man.

Whether the media chooses to admit it or not, DJ Khaled is the backbone of this nation and one of the most influential leaders of our time, and for that reason alone I couldn’t be more proud to be an American.

STUDENT LIFE

Lesser Explored Classes at Paly

COURTESY OF IHEARTKINESIOLOGYBLOG.COM

Although not as popular as many of the other courses at Paly, these more unknown courses teach rare, applicable skills that students can use in their lives beyond high school.

Kid Cudi Album Review

American Idol Finale

Drag Queens

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COURTESY OF HYPEBEAST.COM

ENTERTAINMENT

An examination of the heavily criticized work in a new light.

COURTESY OF FOX.COM

ENTERTAINMENT

The famous show is set to come to an end after 15 successful

LIFESTYLE

COURTESY OF HITFIX.COM

Exploring misconceptions about the identities of drag queens.

Friday, January 29, 2016

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The Campanile

LIFESTYLE

Students explore experiential learning styles Paly English and Science departments offer innovative Twenty Percent Project and Science Research Project CARISSA ZOU

LIFESTYLE EDITOR

T

here are numerous paths to learning; in fact, every individual has his or her own unique learning style and method to accommodate their education.

While some take a visual or verbal approach through traditional lectures and visual displays, others may prefer a more hands-on approach, gaining knowledge through experiences and discoveries. At Palo Alto High School, as teachers continue to innovate the classroom through new projects and learning opportunities, students get the best of both worlds.

Many teachers offer conventional lectures with the occasional graphics, pictures and charts, but students may also pursue experiential learning through projects across a variety of subjects through opportunities such as the Twenty Percent Project and the Science Research Project course.

Twenty Percent Project Throughout the past few years, various teachers in Paly’s English department have offered the Twenty Percent Project, a Google project that gained widespread attention as a project that could be implemented into education. The project allows students to dedicate 20 percent of their time in a specific class to pursue side projects they are interested in and ultimately create an end product.

Erin Angell, who incorporated the Twenty Percent Project in her World Literature course in previous years, views the Project as an opportunity to blend subject matter with students’ interests and aspirations.

“I would define the Twenty Percent Project as being a passion project where a student is able to select a project through which the goals of the subject matter will be gained,” Angell said. “They’re looking to learn the skills of doing English [for example]. Rather than focusing on a specific book that the teacher has in mind, [they get] to select a project

CATHERINE YU/THE CAMPANILE

Students enrolled in Science Research Project have the opportunity to learn in places outside the classroom, like a Stanford lab.

that will result in some kind of product or experience through which the subject matter can be learned.”

One of the key elements of the Twenty Percent Project learning approach is that students are granted the freedom to choose a topic they find interesting, allowing for deeper involvement in the execution of the project.

“I think there is socioemotional and character learning that happens [while doing the Twenty Percent Project],” Angell said. “The way you get the socioemotional part of it is because [the topic] is self selected, so you have a level of engagement and interest that is significantly higher and there is a correlation between that and achievement of subject-specific skills, standards and goals. You use and leverage that part as a teacher in order to get that. You get more of the good stuff but through this thing that is really enjoyable too.”

Unlike other forms of traditional learning, the Twenty Percent Project requires a unique level of self-motivation and direction, skills that Angell believes are important in the learning process.

“A lot of identifying what the topic will be and breaking the end goal into parts, that’s something that the student is highly engaged in and I think that’s more reflective of the things that happen outside of a traditional learning environment,” Angell said. “Our students have said that they are really interested in pursuing, those sorts of jobs and careers are things that are going to require a high level of self motivation and more importantly, self direction. I think passion projects like the Twenty Percent Project are things that help develop skills within the students to be able to self direct and self motivate.”

Projects similar to the Twenty Percent Project continue to be incor-

porated into the Paly curriculum, as the Social Justice Pathway hopes to implement a senior capstone project where students will choose a social justice issue and attempt to create a solution, change, or end product.

Our goal is that students will have a better appreciation and a better understanding of the entire scientic process and how rigorous and thoughtful it is.

Keith Geller

Paly Science Teacher Science Research Project Similar steps are being taken by the Paly Science department. Science Research Project is a course that supports learning through experience and real world application. Currently, Science Research Project is an eighth period course where students meet

weekly to check in on their progress in research and experimentation applications.

According to Science Research Project teacher, Keith Geller, the class offers a unique opportunity for students to be exposed to science in the world beyond the classroom.

“The Science Research Project course is a course in which students work with mentors in actual research,” Geller said.

Through a diverse array of resources, professors and research labs, students are given the opportunity to pursue a variety of interests in science.

“I’ve had students working at Stanford Medical School, I’ve had students working in the biological sciences with professors at Stanford, we’ve had people working on NASA, we’ve had people with United States Geological Survey, we’ve had people working with small research firms, [and I even] had a student a couple years ago work with the San Francisco Zoo,” Geller said.

According to Jenny Xin, a current student in the Science Research Project course, this course teaches students a variety of skills related to the scientific process.

“I think [Science Research Project] provides a great structure for learning to manage lab time, writing up research papers and giving presentations, and being exposed to all different types of projects in STEM fields, that you wouldn’t necessarily see working in solitude in one lab,” Xin said.

Ultimately, this course allows students to learn about the scientific process through their experiences.

“Our goal is that students will have a better appreciation and a better understanding of the entire scientific process and how rigorous and thoughtful it is,” Geller said.

Through projects such as the Twenty Percent Project and courses like Science Research Project, Paly continues to implement innovative classroom structures that foster learning through experiences.

What to eat at Town and Country on a tight budget Plethora of cheaper eating options across the street for Paly students with small pockets and large appetites GRACE KITAYAMA

STAFF WRITER

A

common New Year’s resolution for students is to spend less money. However, with the ever increasing prices of the student specials at Town & Country, the task of finding a quick and satisfying meal becomes all the more challenging.

For the average student unwilling to spend more than a few dollars on lunch, this goal may seem impossible.

But, for the student willing to look a little harder, many lunch deals can be found for under $4 without being labeled as an overpriced student special.

The “I literally don’t even have a dollar’s worth of change in my backpack” lunch: For the student who woke up too late to pack a lunch or to remember his or her wallet, the possibility of buying lunch is seemingly unattainable. With only some spare change found at the bottom of their backpack, this student is now forced to mooch off of their friends or hopelessly search for a club that is having a pizza party during lunch, because there is no way anything at Town and Country could cost less than a dollar right? Wrong.

Trader Joe’s and CVS, possibly the most dependable of staples of Palo Alto High School students, multiple food options sold for under a dollar. For example, a banana at Trader Joe’s goes for just 19 cents. If you are feeling extra extravagant, pair your banana with a bottle of water for 17 cents, coming to a grand total of 36 cents (not including tax, you do the math). If bananas are not your fruit of choice, Trader Joe’s offers other fruit such as apples and pears for under a dollar, sure to keep your tummy full until your next snack.

The carb lover’s lunch: Bread and butter is possibly one of the most well known deals of Town and Country, found in multiple forms at various places for no more than $2.

Though not as filling as other lunches, bread and butter serve as a quick satisfying snack to fill you up until after school.

At Mayfield Bakery, a demi roll and butter is only $1.50, though they do tend to run out quickly. From Village Cheese House Deli, bread and dip for $2 includes a dutch crunch roll and your choice of their original dipping sauce, marinara or mayonnaise. For a twist on the bread and butter, Tava Indian Kitchen serves its own naan for $2. If bread is not your carb of choice, fries are sold at both

NICK MELVIN/THE CAMPANILE

Sensibly priced meal options at Town and Country include bread from Mayfield, a banana from Trader Joe’s or fries from Gotts’.

Gott’s Roadside and Kirk’s Steakburgers for as low as $2.99.

The “I’m going to take advantage of my fast metabolism while I still have it” lunch: Health is typically a comparatively low priority for high school students buying lunch. Luckily for them, there are plenty of nutrient-empty, sugarfilled snacks for no more than a dollar. In the back of CVS, everything from popcorn to cookies to cereal is available for a quick fix. Trader Joe’s also carries a wide array of chocolate and candy for only a dollar. So why

not take advantage of these great deals and a young metabolism for as long as possible?

The healthy lunch: After eating nothing but junk food for the past few lunches, students will probably be looking for something healthy to make themselves feel better about all of the garbage that you have been consuming. To satisfy that ever-rare green craving, the good and reliable Trader Joe’s has a wide variety of salads and wraps, such as the Lemon Chicken & Arugula Salad

or the Buffalo Chicken Wrap, which are priced at just under $4. For those who find salad unattractive, though, Asian Box offers its own spring rolls for $3.64.

With multiple satisfying and cheap lunch choices can be found all over Paly’s beloved Town and Country, why settle for more expensive and unoriginal choices?

Next time you make your way across the street for lunch, try looking around for a new, cheaper meal before getting in line for your usual overpriced special.

The Campanile

Friday, January 29, 2016

LIFESTYLE Courses to consider for next school year With course selections coming up, students should explore these overshadowed classes KAI ODA

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The harsh reality of being a Second Semester Senior

SPORTS EDITOR

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dvanced Placement (AP) Chemistry, AP Physics, AP United States History, AP BC Calculus and similarly challenging courses are some of the most popular electives at Palo Alto High School. Consequently, non-weighted electives that are not needed for graduation credit such as Kinesiology, Sports Careers, Computer Science (CS) Capstone and Sociology are often neglected by students. While unpopular, these courses give students rare, applicable skills that can be utilized as soon as students leave Paly. For those signing up for courses for the upcoming 2016-17 school year, students should take into consideration these electives which can give them broader skillsets.

CS Capstone CS Capstone is a computer science elective in which students choose a project and spend an entire year transforming their ideas from abstract thoughts to reality. They can be anything from mobile apps to search engines, as long as they are usable by the end of the year.

Junior Jonathan Zwiebel joined CS Capstone because it offered a unique experience.

“You’re not going to [CS Capstone] to learn something, you’re going to that course to do something,” Zwiebel said.

However, this freedom is also one of the reasons why CS Capstone has only one period with less than 20 students. It is daunting to plan out a personal schedule nearly a year in advance, and its untraditional style of learning frightens many students.

For enrolled students, the skills learned in Capstone are directly applicable to careers after high school.

In addition to advancing their programming skills, students have the opportunity to collaborate with others and present their work to professionals in the computer science industry. “[CS] Capstone is a class that gives you life skills beyond computer science in that you have to find people to review your project, you have to look for contacts, you have to do a lot of research and you have to be able to present your project in a professional manner,” Zwiebel said.

Christopher Kuszmaul, a computer science teacher at Paly, started the course to incorporate project-based work into the computer science lane.

“Students needed to learn certain basic skills that had become glaringly obviously lacking when they

AIVA PETRICEKS

LIFESTYLE EDITOR

KAI ODA/THE CAMPANILE

Junior Kent Slaney is currently enrolled in CS Capstone. The course combines project-based learning with computer science.

attempted independent projects in all my CS classes,” Kuszmaul said.

Kuszmaul feels that the skills that CS Capstone teaches are not unique, but universal and essential.

“Perhaps what is unique is that students learn that every problem is valid subject matter in CS Capstone, because virtually every problem has a solution that involves Computer Science,” Kuszmaul said.

Kinesiology Kinesiology studies the movement of the body, the range of motion of muscles and how certain muscle groups are involved in certain injuries. Due to low enrollment, Paly’s Kinesiology course was cancelled in the first semester of the 2015-16 year.

However, junior Michel-Ange Siaba took Kinesiology as an independent studies course, and was surprised by its versatility.

“There are a lot of different ways you can go with kinesiology: the opportunities branch out between physical therapy, trainer and teacher,” Siaba said.

Kinesiology is designed to appeal to students interested in sports, injury treatment and injury prevention.

It gives focused lessons about certain topics such as injury prevention and diagnosis to help students who want to better understand sports injuries or pursue a career related to the treatment of the muscles in the human body.

“When you go into the [athletic] trainer with an injury, they ask you what the mechanism of injury was,” Siaba said. “A person who has taken Kinesiology knows which muscles were involved in the action and can

work with the [athletic] trainer to develop a much more detailed recovery plan.”

Sociology Most juniors will ignore Sociology in favor of AP Psychology when signing up for next year’s classes. However, Sociology is a good option if you’re looking for a less rigorous class.

Sociology is the study of how people interact with each other, particularly focused on the interactions between groups of people. Last semester, the course only had one period with a modest class size of 24 students. Senior Allison Zhang attributes the lack of interest in the class to the category which Sociology is associated with.

“There are very few history electives, and social sciences tend not to be a very popular elective at Paly, but the people who choose Sociology tend to find the class useful and interesting,” Zhang said.

In Sociology, Zhang has learned about types of interactions between different groups of people, and applies her learning to real-world situations, such as how the criminal justice system pits groups of people against each other.

“I think what you learn in the course is very applicable to real life,” Zhang said. “We live in a society and it’s necessary to have an understanding of how people tend to interact. It’s like psychology, but more applied.”

Sports Careers Like Kinesiology, the Sports Careers course focuses on students who are interested in a career related to sports. Sports Careers allows senior

Nick Cook to learn about what career he might want to pursue and what the required skills are to achieve his desired job.

“Our teacher tries to ask speakers in different professions of the sports world to talk to our class about their experiences, why they chose to pursue their career and how they got to where they are,” Cook said.

In breaking from classroom norms, Sports Careers teaches “soft skills” such as networking and interpersonal connections rather than “hard skills” such as problem solving and literary analysis.

“I’ve learned that it is important to keep your relations strong with everybody because you never know which connections could get you a job later,” Cook said.

Cook feels that low student enrollment in Sports Career classes is due to a misunderstanding of the course’s goal and structure. Regardless, the class speakers and career focus makes Sports Careers one of the most interactive courses at Paly.

“I think if we advertised that cool speakers come and talk to the class and it’s not all classwork it would be more successful,” Cook said.

Ultimately, these courses at Paly focus on building unconventional skills, yet are poorly advertised. However, their soft-skills instruction, project-based learning and field-specific focus help students uncover different career options. While students can continue to take a multitude of AP courses and hone their skills in memorization and problem solving, many would benefit from taking some of the aforementioned courses and broadening their skillsets.

Bucket list of must-tries for second semester seniors Before the school year ends seniors should take advantage of fleeting local adventures looking fabulous. Even if you don’t have a date, going with a group of friends is all the merrier. You’ll regret not going to prom, even if it’s just for a bit, when you’re older.

CHRISTINA LE

SENIOR STAFF WRITER

O

ur years at Palo Alto High School are winding down to the end, and every day of second semester seems to go by faster and faster. Before you know it, it’ll be graduation. But don’t let the passing time stop you from making the second semester of your last year be the best it can be. Here are a few ideas to help make your last semester one to remember.

Road trips Road trips are a staple of many bucket lists. They’re super fun and make great memories. There’s something refreshing and rejuvinating about getting away from Palo Alto for a little while and experiencing something new. As most seniors will be leaving the Bay Area for college, it is important to take advantage of all the beauty that surrounds the Bay Area while you are still here. Take an afternoon trip to a destination of your choice. Student favorites include Tunitas Creek Beach, Half Moon Bay, San Francisco and Monterey.

For local favorites, try Foothills Park, Arastradero Preserve, Skyline, Palo Alto Baylands or Lake Lagunita. If you want something different, you can try paddle boating at Shoreline or taking a swim with your friends at the Garden of Eden. Take a short ride through your favorite spots with all

Senior Cut Day Not trying to encourage anyone to be irresponsible, but Senior Cut Day is a tradition at many schools. It’s a chance to do one last thing with your class. Traditionally, seniors plan a camping trip together on Senior Cut Day. It’s a great time to get away from school with your whole class. Think of it as one big party...except extra thrilling because you’re missing class.

AIVA PETRICEKS/THE CAMPANILE

Seniors Kylie Callan, Caitlin Giffen and Kelly Branson take a hike in Half Moon Bay.

your friends, bring a few snacks, load up your road trip playlist and enjoy.

Beach day on the Quad If the beach beckons you, but time and distance stops you from going, bring the beach to you. We have the quad, the sun and friends; add some floats, inflatable swimming pools and slip n’ slides, and you’ve got yourself a beach. Set up a volleyball net on the quad, wear a swimsuit and there you have it — a beach day on the quad.

Repaint the deck Class of 2016 — standing on a deck with the numbers 2015 on it is getting ridiculous. Get your class together and design the deck the way

you want your class to be represented.

Remind future classes that the Class of 2016 is “out of this world.” Don’t let construction stop you from painting a sick deck to represent the Class of 2016.

Go to Prom If you did not go to prom last year for any reason, here’s a second chance.

Some people ditch prom for Coachella, and it’s understandable. But seriously, this is probably your last chance to go to a school dance ever, let alone prom. Just keep in mind that you can go to Coachella any year, and this is probably your last chance to go to prom. It’s also one of the last times your entire class will be together and

Senior Prank As the school year comes to an end, the Class of 2016 is trying to figure out the best way to leave their mark. What better way to be remembered than a hilarious senior prank?

Last year’s Class of 2015’s prank was “I’m Shmacked,” a prank where the senior class trashed the quad with red solo cups and camped out. Between you and me, the prank was somewhat of a failure. Hopefully the Class of 2016 can live up to its name and plan an awesome prank. The perfect senior prank makes your class a legend for years to come. Class of 2016, make your mark.

Streak Four words: Make Paly great again.

For those in the Class of 2016 , the time is here: we are now second semester seniors! After somehow surviving the hell that is junior year, standardized tests and college applications, we are #SSS. Senioritis is here and life is good. We have all seen how SSS is portrayed by our predecessors: it is a semester full of parties, ditching classes, not doing homework and just an overall good time. I thought SSS would be exactly like that the second I got to school on the first day of second semester.

However, I have been very underwhelmed with the SSS life. Let me paint a picture for all my underclassmen Paly Pals on what SSS is really like.

First off, one would think that SSS means all your teachers somehow decide that they won’t give you homework or tests anymore and you just spend a semester playing wiffle ball.

Sadly, that is not the case. Contrary to popular belief, teachers still teach second semester (shocker, I know), and that means a slew of tests and homework. For some reason the College Board does not acknowledge SSS. So because Advanced Placement (AP) tests take place in May, AP classes go on as per usual. However, if one wants to wholeheartedly embrace senioritis, just don’t do work in any of your AP classes. Think of it this way: it is harder to try and get a one on a given AP test than it is to get a five, so, in reality, getting a one actually makes you a true overachiever.

One would also think SSS means parties every night, just because #SSS. As my junior friends would say, one would expect it to be L17. Yet again, that is not the case; in fact, I would say it is dim. This is the first time in over a year and a half where I do not have a task to do after I finish my homework, like study for the ACT or do college applications. So not having anything to do after finishing my homework is a weird idea to me. Much like I do whenever I am in a pickle, I turned to Netflix to solve this problem. Somehow, I got drawn into “The Great British Baking Show” and I am obsessed. I will stay up until 1 a.m. watching my favorite British people participate in a baking competition judged by a super sweet old British lady who I want to read me a British story before I go to sleep every night. Thanks to my new obsession, you could say SSS is pretty L17 so far.

The summer between high school and college is often dedicated to a senior trip; one last hoorah with all of your high school friends before you all leave each other for your respective colleges. We have all seen the photos of senior trips from those older than us: touring Europe, hiking through Hawaii, going to Cabo and other adventurous things like that. A senior trip sounds like the trip of a lifetime and it is very easy to get super excited about it, until you realize how much it’s going to cost. With the money you spend on a senior trip that lasts a week, you can’t even imagine how many cups of Philz coffee you could get or the four shirts (or five, if you’re lucky) you could buy from Free People. For those of you who are like me and do not have the money to go anywhere cool for a senior trip, I hear San Jose is supposed to be really nice during summer.

Hate to break it to you all, but essentially what I have learned from my month of being a second semester senior is that life does not get way more exciting just because you are one semester away from finally graduating high school. Bye Paly Pals!

Friday, January 29, 2016

The Campanile

SPOTLIGHT

B4

ADOLESCENT Inequality in

Unequal LAWs in teenage medical care are resulting in dissent on ethics and fa BACKGROUND

T

eenagers aged 13 to 18 tend to take many things for granted, and sometimes do not realize what rights they do and do not have. This largely includes medical rights, which impact critical decisions. Adolescents may face many crucial decisions about sexual health, such as sexually transmitted disease (STD) treatments, abortions, and mental health.

Such decisions have the potential to produce long-term, sometimes irreversible consequences. Yet, many teenagers fail to realize the consequences of remaining oblivious to their own rights. Teenagers are stuck in somewhat of a ‘between’ age — old enough to comprehend what is going on, yet too young to take full control of their lives.

Effective and honest communication between patients and doctors is the key to making informed and beneficial decisions regarding one’s health, and the system of consent that health care providers adopt — whether it be keeping certain sensitive aspects of adolescent lives private or limiting the involvement of parents in medical decisions plays a large role in ensuring safety for adolescents.

how it is different: teens versus adults

A

lthough children clearly should not have identical rights and autonomy as adults regarding medical decisions, what about adolescents? For example, Senate Bill (SB) 138 — California’s Confidential Health Information Act — guarantees reproductive health care confidentiality and allows adolescents to receive care under a separate insurance plan from their parents. Aside from SB 138 and a few consent laws, adolescents have limitations very similar to those of three year olds.

Inequalities in the system stem from a set age of adulthood or majority in which one is considered independent, which in California is 18. Once patients turn 18, medical records are turned over to the new adult.

For teenagers and all persons under 18, medical records are generally not private. Although not entirely public, these records are available to parents, guardians and school admin-

istration. These records include all health information pertaining to the teenager, with the exception of sensitive reproductive health information.

This is the law because the student may not feel entirely comfortable sharing sensitive information such as the act of STD-screening and sexual activity the student may not feel comfortable sharing with the entire school administration.

play a major role in influencing all decisions in the child’s world, and they can prevent a child from doing what they really want to do,” junior Gaby Pelayo said. “A student can receive a lot of pressure at home, and they don’t want to get shunned or disowned, so there’s a lot of pressure because a student can get trapped in a situation where it is mandatory to submit to their parent’s choice.”

“a student can RECEIVE A LOT OF PRESSURE

AT HOME... [children] Get trapped in a situation where it is mandatory to submit to the parent’s choice.”

Gaby Pelayo Junior If adults share their medical insurance policies with their spouses, they may simply submit a privacy form to remove that person’s oversight and infringement on their privacy. Teenagers have no such right to a privacy form as they are underage, and thus cannot escape being pressured into receiving treatments that their parents view as preferable even if such treatments go against their own will.

“For adults, there isn’t a certain threshold [for breaking confidentiality] — when you’re over 18 and no longer have a legal guardian, there’s no one the doctor will tell if you’re harming yourself,” senior Luma Hamade said. “I also think that adults currently have the right to veto their children’s health care in a lot of situations.”

While privacy concerns are considered in adolescent reproductive health services, it can be argued that adolescent confidentiality should be extended to other aspects of health care that have the potential to present similarly serious health risks such as obesity, chronic disease and more.

Parental involvement in health care situations may make adolescents less likely to disclose certain important pieces of information to their physicians, even though it is necessary for the physicians to provide the best health care possible for their patients.

“When parents get really involved in [their child’s] private lives, they

A 2002 study by Planned Parenthood published in The Journal of the American Medical Association found that “59 percent of female adolescents would stop using health care services, including delaying testing and declining treatment for HIV and STDs, if parental consent were required. Astonishingly, 99% of participants in the survey indicated they would continue to have sex.”

Furthermore, each adolescent’s health care has already been affected by decisions made by parents.

Parents choose their child’s physician, which most children have no say in. A good physician is key to understanding and feeling comfortable with one’s health, but adolescents generally do not choose their own doctors.

Dr. Edwin Hui of the University of Hong Kong provides an example of excessive parental control in which a 15-year old referred to as APY had acquired a tumor. The doctors had strongly recommended chemotherapy, but could not proceed without parental consent. Due to APY’s father’s cultural beliefs, the father decided to take APY to his sister, allegedly also a doctor, against APY’s will. APY’s aunt did not offer chemotherapy and APY died from the tumor.

Another instance of controversial parental judgment lies in the example of Christian Scientists, who do not believe in doctors but instead believe in healing through prayer. In 1992,

12-year-old Andrew Wantland developed and died of diabetes within several months, but his Christian Scientist parents neglected medical care for Andrew. Andrew’s treatment instead consisted of prayers from his father, grandmother and a Christian Science practitioner.

why parents usually stay involved

TEXT ANNALISE ETHAN

F

rom the moment parents see the blue line on their pregnancy test, they are constantly making decisions that affect their child’s health. When the child is but one month old, parents are already deciding whether or how to vaccinate their child. Some vaccinations are mandatory to get into schools, but parents can bypass this for philosophical or religious reasons. According

to a recent study by the Center for Disease Control, it was found that since 2006 and to 2015, vaccination rates in 18 to 35 month old infants have decreased by 3 percent.

The legal justification for restricting adolescent medical autonomy lies in the presumption that adolescents lack the maturity necessary to make informed medical choices without their parents’ help.

The current system uses cognitive assessments — or intelligence tests — to determine adolescent maturity. Studies show that on average,

KNOW YOUR RIGHTS california minors consent laws (all ages)

Minors can be the solitary consenter to birth control, pregnancy test and sexual assault care (although for sexual assault care, providers to notify parents)

california minors consent laws (12 YEARS AND OLDER)

Minors over 12 years of age can be the sole consenter for all STD an alcohol and drug counseling and outpatient mental health tre

Confidentiality of Medical Information Act (CMIA)

Prohibits the sharing, selling and distribution of medical infor

Senate Bill 138 AND Assembly Bill 499

Minors 12 years of age or older may have confidential access to sen such as sexual and reproductive health care and be the sole consent related to these areas

MATURE MINOR DOCTRINE

Allows physicians to grant minors that possess the maturity to choos particular health treatment the ability to do so without parental

DESIGN BY: ANNALISE WANG, STAFF WRITER & GRACE

Friday, January 29, 2016

The Campanile

SPOTLIGHT

B5

the realm of Healthcare

airness of current healTHcare policies in which teenagers remain uninformed

T BY: E WANG & N TEO

ting, abortion s may attempt

nd HIV testing, eatment

rmation

nsitive services to treatments

se or reject a l consent

A timeline of adolescent medical rights legislation 1973: roe v. wade Minors 12 years or older may consent to medical care related to the prevention of an STD

1981: title x Amendment

1997: American Academy of pediatrics v. lungren

Encourages minors to include parents in medical decisions

Minors may consent to abortions without parental notification

1970: Title X of the public health service act

1974: Family educational rights and privacy act

1983: Planned parenthood v. matheson

Family planning services available to all

Parents have access to all of their children’s health records

Parental notification for contraceptives ruled unconstitutional

individuals become fully capable of understanding medical conditions and their consequences by the age of 14.

Legislature tends to overlook this, assuming that adolescents do not understand their medical rights or realize the importance of their actions.

However, there are still a few flaws in that system as it is incredibly difficult for physicians and the legal system to determine the threshold for when an adolescent can appropriately consent to health care treatments without parental supervision.

“The problem is that some of the standard capacity assessments that they use are really just cognitive assessments,” Director of Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics David Magnus said. “There’s an emerging literature on the developing brain that shows that even if [adolescents] have the cognitive capacity, it may not be the dominant operant module of the brain that is guiding the decision-making process. Adolescents might have emotional centers that swamp cognitive centers, and the developmental process may not really finish until about 25 years of age.”

Parents have a lot of control over their children’s health care because teenagers are known for giving into peer and familial pressure, since adolescents are still figuring out who they are. This leads to greater risks of rash or uninformed decisions regarding their health.

Additionally, health care providers encourage parental involvement.

Palo Alto High School Adolescent Counseling Services (ACS) Site Coordinator Kelly Sumner explains that it is important to acknowledge the benefits of parental involvement in decision-making.

“We try as much as possible to involve parents,” Sumner said. “If parents are a positive resource for the student, [they] should not be overlooked. It can be overlooked, and sometimes therapeutic programs for adolescents veer a little too much on that ‘don’t involve parents’ attitude.”

However, there are several reasons why parents should have the right to control over their child’s health treatment. Not only do parents pay for their child’s medical care, they influence in all major decisions is an intrinsic aspect of the parent-child relationship.

Also, many insurance policies detail that major portions of the child’s health visits to be disclosed to parents. Some children give complete control to and respect their parents immensely, which is not wrong in itself, as most parents simply want what is best for their kids. However, they may use their own views as context in decision-making, and for that reason, parental involvement is not a universal benefit.

“Judging confidentiality and the fairness of consent issues should be done on a case-by-case basis,” senior

Women have the right to be the sole consent for an abortion

“We wouldn’t [break confidentiality] unless there’s a safety concern involved,” Sumner said.

It is difficult to define that safety threshold, especially because it requires foresight rather than a judgment about the child’s past experiences. Ultimately, it is up to physicians to determine whether patients are at risk of imminent harm.

In particular, Sumner cited an example in which breaking confidentiality was necessary for the well-being of the individual and community.

The individual had met with ACS multiple times before the individual’s parents became involved, but Sumner and the ACS team felt that the individual presented a significant safety concern after several meetings, and decided to involve not only the parents but also a county clinician, thus breaking the patient’s complete

david magnus DIRECTOR OF STANFORD CENTER FOR BIOMEDICAL ETHICS

maturity and safety

T

here is only one way for adolescents to bypass all parental control — testifying and proving in a court of law that they are a “mature minor.” This removal of parental control is only given under extenuating circumstances, which primarily include physical abuse, mental illness of parents and neglect, in addition to a high level maturity demonstrated by the minor.

Essentially, when the parents are not abusive, mentally sound and the child is not being physically harmed, there is no legal way to remove parental control.

Medical decisions regarding birth control, hormone regulation and sexual activity are the most apparent instances of parental influence.

Some parents have strong feelings on the subject of pregnancy, and sexual health. It is often difficult for a child to approach the parent and discuss matters such as these if she does not feel safe or heard.

The respect for autonomy is reason for health care providers to look for ways to maintain confidentiality between patients and doctors. In general, doctors and therapists want to respect confidentiality as much as possible, although the status quo limits it.

E KITAYAMA, STAFF WRITER & BO FIELD, DESIGN EDITOR

confidentiality. Sumner believes that ACS made the right decision in doing so.

“I think it went relatively well — the outcome was positive,” Sumner said. “The student is in a much better place at this time.”

Determining a situation of imminent harm is difficult to evaluate, and it would be nearly impossible to construct laws that are able to cover every single scenario.

“Permitting adolescent autonomy has to be done on a case-by-case basis,” Magnus said. “We have laws in place in these different domains, but even with these laws, they give a lot of discretion to physicians. Every case is different — it matters what the burden-benefit ratio is in the decision, it matters whether or not parents being involved is beneficial, it depends on how crucial it is for the adolescent to get treatment. You have to have assessments of the maturity of the particular patient, and you have to have assessments of the circumstances.”

a look into the future

I

Ensures confidential access to sexual and reproductive healthcare services

2011: ab 499

“Permitting adolescent autonomy has to be done on a case-by-case basis. We have laws in place, but even with these laws, they give a lot of discretion to physicians.”

Siddharth Srinivasan said. “A lot of the final decision depends on the child’s relationship with [his or her] parents.”

2013: SB138

n California, recent confidentiality laws have been in support of greater adolescent autonomy.

Even with legal inconsistencies across the 50 states, the adolescent health care system is looking for the best way to respect autonomy without sacrificing safety.

“In an ideal world, parents would be involved,” Hamade said. “But I definitely respect and understand

kids who can’t do that because there are parents who are not very openminded and protection of the child is more important than parental consent at the end of the day.”

Health care systems have been trying to find other ways to adequately inform and guide adolescent decision-making to protect adolescents from harm. A shared decisionmaking model, in which a patient works collaboratively with both the physician and his or her parents to find treatments that all parties assent to, has been recommended.

However, it often proves difficult for three parties to come to an agreement on a treatment option, so a perfectly shared decision rarely actually occurs.

“Shared decision-making in practice doesn’t happen for anybody, period,” Magnus said. “If you look at the empirical data based on recorded conversations, the elements of shared decision-making were met less than 9 percent of the time. Other studies show 0 percent. It’s an ideal process, but it almost never happens that way.”

Shared decision-making requires all parties to be completely educated of the situation and the consequences of each alternative action so that they can make informed decisions, but rarely are individuals fully informed about their own health.

“What will happen is that physicians will give the patient incomplete information in ways that are incomprehensible, and then the decision will be what the physician wants,” Magnus said. “These patients are often educated people too, but they have absolutely no idea what’s going on. If you think patients make decisions for themselves most of the time, you are mistaken. Informed assent almost never truly happens.”

Poor communication is the primary detriment to any feasible shared decision-making process. While Magnus believes doctors have the responsibility to inform patients, patients themselves — and especially adolescents — are not entirely honest all of the time in communicating their needs.

“It is absolutely the burden and duty of health care providers to simplify explanations of treatments so that patients are more informed when making decisions,” Magnus said. “But [patients] are often embarrassed to tell doctors certain facts, which are what they really need to know to run all the right tests.”

The solution to that problem may be to facilitate confidential discussions between the adolescent and patient. Physicians must judge based on instinct whether an adolescent is being entirely honest.

“How doctors should be acting is all based on the circumstances at hand,” Srinivasan said. “The child’s health interests should definitely be the primary goal of any health care system.”

Friday, January 29, 2016

The Campanile

B6 LIFESTYLE Kid Cudi perplexes fans with subversive new album Cudi fuses his hip-hop origins with grunge stylings and philosophy to realize his newest misunderstood concept BO FIELD

DESIGN EDITOR

S

uccess as a popular musician is coveted not only for the comfortable lifestyle but also for the freedom to experiment more as an artist without worrying about alienating a supporting fanbase. Examples of individuals who take this freedom to its extremes can be found in Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins, who recently completed an 8-hour long improvised synthesizer performance sonically interpreting Herman Hesse’s novel “Siddhartha,” and Shia Labeouf, who transformed his entire public persona into a conceptual piece of performance art to equal parts appreciation and confusion. Recently joining these ranks is hip-hop saviorturned-pariah Kid Cudi, whose latest double album release “Speedin’ Bullet 2 Heaven” was universally panned as a huge disappointment by music critics and former fans alike. But is the album genuinely bad, or does it actually just adhere to the tradition of pop icons exploring their potential for unfiltered pretentiousness?

The syrupy, minimalist guitar

riffs and clean tones complimented

by Cudi’s droning vocals and serotonin-deficient lyricism almost perfectly emulate the feeling of mid-90s alternative demo tapes.

“Speedin’ Bullet” is possibly the most purely grunge album to come out in the decades since the genre’s heyday. The syrupy, minimalist guitar riffs and clean tones complimented by Cudi’s droning vocals and serotonin-deficient lyricism almost perfectly emulate the feeling of mid90s alternative demo tapes. The areas where the album commonly earns its flak can instead be attributed to the

BO FIELD/THE CAMPANILE

Mike Judge’s characters Beavis and Butthead, who appear on Kid Cudi’s newly released album “Speedin Bullet 2 Heaven’s,” proclaim the album the “greatest record of all time.”

work’s purposefully subversive spirit which serves as a tribute to the irony and disrespect that were staples of the grunge era’s philosophy. There’s a reason why one of Kurt Cobain’s favorite albums was The Shaggs’ “Philosophy of the World.” Its tortured existence as a terrifying musical abortion created by three sisters forced into playing music by their controlling father perfectly exemplifies the existentially irreverent tone that Nirvana strove to emulate in their persona and songwriting (see: “Rape Me,” Cobain performing in a wheelchair at Reading Festival in 1992). When Cudi entitles a song “Judgemental C**t,” or briefly segues into Jar Jar Binks-esque babbling and animal noises, his tonguein-cheek homage to the beauty that Cobain and others found in offensively misguided artistic decisions shines through.

These snide moments distract casual listeners from the genuine greatness that exists in the album’s peaks. The slowly trodding title track merges incessant, slowed hip-hop drum loops with haunting synths and rhythm guitars to complement the hauntingly angsty lyrics detailing Cudi’s pure stream of consciousness along his personal journey.

Where other current or former rappers play it safe melodically with mainly R&B-inspired crooning, Cudi forges a completely new direction, turning his aggressive baritone into something closer to a howl at points.

The raw emotion present could make any teary, lovelorn Drake verse seem sociopathic in comparison. The rough-hewn fuzz of Cudi’s guitar and his deep grating voice work well in conjunction to create a unique sound

that is somehow relaxing in its ennui yet constantly unnerving.

The raw emotion present could make any teary, lovelorn Drake verse seem sociopathic in comparison.

The key to understanding Cudi’s concept lies within the intermittent skits, in which Beavis and Butthead discuss the album’s certain status as the “greatest record of all time.” Cudi foresaw that his record would inspire the kind of condescension and derision that it did. Including the ironic mouth-breathing hyperbole of this skit early on works to dispel any illusions listeners might hold about Cudi attempting to make a perfect or crowd-pleasing work. He even painstakingly (yet still in a half-smiling,

self-deprecating manner) lays out his chief influence in the making of the album: “Word to Kurt,” Beavis and Butthead sarcastically snivel at each other before their muffled guffaws fade out to make way for the next agonizingly unfiltered song.

Later they return, and Butthead soothes Beavis, who is having an existential crisis due to the bleak disparity of Cudi’s lyrical content. “Take some of these mushrooms that Cudi gave us,” Butthead advises consolingly. This serves to break the fourth wall and rebuttal the inevitably confused and distraught listeners — Cudi understands that the whirlwind of his tortured mind is somewhat inaccessible, and recommends embracing his unique brand of insanity in order to retain your own mental faculties during the experience. Do as Butthead says and take the mushrooms, Beavis.

American Idol airs final season New video games to New singing competition shows overtake iconic 15-year-old TV series

look out for in 2016

Introducing five of the most promising games NOAH SMITH

SENIOR STAFF WRITER

M COURTSEY OF PARADE

Keith Urban, Jennifer Lopez and Harry Connick Jr. are the current judges on the show and will be joined by new guest judges.

JOANNA FALLA

STAFF WRITER

T

he hit TV singing competition “American Idol” will be starting its fifteenth and final season, the FOX network announced last May. Originally created by Simon Fuller, who is also known for other talent shows such as “So You Think You Can Dance,” the show has been cancelled by the FOX network for undisclosed reasons.

While many may argue its viewership has declined from its highest peak in season five with almost 30 million viewers, it was still the most popular show on broadcast for eight of its seasons. Starting in 2002 with the original judges, record producer Randy Jackson, singer-songwriter Paula Abdul and renowned critic and show creator Simon Cowell, the show was once a place for aspiring musicians all across America to have a chance at fame.

What is not as openly discussed; however, is the likelihood of the winner’s continuous fame after the show ends. While artists such as Carrie Underwood, Kelly Clarkson and Jennifer Hudson were able to use the show as a launch pad for their multi-million dollar careers, many of the other winners were not as lucky.

The show’s prize is a contract with a major record dealer and the chance to

create up to six albums, but many of the past winners have made only one or two well-known albums before disappearing out of the spotlight. Not only was the chance of staying in the spotlight after winning slim, but the viewer voting aspect was not taken seriously.

For example Sanjaya Malakar finishing in seventh place on season six of the show was the epitome of the show’s lack of maturity. Barely making it past Simon’s harsh remarks in auditions, Malakar was able to advance to the finals based on viewers voting for him as a joke. He was unrightfully able to take the spot of a much better singer because the vague guidelines of the show allowed for it.

As the show progressed in 2010, many judges had come and gone as the show fell into a predictable pattern full of pretty faces and sob stories for the viewers’ pleasure. In 2011, however, a new show featuring a singing competition began: “The Voice,” featuring current popular singers such as Christina Aguilera, Cee Lo Green, Adam Levine and Blake Shelton.

Hosted by Carson Daly, the “blind audition” show immediately rose in popularity and is currently on its ninth season in only five years of existing with a tenth one debuting in February. The singers set to audition have already been through several

different set of judges before being deemed good enough to perform on national television. This wildly contrasts “American Idol” in the sense that the show heavily relied on getting the bulk of its views from the first auditions featuring tone-deaf wannabes with a sad story.

The show differs from American Idol in the simple manner that everyone who came onto the show was already a talented singer. There are no joke auditions on the show, and the stakes are high to be picked by one of the judges to be added to his or her team. “The Voice” is everything “American Idol” was not: it is both serious and light-hearted while also making competition between the contestants and judges alike.

Coincidentally, it was only when “The Voice” was launched that “American Idol” was dethroned as the viewer’s No. 1 choice on broadcast television. When “The Voice” opened the doors for a change in talent competition, other talent shows such as “The Sing-Off,” “The Glee Project” and “Pitch Slapped” were created in the hopes of catching the singing competition wave that the big names had created. While “American Idol” will still be missed by millions of its faithful viewers, the show’s cancellation gives way for other modern and original shows to gain traction without the shadow of “American Idol.”

any excellent games came out last year, with the release of titles like “Battlefront,” “Fallout 4,” “Witcher 3”, and “Rainbow Six: Siege.” This year will also have some big titles, as well as new games that many have high expectations for. Most of the games will be part of a pre-existing gaming franchise, but a few are games that will start their own franchise or be stand-alone games. These are just a few of the games which are highly anticipated to come out this year.

XCOM 2: PC (Mac, Linux, and Windows); Feb. 5 The new “XCOM” title takes place 20 years after the first game. It occurs in a world where humanity has lost the fight against the alien threat that has established a new world order. It will still use the strategy turn-based combat system that worked well in the first game. It will take everything from the previous one and kick it up a notch –– all the weapons and equipment will be more powerful, but so will the enemies. The preorder price for all consoles is $60.

Tom Clancy’s The Division: Xbox One, PS4, PC; March 8 This new Tom Clancy game is one of the more talked about games currently. “The Division” was delayed multiple times and was finally given an official release date. The gameplay will be an online multiplayer game, with similar gameplay to Activision’s Destiny that came out on September 9, 2014. Players can go solo or join up with friends to retake New York City from gangs of criminals who have made it dangerous for anyone to venture outside their homes. The preorder price for all consoles is $60.

Hitman: PC (Windows), Xbox One, PS4; March 11 The new “Hitman” game will be the sixth in its series. It will likely

have a similar style of gameplay as the previous games. The graphics are very high quality and up-to-date, as is the standard of similar games. The game will feature new locations, missions and hits at set periods during the year.

The end of the “initial storyline” will come around before the start of the winter holiday season. The preorder price for all consoles is $60.

No Man’s Sky: PS4, PC (Windows); to be announced “No Man’s Sky” is a highly anticipated upcoming game originally announced by developer and publisher Hello Games in 2013. It was highly acclaimed by critics, winning “Best Original Game” and “Best Independent Game” during the event, in addition to its “Special Commendation for Innovation” award. “No Man’s Sky” is a science-fiction game that allows players to explore and survive in an infinite procedurally generated universe. This means that planets and solar systems will be built as you play, and each will be different from the previous one. “Whether a distant mountain or a planet hanging low on the horizon, you can go there,” the “No Man’s Sky” website said. “You can fly seamlessly from the surface of a planet to another, and every star in the sky has a sun that you can visit.”

There is currently no listed price for the game.

Dishonored 2: PC (Windows), Xbox One, PS4; Release Date to be announced Not much is known about the sequel to “Dishonored.” It will allow the players to choose from one of two main characters to play as for the entirety of the game.

There wil be a new character, Emily Kaldwin, who has three different powers. One of Emily’s powers, Far Reacher, allows her to pull herself to another building or character. Her other powers are Shadow Walk and Mesmerize, but not much is known about what those powers do yet. The preorder price for all consoles is $60.

The Campanile

Friday, January 29, 2016

LIFESTYLE B7 Thyme offers different take on classic cuisine New restaurant’s dynamic menu, affordable prices, welcoming ambiance lend to pleasant dining experience CLAIRE DENNIS

NEWS AND OPINION EDITOR

MAGGIE ROSENTHAL

SENIOR STAFF WRITER

T

ucked just a block away from the bustling University Avenue and its trendy new restaurants and coffee shops is a new restaurant, Thyme, which sits on the corner of Hamilton Avenue and Cowper Street. A refreshing change from the typically overpriced and overrated cuisine downtown, Thyme serves fresh, quality food at reasonable prices. Since just recently opening in late December, Thyme currently only serves lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. on Mondays through Saturdays, although they expect to open for dinner service in the coming months.

Thyme maximizes its small corner location and creates a welcoming ambience. The wood detailing throughout the interior exudes a modern feel.

On the contrary, Thyme’s exterior is lacking, with small simple signage which can slip into the background and may cause passerby to skip over this superior restaurant.

The daily rotating menu is fairly simple and limited, as it usually includes a soup, a few entrees and a couple desserts. The menu changes based on the availability of ingredients at fresh markets, but consistently includes more popular options, such as pasta and the steak sandwich.

The soups are simple yet hearty, with large and satisfying portion sizes. The potato and sweet corn chowder ($7.50) delivers with bold flavors.

The chowder is a fairly thin soup, and it is not cream-based as one might expect. The soup benefits from the un-

MAGGIE ROSENTHAL/THE CAMPANILE

Left: Thyme’s storefront on the corner of Hamilton Avenue and Cowper Street. Right: Thyme’s steak sandwich with grilled onions is accompanied by a simple green salad.

expected whole kernels of corn added in and its unique blend of spices.

The steak sandwich with caramelized onions ($12.50) is filling. The lightly seasoned, tender steak pairs well with the sweetness of the onions.

The sandwich is served on hearty artisan bread, with a thick crust and chewy interior. The bread could be a bit robust for some tastes; however, its moist texture cannot be beaten.

Several entrees, including the steak sandwich, come paired with a small side salad. The combination of simple greens and light mustard vinaigrette provide a lighter contrast to the filling steak.

Thyme also delivers with its bacon tart ($10.50), a flavorful play on a classic quiche. The tart features a buttery and flaky crust, but not enough

of it. The crisp, saltiness of the pork on top of the quiche will please any bacon lover.

Thyme’s delicious and healthy lunch options allow diners to treat themselves to a refreshing meal without breaking their wallets.

Another clever entree is the asparagus risotto ($9.50). Thyme manages to take a traditionally heavy dish and make it light with the addition of fresh vegetables and reduced cream.

The creamy risotto is complimented by the added texture of green beans.

For dessert, Thyme elevates the classic cheese platter ($7.00) into an original treat, featuring a mouthwa-

tering combination of warm goat cheese and roasted apricots, with pine nuts and crackers for an added crunch.

The dish brings sweet and savory elements to dessert. The bitter and sour goat cheese plays off of the honey and tender roasted apricots. Together with crackers and crisp pine nuts, this dessert hits the mark.

Thyme’s delicious and healthy lunch options allow diners to treat themselves to a refreshing meal without breaking their wallets. Entrees come in at around $10 to $13, making them remarkably affordable considering the quality of the ingredients and the downtown Palo Alto location. Appetizers, soups and desserts are offered for around $7 to $9, making them a reasonable add-on

to any meal and even better to share with friends or family.

Service is prompt and friendly, adding to the inviting atmosphere.

Waiters and waitresses are well-informed and willing to answer questions about the restaurant and its menu. They are especially helpful in assisting with dietary restrictions or allergies.

Overall, Thyme is a diamond in the rough of Downtown Palo Alto.

The new restaurant offers clever spins on classic dishes, fresh and healthy ingredients, and a great value. With its inventive and ever changing menu, and affordable prices, Thyme can quickly become a go-to restaurant for any diner in search of a refreshing bite. Be sure to check out Thyme for a quick and satisfying meal.

Learn to salsa at Los YouTubers extend reach to movies Salseros de Stanford Personalities discover varied success in alternate forms of media Dance socials are perfect for people of all comfort levels and provide health benefits SUSANA CACHO

SENIOR STAFF WRITER

W

ith the new year comes New Year’s resolutions.

Many resolutions have to do with getting out of their comfort zone and trying something adventurous, instead of just staying in on a Saturday night and binge watching Netflix. It turns out that salsa dancing may just be the perfect activity to accomplish this.

Los Salseros de Stanford is a student organization at Stanford University which offers various salsa dancing workshops, lessons and events throughout the year. Los Salseros de Stanford host social events open to everyone about once a month at Stanford University. The price for students with any student ID card is $5 and $10 for general admission.

If one wants to join the salsa lesson, there is an extra $2 fee.

A typical night begins with a salsa dancing lesson taught by a member of the Salseros de Stanford organization. After about half an hour of learning the basic steps such as the turn and the crossbody leap, the whole class is split into two groups. A circle is formed and one is required to partner up with a person, preferably of the opposite sex.

I love the salsa social events at Stanford because [they’re] a different way to be brought out of your comfort zone and just have the time of your life with your friends.

Maya Ghai Gunn High School Senior The instructors stand in the middle and give a demonstration with the steps the rest of the class can follow.

Every few minutes one person from each pair rotates around the circle so people can have the opportunity to dance with others. Though the lesson is not required, it is very helpful, especially for beginners.

Once it is 9 p.m., it is time for social dancing. The lights turn off and salsa music begins playing. If one does not have a partner to dance with, there are plenty of single people towards the back, waiting to ask or

to be asked to dance. At first, it can be awkward to dance with a stranger because salsa dancing requires a lot of communication. However, after dancing with this person for the duration of a three minute song, one will begin to feel more comfortable.

The dancing usually continues late into the night, until 2 a.m. Even if one has no sense of rhythm when it comes to music and dancing, it is acceptable because there are dancers of all skill and talent levels, ranging from beginners to advanced and everyone is encouraged to attend.

These social events also have many different special performances from various groups around the Bay Area.

If one decides to give these events a try, not only will one learn to dance salsa, but also a variety of other interesting dances such as bachata and merengue.

According to Henry M. Gunn High School senior Maya Ghai, the skills she learned from salsa dancing also helped her in many other aspects of her everyday life.

“I love the salsa social events at Stanford because [they’re] a different way to be brought out of your comfort zone and just have the time of your life with your friends,” Ghai said. “I would not really recommend going single but with a group of friends because everyone is willing to learn to dance with people they’ve just met.

It’s a great way to meet people and try something new.”

One does not necessarily have to attend these events by his or herself; it is also fun to bring some friends along. There are many health benefits associated to salsa dancing such as improved balance and memory. There is also correlation between dancing and emotional health. Dancing can help improve one’s mood because it releases many endorphins, which diminish pain and trigger positive feelings.

If one is interested in attending the social events hosted by Los Salseros de Stanford, one can check out their Facebook page or their website for more information on more upcoming events.

The next salsa social will held on Friday, Feb. 5 at the Black Community Services Center in Stanford University at 8 p.m.

PHOTO COURTESY OF IMDB.COM

PHOTO COURTESY OF IMDB.COM

PHOTO COURTESY OF TV.TWCC.COM

Many YouTubers, including Smosh, The Fine Brothers and Tyler Oakley have used their fanbases to expand beyond YouTube.

SAMUEL YUN

STAFF WRITER

S

mosh, The Fine Bros and Tyler Oakley have all grown to become well-known names in the YouTube community. Over the past decade, YouTube has slowly been evolving into a major medium of entertainment. With increased popularity, popular YouTube personalities have gathered millions of loyal followers who watch their daily videos and support whatever new venture they may have. But, of course, these growing channels are looking for ways to expand beyond online video sharing. Using their large fanbases, many YouTubers are now launching themselves onto the big screen and into the realm of TV shows.

Smosh At one point, Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox had the most subscribers on YouTube for their channel Smosh, known for its crude humor and appeal towards younger audiences.

Smosh currently is the fourth most subscribed channel on YouTube with 21 million subscribers. The duo has been posting YouTube videos for over 10 years and recently released their new movie aptly titled “Smosh: The Movie.”

The comedy film features several other prominent YouTubers including Jenna Mourey, who is better known as Jenna Marbles, Shane Dawson and Dominic Sandoval. The script was written by Eric Falconer, the same person behind CBS’s hit show “How I Met Your Mother.”

Although the movie received mixed reviews by critics, Smosh fans were

thoroughly delighted to see what essentially was a 2-hour YouTube video.

It took the number 1 spot on Apple’s iTunes comedy chart soon after it was released on iTunes and DVD. Padilla and Hecox have also recently released their first scripted series, called “Part Timers.” The comedy series is being shown for free, exclusively on Smosh’s channel, and is also one of the first productions that is being funded under YouTube’s original-content strategy. This initiative was funded by Google in order to help kickstart Google TV by bringing original and produced content onto YouTube. The first season of “Part Timers” is set to include 11 episodes, with the first one debuting on Jan. 11.

The Fine Bros Brothers Benny and Rafi Fine gained their Youtube fame by making videos that show kids, teens, elders and even YouTubers reacting to popular internet fads, including songs, technology and other various topics.

Their channel, “The Fine Bros,” now has more than 13 million subscribers and 3.3 billion views, and is currently the 16th most subscribed channel on YouTube.

“React to That” was a reality TV series created by Benny and Rafi Fine that premiered Dec. 15, 2014 on Nickelodeon and was an elongated version of the react videos that the duo has been producing on their channel. Every episode was split into different challenge and questionnaire segments in which children, teens or celebrities respond to a common trend or item. However, due to unsustainable viewership, the show

came to an end after one season on Jan. 1, 2015.

Not deterred by this setback, the Fine Brothers launched a new TV series called “Six Degrees of Everything,” which aired on TruTV on Aug. 18, 2015. This comedy reality show is based on the theory of six degrees of separation, which states that something can be connected to something else in six steps or less. On the pilot episode, The Fine Brothers demonstrated how Albert Einstein relates to breast implants in six steps.

With this show, fans are able to experience the well-known combination of humor and dorkiness that the duo commonly explores.

Tyler Oakley This YouTube sensation has spent the past eight years posting short snippets of his everyday life on his channel. To this day, Oakley has gathered nearly eight million subscribers on YouTube with 537 million views, and many more followers on his various social media platforms. Recently, Oakley has transitioned from posting short videos to a full length film.

His documentary, “Snervous Tyler Oakley”, released on Dec. 11, 2015 on iTunes, is a film that looks deeper into his life and relationship with family, followers and fame.

Coming out as gay nearly five years ago, “Snervous Tyler Oakley” explores the struggles that he has had coming out to his parents and large fan base, as well as judgement that came along with it. The documentary was received tremendously well by his loving supporters, as they were given the privilege to look behind the scenes of the cheerful YouTube persona.

Friday, January 29, 2016

The Campanile

LIFESTYLE

B8

UNDERNEATH THE DRAG Beyond the makeup, hair and glamour, drag queens are more than what meets the eye

TEXT AND DESIGN BY BETHANY SHIANG

P

icture a strong, tenacious woman. Beyoncé, Hillary Clinton, Oprah Winfrey or Monica Beverly Hillz might come to mind. Three out of the four names will be familiar to most, but the name Monica Beverly Hillz will only be recognized by a few. Hillz is a drag queen — a term used to refer to as a man entertaining an audience dressed up as a sensationalized woman.

However, those that do drag will define it as something more significant. Each drag queen is different ,with his or her own personal reasons for doing drag and each sends a unique message.

Drag queens are most commonly known for their big hair, flashy clothing, layers of makeup, high heels and sassy remarks. Drag television shows cover a spectrum of emotion and entertainment one that is quickly understood in the reality show, “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” where drag queens are assigned to different challenges include singing, dancing, acting and more.

“A drag queen is the ultimate showgirl; a drag queen is there to uplift you, make you happy, and take your mind off of whatever stress or challenges that are going on in your life for those minutes during the show, ”

season five contestant on “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” Hillz said.

Tammie Brown, who was a contestant on the pilot seasons of both “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and “RuPaul’s All Star Drag Race,” is a full time drag queen, an uncommon occurrence in the drag community. During the day, Brown practices Buddhism and runs her daily errands. By the afternoon, however, Brown begins preparing for her job as a drag queen, with bags of makeup that cover the table with powders of bright colors, cans of hairspray and copious amounts of glamorous outfits on hangers.

Every night, Brown performs in night clubs performing songs, lip syncs and dances. Brown is a fulltime entertainer, but at the heart of her performance is a message to her audience to stay true to oneself and to not be afraid to express one’s ideals. Brown’s message is inspired from her high school experience, a time when his peers did not accept her as a drag queen.

“I love that drag is able to inspire others and that other people have been uplifted and inspired to express themselves and I have been able to share that with others in a positive way,” Brown said.

On the other side of the spectrum lies Sophilya Leggz; a Bay Area drag queen who began drag as a way to use makeup and feminine clothing to feel beautiful. After dozens of counseling sessions, and ultimate questions of whether he wanted to identify as a woman, Leggz concluded that he was not transgender. Unlike many of the traditional drag queens, Leggz performs an alternative style of drag, he prefers gothic, punk, rock and metal styles, emphasized by his black and silver makeup, head bangs and dark outfits.

“I identify myself as a bisexual, probably more straight than bisexual,” L eggz

DESIGN BY JESSICA WONG & ASHLEY ZHANG

said. “I liked to dress in feminine clothing and I enjoy making music so when I found drag it just went hand in hand.”

Drag in its most understood form is defined as a man dressed up as a woman. This is misconstrued by many to mean that drag queens are transgender or that they want to be women. Although there are transgender women who are also drag queens, this is not true for all of them.

“Drag is more of a look and feel and has nothing to do with one’s sexuality,” Brown said. “Drag is an art form and it allows me to express myself.”

banned from the event. The founders argued that drag turned gender identity into a joke.

“If there weren’t any drag queens there would not be a gay movement because drag queens are the one’s that are out and about,” Brown said. “They are not hiding in a closet and they aren’t closeted because there is no way to hide in the closet if you are a drag queen.”

In an attempt to create transgender equality, the word “cisgender” was introduced to the Oxford English Dictionary in July of 2015 in order to gradually replace

“A drag queen is the ultimate showgirl; a drag queen is there to uplift you, make you happy, and take your mind off of whatever stress or challenges that are going on in your life for those three minutes during the song.”

Monica Beverly Hillz RuPaul contestant

While filming season five of “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” Hillz was hiding a big secret, which she claimed distracted her from the competition.

Near the end of the second episode, Hillz admitted that she was not only a drag queen, but also a transgender woman.

At a young age, Hillz was abandoned and felt insecure, which led her to do drugs and start escorting.

Her past serves as the inspiration for the message she advocates through drag to her audience today.

“My darkest time was when I escorted and put myself in the craziest positions where I was robbed, almost raped and had a gun to my head,” Hillz said. “Now I hear these stories about these girls with the sadness, the depression, the past and nobody really wants to talk about it. [I thought] if I could talk about that, maybe this would be a chance to look at myself in the mirror and reflect. I needed to do drag and experience it to help me and other people.”

Ever since the Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that same-sex couples could marry nationwide, other groups are emerging to challenge cultural norms and beliefs, including the issue between the drag and transgender community.

During the 2015 Glasgow Pride Parade, drag queens were

the words “gay” and “straight.” The word “cisgender” does not refer to sexual orientation, but refers to gender identity to recognize that everyone has a gender identity.

It has been used to characterize some drag queens without calling them gay. However, not all drag queens consider themselves cisgender, transgender or gay.

“I in no way consider myself as a cisgendered male,” Jinkx Monsoon, season five winner on “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” said in an interview with ThinkProgress. “I think the closest thing I would refer to myself as transgendered or agendered. I really don’t consider myself a man or a woman. I just kind of float in between and that’s how I’ve always felt.”

Recently, there has been a progressive societal shift to be more inclusive with greater topics that trans-activists address such as bathroom access, name changes and hate crimes. Some drag queens do not identify as transgenders, but many see themselves as a part of a community with those who do. Questions such as “What other LGBT groups are misunderstood?” or “How has today’s social culture shaped our perception of the LGBT community?” should be considered as not just simple curiosity but a serious engagement with another human and their human experience.

The ability to understand and ask questions are the the foundation into clarity and away from ignorance. The very cornerstone of drag is for individuals to learn to accept and be accepted for themselves, as RuPaul says at the end of every episode, “If you can’t love yourself, how the hell are you going to love someone else? Can I get an amen?”

1

in

2000

This edition featuring:

Gabi Rossner with The Campanile’s own

Maggie Rosenthal and Tiffany Liang The Campanile: How’s your day going so far?

Gabi Rossner: It’s great. I had one class today.

TC: Living the SSS life?

GR: I’ve been living the SSS life for a while, except now, I like actually don’t care, versus last semester I was pretending I didn’t care. It’s really fun.

TC: Your article on affirmative action sparked up debate. How do you feel about your #1 fan Griffin Carlson?

GR: Me and Griffin have a very complicated relationship. Maybe it’s not so complicated, maybe it’s very simple. I just love how he goes out of his way to create intellectual conversations around everything that I do.

It’s just been a really, really great four year journey with him, and I’m sad to see it go.

TC: How do you deal with #haters?

GR: Therapy.

TC: What’s your tumblr aesthetic?

GR: My tumblr aesthetic, oh gosh this is hard to describe, because I just changed it. The aesthetic of my tumblr — oh, I don’t want to say my url.

Okay, but, it’s a lot of art, pictures of dogs and politics. My personal aesthetic, I want to be like the best friend in the ‘90s movies who like doesn’t have her own plot line. I don’t know, like last semester, I was trying to go for male Campy editor as my personal aesthetic.

TC: Do you have a favorite?

GR: My favorite male Campy editor, style wise, has to be Nikhil.

TC: Do you have any advice for underclassmen?

GR: My advice for underclassmen is, oh this is so hard. It’s to get the f**k out of the MAC. Also to be quiet.

Like put on a gag and walk outside of the Media Arts Center.

TC: If there was a Verde fight club, who would be the winner?

GR: I want to say that I would win, but I honestly feel like it would be one of those juniors and sophomores who are already thinking about being EIC, who would just be ruthless and rip my f**king face off. They’ve got some hidden fire.

TC: More broadly, who would win in an inter-publication fight?

GR: Props or no props?

TC: Just fists.

GR: Viking, obviously. Viking has muscles and does sports. The last Verde bonding we did, we just sat and ate food, so pretty sure Viking would wreck all our asses. I just think it would be so much more fun with props.

TC: If we added props back in there, do you still think Viking would win?

GR: So, Verde has our secret weapon of a giant spoon and fork, which I feel like could be pretty ruthless.

TC: Oh, so if you were to spear any Campy editor, which would it be?

GR: I want to be like, I’d spear Nikhil and then steal his closet but I can’t fit myself into Nikhil Rajaram’s skinny, skinny jeans.

TC: What are your feelings towards Bernie Sanders?

GR: I like Bernie but I think that he can be more progressive on issues surrounding race, guns and imperialism.

TC: Who would you vote for in the 2016 presidential election?

GR: I’m a baby who can’t vote in 2016. But if I could, probably Bernie.

Who knows? It depends on how the primaries go.

TC: Any final words for Paly?

GR: @ the sophomore who stole my megaphone. I’m still pissed.

Friday, January 29, 2016

The Campanile

ATHLETE OF THE Junior MichelMONTH

S ORTS

C7

Ange Siaba is playing exceptionally well for the Paly varsity soccer team.

THE “WIN-NOW” EXPECTATION DESIGN BY GREG EUM, EDWARD KIM AND CARISSA ZOU TEXT BY EDWARD KIM

relegated it into a 5-11 laughingstock.

A do-or-die mindset that many NFL owners currently employ would have caused Belichick to be fired, but that was not the case. Robert Kraft, the Patriots owner, allowed Belichick to continue on with his coaching tenure in Foxborough.

With just one year to acclimate, Belichick promptly propelled the team to a Super Bowl victory in 2001. Today, Belichick has four total Super Bowl victories and multiple accolades.

In contrast, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers gave former coach Lovie Smith very little time to settle in before firing him. Smith’s predecessor in Tampa, Greg Schiano, left him in 2014 with a young but inexperienced roster. And as a result, Smith managed to amass two wins compared to his 14 losses.

The next season, with star rookie quarterback Jameis Winston and developing receiver Mike Evans at the helm, Smith improved the team’s record to 6-10. Ignoring the obvious improvements and the fact that t h e team had developing talent, the Buccaneers fired Smith. Although only time can tell if this was a good choice, Smith’s upward trend and ability to develop the Buccaneers’ young players signaled the possibility for a successful future.

Half a decade earlier, the Oakland Raiders made the same mistake when they fired promising coach Hue Jackson after just one season.

Taking over for head coach Tom Cable in 2011, Jackson inherited a squad with only one quality nonspecial teams player.

While people may argue that the four Pro-Bowlers in Jackson’s squad could have led the

“

team to success, three of them played exclusively on special teams, which take the field less than five minutes a game. Jackson, who took a roster without the likes of former Raiders stars Nnamdi Asomugha and Zach Miller, managed to achieve an 8-8 season.

Unfairly, the Raiders fired Jackson.

Five years and three head coaches later, the Raiders have a roster full of talent and potential, yet no records similar to what Jackson achieved.

Meanwhile, in the National Basketball Association (NBA), the Los Angeles Lakers prematurely fired head coach Mike Brown, which began a downward spiral of mediocrity that has still not ended even after several years of pathetic play and decreasing attendance rates.

Moyes, e x manager of Manchester United, the front office had adequate reason to fire him.

Moyes, w h o inherited a squad with combined talent worth over 100 m i l lion euros f r o m legendary manager Sir Alex Ferguson, dragged United down to a seventh-place finish. In a sport where performance directly correlates with income, a decline in winning could lead to a lower budget, which in turn would lead to a lower talent level in the club and then relegation.

Relegation, the ultimate demotion in soccer, drops a team into a lower league. Just as if a NBA team dropped into the Development League, soccer teams lose a large amount of money and publicity when relegated to lower leagues.

Thus, in order to avoid relegation, s o c c e r teams are justified in firing coaches immediatel y.

H owe ve r, t h i s logic

However, if Patriots had the same “win-now” attitude with [belichick] in 2000 as current teams have with their coaches, he would be relatively unknown and NFL history would have been dramatically altered.

COACH

Taking the already established Lakers roster, Brown led the team to its successful 2011 campaign. Even though the Lakers managed to win many games, the lockout-shortened season gave Brown limited time to impart his new offensive philosophy on the players.

When his first complete season with the Lakers began in 2012, the addition of superstars Dwight Howard and Steve Nash raised expectations significantly for the aging team.

After 10 quick losses, Brown was fired.

Later in the season, the issue arose that Brown’s coaching ability wasn’t the problem — the cumulative star talent was unable to cohesively succeed even with a new coach. Furthermore, the Lakers have not had a winning season since Brown left with the ninth-shortest coaching tenure in the seventy-year history of the NBA. In soccer, the immediate firing of coaches is justified because of the risks associated with having a single terrible season. In the case of David

“

B

ill Belichick: 6-time Super Bowl champion, 3-time Coach of the Year, postseason win percentage of .710.

After over 30 years of coaching in the National Football League (NFL), Belichick’s name has become synonymous with the historically successful New England Patriots. Selected to be in the NFL’s All-Decade team, Belichick is considered by most fans as the best coach in history.

However, if Patriots had the same “win-now” attitude with him in 2000 as current teams have with their coaches, he would be relatively unknown and NFL history would have been dramatically altered. Sports teams need to give their coaches more time to acclimate before making a decision on their futures. Belichick took over for a team that had managed a mediocre season in 1999 on the backs of two NFL stars.

In his first season, Belichick took the same roster that m a n aged to breakeven while stayi n g competitive and

should not apply to American sports teams that are not subjected to the threat of relegation and drastic financial loss.

Just this month, the Cleveland Cavaliers of the NBA had justification for firing their head coach, David Blatt. While critics of the move would argue that Blatt, who was around for just one year, took the Cavaliers to the NBA finals and currently led them to the thirdbest team in the league, the Cavaliers’ concerns about Blatt outweighed any benefits that keeping the coach had.

One of the “Big Three” superstars that the Cavaliers signed in the

summer of 2014, Kevin Love, with his $110 million contract, appeared to be disgruntled and stymied by the offensive system implemented by Blatt. To compound on the chemistry problems with Love, the most important player on the Cavs, LeBron James, had been a strong advocate for a new head coach, namely exBlatt assistant and former NBA player Tyronn Lue. In contrast to Blatt, Lue had the support of most of the players for a head coaching position, which would greatly improve team chemistry.

Although the winning record presented Blatt as a quality coach, the problems that lay underneath the surface had to be addressed before they caused lasting damages to the Cavaliers’ infrastructure.

Although the occasional example persists of teams justifiably firing their coaches after one season, the overwhelming majority of cases in American sports provides enough evidence against the knee-jerk re ac tions by owners to fire coaches prematurely.

EX-COACH

SPORTS

A Rise in Popularity of Women’s Soccer

Due to the recent success of the U.S. Womenís National Team, including a World Cup victory, womenís soccer is gaining popularity in the United States and has garnered support in the fight for gender equality.

COURTESY OF CNN

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COURTESY OF THESOURCE.COM

COURTESY OF CBSSPORTS

COURTESY OF ESPN.COM

Stephen Curry

Athletes & Current Events

The WNBA

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With the success of the Warriors, basketball is starting to change.

Sports figures should not be expected to act on current news.

Low pay for the players and low attendance doom the WNBA.

Friday, January 29, 2016

SPORTS Boys soccer maintains a flawless record

C2 VIKING RECAP

After coming in first at a preseason championship, the team hopes to continue its streak

BOYS SOCCER RECENT SCORES

Paly vs. Lynbrook 1/22/16, Paly, 5-0 Paly vs. Santa Clara 1/25/16, Paly, 2-0 UPCOMING GAMES

Paly vs. Homestead 1/29/16, 3:30 Paly vs. Gunn 2/3/16, 3:30

GIRLS SOCCER RECENT SCORES

Paly vs. Saratoga 1/20/16, Paly, 3-0 Paly vs. Santa Clara 1/25/16, Paly, 2-0 UPCOMING GAMES

Paly vs. Homestead 1/29/16, 3:30 Paly vs. Milpitas 2/3/16, 3:30

BOYS BASKETBALL RECENT SCORES

Paly vs. Fremont 1/23/16, Fremont, 48-38 Paly vs. Pinewood 1/27/16, Paly, 65-54 UPCOMING GAMES

Paly vs. Gunn 1/29/16, 7:45 Paly vs. Milpitas 2/3/16, 7:00

GIRLS BASKETBALL RECENT SCORES

Paly vs. Mountain View 1/19/16, Paly, 46-43 Paly vs. Wilcox 1/26/16, Paly, 67-12 UPCOMING GAMES

Paly vs. Gunn 1/29/16, 6:15 Paly vs. Gunn 2/2/16, 7:00

WRESTLING RECENT EVENTS

MidCal Tournament 1/22/16 and 1/23/16 UPCOMING GAMES

Paly vs. Gunn 2/4/16, 5:30 Mission San Jose Tournament 2/5/16 and 2/6/16

The Campanile

JOANNA FALLA

STAFF WRITER

M

aintaining its impressive undefeated season, the Palo Alto High School boys soccer team beat Mountain View High School with a score of 5-0 on Jan. 15.

Team captain and senior Eli Friedlander believes that although the team has held an undefeated record thus far, there is still room for improvement.

“I think we’ve had a great season so far,” Friedlander said. “There are obviously still a lot of things we can improve on, but overall, we’ve done very well.”

The team currently has an overall record of 9-0 and won the Oak Grove championship during its preseason games. While the Paly boys soccer team has always done well in past seasons, junior Michel-Ange Dudesert believes that the combined skill set each player provides supplies the team with an edge throughout this season.

“I think this year we just have a lot of talent on the team, and when those talents connect, we can be very dangerous,” Dudesert said. “Chemistry was a big issue last year but not this year.”

The team this year is reasonably balanced between the amount of seniors, juniors and sophomores,

JACKY MOORE/THE CAMPANILE

Junior forward Michel-Ange Siaba dribbles past various Mountain View players.

which has contributed to the team’s success. Sophomore Xander Sherer acknowledges that while the team is made up of a diverse group of players, the teammates have the ability to focus on what matters when the time comes.

“I would attribute our undefeated score to our team’s winning mindset,” Scherer said. “Sometimes we mess around off the field, but once the game starts everyone is laserfocused.”

The mixed team has two sophomores this season, Scherer and Matt Knowles, and according to Dudesert, they earned their positions on the varsity team.

“I think the roster is solid,” Dudesert said. “I think the coach’s intention was to have a team with just enough

underclassmen so that next year’s team could stay just as strong as this one, and that really wouldn’t be possible if we had 15 seniors graduating.

The sophomores absolutely deserve their spots — it was a very good pick by the coach.”

All the athletes on the team have exemplified their ability to play against challenging varsity teams in the area and win with impressive score differences. Friedlander accredits the team’s successful season not necessarily to the team full of a variety of ages but instead to each player’s capacity to introduce a positive influence to the team.

“This year we have a really wellrounded team,” Friedlander said. “We have a lot of guys that can come off the bench and make a real difference.”

Each player provides a specific edge to the team, whether it is defensive or offensive. Dudesert believes that there is not one single player to look out for, but instead teammates that have great chemistry during their games. “[ Junior] Jack Stoksik scored three goals in two games, which gave him the title of “Athlete of the Week”,” Dudesert said. “Eli [Friedlander] is by far the best goalkeeper we’ve seen this season even when recovering from a broken wrist.”

To hold an undefeated record, a team must be not only physically fit, but mentally tough. It can be very easy for the team to get swept up in the numbers, but Friedlander knows that although it can be stressful, the boys are capable of dealing with the weight of their undefeated title.

“We’re just taking it one game at a time and trying to stay focused,” Friedlander said. “For us I think the expectations are just higher this year because of last year. Last year’s title also means that every team we play will want to knock us off this year.”

The boys soccer team members collectively believe that this is a special season, and Dudesert thinks that the team can qualify for the Central Coast Section (CCS) Championships.

“Our coach believes that we can go on to win the league like last year and even win CCS,” Dudesert said.

Girls soccer triumphs Sophomore wrestlers Lady Vikes remain undefeated this season change team dynamic TOMMY SMALE

STAFF WRITER

T

he Palo Alto girls soccer team continues its victorious season, remaining undefeated, 10-0-1. Palo Alto tied former Santa Clara Valley Athletic League (SCVAL) league and Central Coast Section (CCS) champions, Mountain View High School, in a close 0-0 game. The two foes went back and forth both stopping each other’s shots at goal.

Defense, led by senior captain Jacey Pederson, has been a pivotal part of the team’s success. Eleven games have been played in the season and a mere total of two goals have been scored against Palo Alto High School. Both goals occurred in the first two games of the season, and for nine games no goals have been scored on Paly.

Such phenomenal defense was able to keep Paly in their crucial game against opponent Mountain View. A prominent Mountain View shot appeared as if the ball would definitely go in the goal, until Jacey Pederson swept in and kicked the ball off the goal line.

Ten games have been played in the season and a mere total of two goals have been scored against Palo Alto High School.

Impentrible defense is a critical factor of Paly’s success and leads them to many wins.

“The team definitely played well and we shut them out for sure on their attack side, not letting any balls in,” junior Tess Preising said. “We had some good chances for goals but

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we didn’t put them away as often as we should.”

Despite a 0-0 finish, the offense did a good job continuously taking many shots at the opposing team’s goal, but Mountain View’s defense was impassable. The offense created many opportunities to score, but wasnot able to follow through.

Mountain View and Paly are scheduled to meet once more again during the regular season at Paly on Feb. 5.

The team definitely played well and we shut them out for sure on their attack side, not letting any balls in.

Tess Preising Junior In conference play, Paly and Mountain View are neck and neck, tied for first place. The results from game one are a sure indication of another close standoff between the two teams.

“The results showed that both teams were very skilled and would not give up a loss so easily,” Preising said.

Besides stiff competition with Mountain View, Paly has been dominant over other opponents.

A current trend is the opposing team scoring no goals, with Paly usually scoring three or four.The girls beat crosstown rival Gunn 4-0 with two goals from Reilly Filter.

“Playing against Gunn was really exciting and it was a great experience to score two goals against our crosstown rival Gunn,” junior Reilly Filter said. Paly girls varsity soccer has not lost to Gunn since 2011.

The team holds high expectations for CCS

KIRAN MISNER

STAFF WRITER

P

alo Alto High School’s wrestling team competed in its second tournament at Cupertino High School, placing three wrestlers in the top 10. While winning the tournament was exciting for the team, both head coach Jonathan Kessler and junior Seth Goyal believe that this should be preparation to fight for the league championship and then for the California Coast Section (CCS) championship.

Kessler believes that additional training outside of just team practices is necessary for a successful season.

“The key will be all the extra work that the wrestlers put in,” Kessler said. “It will be based on if they do conditioning after practice and if they lift outside of school.”

Furthermore, the team added six sophomores and 10 freshmen onto its roster.

“We only had two wrestlers who were varsity before, so the addition of the freshman and sophomores makes it more complete,” Goyal said.

According to Goyal, the freshmen who were pulled up to varsity have competed well, but still have for improvement.

“I’ve known all these guys from wrestling in middle school, but high school wrestling is a totally different sport,” Goyal said.“This is where guys start to devote their lives to the sport, so the freshmen need to gain experience to get better.”

Kessler, along with Goyal, believes that the team needs to learn more

about different tactical situations before competing at CCS and State Championships.

“We need to be able to score from any type of position, so we’re trying to get the team to be in those situations during practice,” Kessler said.

Freshman Callum Day-Ham described the varsity experience as grueling; his getting moved up has strengthened his winning outlook.

“I, like the rest of the team, just need to stay strong and get on top of the match,” Day-Ham said.

As for both CCS and the California Interscholastic Federation state championships, Goyal has set high expectations for himself.

“It should be a given that I win CCS this year,” Goyal said. “If I make weight for states, I’m expecting myself to place at that.”

The key [to success] will be all the extra work that the wrestlers put in. It will be based on if they do conditioning after practice and if they lift out side of school.

Jonathan Kessler Head Coach Kessler also wants the boys to compete fiercely at CCS. “I think CCS will be a good learning experience for them,” Kessler said. “They will gain alot of experience from a high level competition.”

The Vikings will travel to face their cross town rivals Henry M. Gunn High School on Feb. 4 at 6:30 p.m.

Friday, January 29, 2016

The Campanile

SPORTS C3 Boys basketball defeats Gunn Recent win inspires

Paly win in crosstown rivalry game ends Titans undefeated season

girls basketball team High scoring propels Vikings to victories CLAY WATSON

STAFF WRITER

T

JACKY MOORE/THE CAMPANILE

Junior Miles Tention struggles for a rebound against three Titan players. Tention scored 25 points during the game versus Gunn.

GILLIAN ROBINS

STAFF WRITER

O

n Jan. 8, Palo Alto High School students stormed the Henry M. Gunn High School basketball court after the Vikings took the win with a score of 74-56. Aside from the crosstown rivalry, this was a major victory for Paly as the Titans were undefeated up until this game.

The first quarter was evenly played, ending with the Vikings holding a razor-thin 14-13 lead. The boys stepped up their game during the second quarter and expanded their small lead to 33-31. Breaking the stalemate in the second half, the Vikings began to substantially increase their lead over the Titans.

“In the second half, our defense was really solid, and we forced a lot of turnovers which created a lot of offense for us,” junior Ethan Stern said.

“Whenever our offense isn’t really working, we can count on our [defense] to pick us up.”

The boys’ solid defense created opportunities for key players to put points on the board. Named the most valuable player of the game, junior

Miles Tention was one of the pivotal players of the match. “[Tention] racked up 25 points and shot well from beyond the [3-point] arc in the second half,” sophomore Max Dorward said. “He also set his teammates up well.”

Besides being a crucial player on the boys’ team, Tention was nominated for the Get Sports Focus Game Changer of the Week award, eventually coming in second.

Get Sports Focus is an online magazine focused on Bay Area high school and college sports teams.

Paly’s ability to stick to their game plan resulted in their win, according to Dorward.

“We came in knowing they had some key players,” Dorward said.

“And we [needed] to stop them on defense, which, in turn, create opportunities on the offensive side.”

Paly took on Los Altos on Jan. 15.

The match did not prove to be satisfactory for the Vikings, with the final score of 62-69. Star players Miles Tention and Justin Hull were on the bench this game due to illness, hindering the team’s performance.

On Jan. 20, the boys took on Fremont High School, and lost 38-48.

The game left much to be desired for the Vikings.

“We missed a lot of shots that should have gone in while [Fremont] made all of theirs,” junior Jack Simison said.

The Vikings pulled out the win last Saturday, Jan. against Pinewood 65-54.

Thanks in part to returning coach, Peter Diepenbrock, the Vikings have only lost five games this season with a 12-5 record. One of the Vikes’ few losses was against Saint Francis High School.

According to Diepenbrock, they may compete against Saint Francis again in the playoffs, and, to prepare, the boys will work on their ball handling skills. The Saint Francis team, according to Diepenbrock, is hard to beat because they are primarily tall, talented seniors with a lot of depth.

The Vikings have set goals for the rest of the season.

“I think the one thing we need to improve on is coming out stronger in the beginning of the game,” Dorward said.

The boys face the Gunn Titans for the second time tonight, Jan. 29, at 7 p.m.

he Palo Alto High School girls basketball team has maintained its winning record with a recent 49-34 victory over rival Henry M. Gunn High School, as well as one in overtime against Mountain View High School. With a 3-2 record in the De Anza League (DAL), the team is currently in second place, behind Los Gatos but ahead of Los Altos.

Leading the team in scoring is junior Lauren Koyama, who averages 10 points per game. She is followed by senior Alexis Harris, who averages 9.1 points per game, and senior Coco Lovely, who averages 8.7 points per game. With all six players averaging over five points per game, Paly girls basketball is looking to defeat its opponents through sharing the scoring load and playing off of each other’s strengths.

We’re getting back into the groove of things. We’d rather peak in the postseason than preseason, so I’m excited for what’s to come.

Skylar Burris Junior Playing in Gunn’s gym, hundreds of both Paly and Gunn fans led cheers as the crosstown rivals went head to head. Leading the way with 11 points was Lovely, with junior Maya Lathi close behind with eight, followed by senior Maddy Atwater with seven and junior Skylar Burris with five.

Given that Paly and Gunn no longer play each other in football, dedicated fans look to keep the sports rivalry alive by attending contentious the Paly versus Gunn basketball games.

“Playing Gunn was the best experience I’ve ever had playing a basketball game,” Burris said. “The crowd was amazing and taking home the win definitely added to the adrenaline high.”

On Jan. 19, the team experience their closest game of the season.

The Vikings defeated the host team, Mountain View, in a narrow 46-43 overtime victory. With seven different players scoring three or more points, the team proved that they are most successful when they share the scoring Averaging a staggering 52.2 points per game, on 34 percent field goal shooting, this season the Vikings are crushing the national average of 45 points per game. This can likely be attributed to the team’s willingness to follow coach Scott Peters’ game plan, while playing in a selfless manner, averaging as shown by the Vikings nearly eight assists per game.

The team-oriented style is not only evident in how they score or pass, but in how they play rebound.

Averaging 23 rebounds per game, six of the 11 players on the team average two or more rebounds per game. Additionally, seven of the players evenly share the 1.3 blocks per game, with Harris and freshman Ellie Jeffries leading the way in that category.

Currently, the Vikings sit in second place with five games under their belts. However, they went into the season hoping to go undefeated against other teams in the DAL. “We definitely aren’t playing as well as we expected, and that really is too bad,” Burris said. “But we’re getting back into the groove of things.

We’d rather peak in postseason than preseason, so I’m excited for what’s to come.”

With the Central Coast Sectional playoffs a month away, the team hopes to find success through their team-oriented basketball play.

Friday, January 29, 2016

C4

The Campanile

SPORTS SPREAD

Kicking Grass: U.S. Women’s Socc

T

his past year was undisputedly United States. From the U.S. the National Women’s Soccer L States has seen some tremendous chan the start of a new era in the realm of U

Winning The World Cup

A

fter a 16-year drought, the WNT finally pulled off a Federal Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) Women’s World Cup win in the summer of 2015, beating Japan in a thrilling 5-2 victory.

The last time the team had won a World Cup was back in 1999, when names such as Mia Hamm and Kristine Lilly still dominated the headlines.

In the World Cups of 2003 and 2007, the United States managed to place third, and in 2011, the WNT came just short of a victory in the finals, losing to Japan in penalty kicks.

2015, however, proved to be a winning year for the United States women. They not only secured the win, but shattered quite a few world records in the process.

The title marked the third time the WNT has won the FIFA Women’s World Cup (its other titles came in the 1991 inagaural Women’s World Cup and the 1999 World Cup), which is more than any other nation. The defense extended its 540-minute streak without conceding a goal in the World Cup, the second longest shutout streak in Women’s World Cup history. Midfielder Carli Lloyd’s hat trick in the first 16 minutes was the first hat trick

scored in any World Cup Final, in both the men and women’s division. And with 26.7 million viewers in the United States alone, the 2015 World Cup Final became the most viewed soccer game in all of American history.

Danielle Colaprico, a recent call-up to the WNT and NWSL Rookie of the Year in 2015, believes the quality of women’s soccer has improved over the years, and has now reached the point at which more viewers are interested in watching.

“As time goes on more and more people are tuning into women’s soccer,” Colaprico said. “I think this is because the quality of women’s soccer has become more entertaining to watch. I think the women that went on to win the World Cup last year have impacted so many people around the world.”

Women’s soccer is starting to pick up steam, especially here in the United States. With this title behind them, the team now looks toward winning the 2016 Olympics, a win that would make the United States the first nation to win a World Cup title and an Olympic title back-to-back.

“No team has won the World Cup and then gone on to win the Olympics, so [doing so] would be awesome,” Colaprico said.

Gaining Popularity

T

he 2015 World Cup Final attracted more viewers than ever, a huge step forward in the future of women’s soccer.

This popularity, though beneficial for all female players around the globe, was a much needed boost for professional soccer in the United States. Since 2000, three top tier women’s professional leagues for women have formed and folded in the United States, each failing to get enough viewers and sponsors to stay afloat. The current league, the NWSL, was established in 2012 and coming into 2016, will now be the longest lasting top tier women’s league in the United States.

Rachel Quon, who has played for the Canadian National Team and the Chicago Red Stars of the NWSL, attributes the league’s success to the support of national teams and salary caps, and believes the league’s sustainability depends on attracting viewers.

“The structure right now with the national team support and salary caps has definitely helped the league financially, as well as provided some of the best players in the world to play in this league,” Quon said. “The key to being sustainable will be growing our audiences which would allow the NWSL to get more sponsors, some TV time and more media exposure in general.”

Following the 2015 World Cup, popularity gained on the international stage shifted to the national stage, with NWSL

viewership increasing as a result. In the six weeks following the World Cup, NWSL game attendance was up by almost 33 percent in comparison to the year before.

Additionally, in the 2015 season following the World Cup, FOX Sports continued its contract with the NWSL, agreeing to televise 10 NWSL games.

Even more promising for the permanence of the league is its continuous expansion. In 2014, a year after its formation, the NWSL added one more team to the existing eight, the Houston Dash. Now, in 2016, the league has added another team to make the total count ten: the Orlando Pride.

This expansion further establishes the league as one to stay, though there is still a long way to go in terms of payment, sponsors and media in order to make the NWSL a league for women like Major League Soccer is for men’s soccer.

According to Quon, players need to continue making sacrifices in order to further establish the NWSL. “Keeping the league around means having players sacrifice a little — whether that is living with a host family as a professional or accepting lower salaries,” Quon said. “In addition, I think awareness is very important for the league and NWSL players are taking the time and responsibility to get out to surrounding communities to spread the word about their team and the league.”

MOVING

F

rom wins and team dynamics to populari The United States is set up with a myriad a World Cup win, fresh new players, a gr If the United States can take the momentum fr can start to truly make an impact in the sporting

text and design by: Sarah Wang

Friday, January 29, 2016

The Campanile

SPORTS SPREAD

C5

cer Becomes a Global Powerhouse

a huge year for women’s soccer in the Women’s National Team (WNT) to League (NWSL), soccer in the United nges this past year, setting 2016 up as U.S. women’s soccer.

Building A New Team

T

he 2015 World Cup win marked the culmination of years of efforts for the WNT, and also marked the end of many illustrious careers. During the 10-game Victory Tour following the World Cup, four players on the World Cup winning roster went into retirement, including forward Abby Wambach.

During her 15-year international career, Wambach earned accolades such as the FIFA Women’s Player of the Year, and left the field as the all-time leading scorer in all of soccer with 184 goals.

Lauren Holiday, Shannon Boxx and Lori Chalupny also retired during the tour. All the retiring players were difference-makers and starters for the WNT at one point, and their departures leave a huge gap to fill.

On top of these retirements, the team is missing four other members of the World Cup roster due to injuries and pregnancies.

However, coach Jill Ellis has already began working to fill this gap.

Throughout the Victory Tour, Ellis called up 10 players not part of the World Cup roster, including Colaprico.

These young players, ranging from 17 to 23 years of age, will be a vital part of the development of a new phase in the WNT, according to Ellis.

“We are all about acknowledging what we’ve accomplished and taking away the positives and the lessons we’ve learned,” Ellis said in an interview with U.S. Soccer. “But now it’s about hitting the reset button and building again because it’s a new challenge and a new team with a slightly different identity.”

Furthermore, with the retirement of Wambach and the injury of Christie Rampone, Ellis has chosen new captains for the WNT: defender Becky Sauerbrunn and midfielder Carly Lloyd. Both displayed extraordinary leadership through the World Cup; Sauerbrunn led the back line to its 540 shutout minutes, and Lloyd led the team in goals scored.

“As we move into the next phase of this program, I’ve selected two captains who I know will represent us extremely well on and off the field and will help facilitate the positive direction of this team,” Ellis said in an interview with U.S. Soccer.

With a host of new talent, the WNT is transitioning into a new phase of U.S. women’s soccer, hopefully bringing the momentum of their recent World Cup win into the future.

Fighting For Equality

I FORWARD

ity and equality, U.S. women’s soccer is changing. d of opportunities to turn soccer into a larger deal: rowing league and a basis for fighting for equality. rom these factors and run with it, women’s soccer g world.

Design by: Kai Oda & Peter Maroulis

n the past two years, female soccer players around the globe have begun to push harder for equality on the turf, or more accurately, the grass.

Over 40 players around the world signed a lawsuit against FIFA and the Canadian Soccer Association in 2014, alleging the presence of gender discrimination, since the 2015 World Cup was to be played on artificial turf, while every single men’s World Cup has been and will be played on grass. The lawsuit contained the signatures of players like Wambach and fanfavorite Alex Morgan.

The number of signatures fluctuated throughout the lawsuit, as some players added their signatures and others dropped their signatures. Many withdrew their names due to threats from their nations’ soccer organizations to drop them from their national teams if they continued to be a part of the lawsuit.

The lawsuit, however, was dropped in January 2015, after the players failed to get FIFA to make any changes or cooperate. However, Wambach believes this failed lawsuit is only just the beginning of the fight for equality.

“On behalf of the players, I want to thank all who aided our fight for natural grass fields at the 2015 World Cup,” Wambach said in a statement. “Our legal action has ended. But I

am hopeful that the players’ willingness to contest the unequal playing fields — and the tremendous public support we received during the effort — marks the start of even greater activism to ensure fair treatment when it comes to women’s sports.”

Wambach’s statement was later reinforced by the WNT’s decision to cancel a December game in 2015 in Hawaii during the Victory Tour due to unsuitable playing conditions.

The field should have been checked by the U.S. Soccer Federation months prior, but not until the team’s decision did the Federation agree that the stadium was not in good enough condition to play on.

The decision came just a day after midfielder Megan Rapinoe tore her ACL on a subpar training field in Hawaii.

“This [decision] was about wanting to protect women’s soccer players in general,” the team wrote in an article of the Players’ Tribune. “At the end of the day, we expect to be treated equally as our male counterparts. And we hope that, in the future, our fields and our venues will be chosen and inspected at the standard of an international match — whether it’s men or women playing on the field.”

The U.S. women are starting to take matters of equality into their own hands — and this is only the beginning of their fight for gender equality on the field.

Friday, January 29, 2016

The Campanile

C6

SPORTS Athletes cope with Stephen Curry’s new playing repeated concussions style popularized in the NBA Basketball players continue to suffer the consequences of multiple concussions DAVID TAYERI

STAFF WRITER

J

ack Simison pushes the ball down the court, dribbling with one hand and directing the offense with the other. Deftly, he passes the ball to a teammate who scores as the crowd leaves its feet to cheer.

Watching Simison play, one would never guess what had happened to him four years ago, when he was trying out for the Palo Alto All-Net Basketball team.

“I just remember looking at one of my friends around half court,” Simison said. “He pump-faked, I jumped to try to block him, my legs caught on his back, I flipped over him and I hit my head on the ground.”

Simison suffered post-traumatic seizures for four minutes before he blacked out. He woke up in the hospital having spent 40 minutes unconscious.

“It was definitely a bad accident,” Simison said. “I sustained a grade III concussion, which is the most serious.”

Simison was forbidden from playing basketball for a month and a half on doctor’s orders, but he was back on the court as soon as he could be.

However, something was a little different when he started playing again.

“Beforehand, it never occurred to me that I could get a concussion from playing, but afterwards it made me more cautious and made me secondguess myself,” Simison said.

Luckily, according to Simison, his fear melted away after only a couple of months of playing again.

Maddy Atwater is another Palo Alto High School student who is unfortunately no stranger to basketball related head injuries.

Her first concussion was in eighth grade, four years ago. Her team, the Palo Alto Midnight was practicing

in Paly’s small gym, preparing for an upcoming memorial day tournament.

“We were scrimmaging and the ball was rolling towards the wall,” Atwater said. “When I dove to get the ball I hit my eye on the door hinge and my head hit the wall.”

Her father, the coach, took her home where they noticed that she was slurring her words. She went to a doctor, who diagnosed her with a concussion. Atwater ended up playing that weekend anyway, but sat out after being hit in the head again. She now regrets playing so soon.

Since that first concussion, Atwater has suffered four more, while playing for Midnight or the Paly team. Most recently, during the fall of 2014, Atwater was concussed during a Midnight game. This time she sat out for a month.

Atwater and Simison’s injuries are part of a grossly under-discussed subject — concussions in basketball.

Concussions can be caused in basketball through a variety of collisions, whether they are head-to-ball, headto-head or head-to-floor.

A 2010 study, by the American Academy of pediatrics revealed that over a 10-year period, there has been a 70 percent increase in traumatic brain injuries on the basketball court.

The rise in concussion rates over the past years may be attributed to an increasingly aggressive mindset in players and coaches. Adding to the danger is the lack of awareness of the danger and frequency of concussions in basketball, especially when compared to other sports such as football.

Atwater believes that many concussions in basketball go undetected and undiagnosed.

“I think a lot of the times you get hit in the head ... and just keep playing,” Atwater said. “You’d think that with something like that that’s a head injury, you’d want to sit out.”

Curry’s constant 3-point shots have changed professional basketball

COURTESY OF NBA.COM

Stephen Curry drains a 3-point shot against the Utah Jazz. His rise in the NBA has caused a controversial shift in playing style.

CLAY WATSON

STAFF WRITER

W

ith the Stephen Curry-led Golden State Warriors dominating the National Basketball Association (NBA), setting new records left and right, it is clear that the team is changing the way that professional basketball is played. While naysayers such as former Warriors head coach Mark Jackson argue that the 3-point-reliant strategies employed by the Warriors are destroying decades-old fundamentals that have been prevalent in the sport for decades, the renovated style actually gives hope to a wider community of youth basketball players, and has led to more exciting game play.

The Warriors have crushed multiple NBA records this season, with the best starting record in history and a plethora of 3-point related records. A

bitter Mark Jackson argued that this 3-point outpour has hurt the game for aspiring players, while commentating for ABC. “To a degree, he’s hurt the game,” Jackson said. “And what I mean by that is that I go into these high school gyms, I watch these kids and the first thing they do is they run to the 3-point line. You are not Steph Curry. Work on the other aspects of your game.”

There is no question that professional basketball has changed through the years, however, a more 3-point oriented game is anything but bad. While aspiring basketball players may not be Steph Curry, the majority of the population is closer to a 6’3” 185 pound point guard than a 6’8” 250 pound Lebron James, or a 7’1” 324 pound Shaquille O’Neal.

Curry’s alternate playing style gives hope to a wider variety of aspiring basketball players, resulting in a wid-

er viewing market and benefiting the NBA as a whole.

Boston Celtics legend, and current general manager of the Indiana Pacers, Larry Bird, responded to Mark Jackson’s comment in a interview with Colin Cowherd, arguing that Curry’s playing style does not break the rules of traditional basketball.

“If you walk in any gym, if there are kids in there, they’re all shooting 3-pointers,” Bird said. “That’s the way it was when I walked in gyms years ago. I don’t see anything wrong with it.”

There is no question that the game of basketball is changing, epitomized

by Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors. While the game has changed, it is better to appreciate the changes instead of trying to hold on to the past. With the NBA All Star game around the corner, fans should look to simply enjoy the game for what it is — imperfect but exciting.

Friday, January 29, 2016

The Campanile

SPORTS OPINION Athletes are not obligated to protest

NBA and NFL players should not be expected to have knowledge on all political events JOSH NG

SENIOR STAFF WRITER

E

ric Garner, a 43-year-old African-American male, died on July 17, 2014 as a result of being choked to death by New York Police Department (NYPD) officers Daniel Pantaleo and Justin Damico.

Garner was accused of illegally selling cigarettes without tax stamps, causing suspicion from nearby NYPD officers. Pantaleo and Damico proceeded to arrest Garner, with Pantaleo putting his arm around Garner’s neck and slamming him onto the concrete sidewalk, during which Garner repeatedly said “I can’t breathe” 11 times.

Garner was brought to the hospital after lying on the sidewalk for seven minutes and was pronounced dead approximately one hour later.

While the nation was shocked by this event, a handful of professional athletes used their influence to create some good out of a tragedy.

The death of Garner instigated nationwide protests that came in the form of picketing, with celebrities publicly denouncing police brutality and demonstrations from professional sports athletes. On Dec. 8, 2014, basketball players Lebron James and Kyrie Irving wore “I can’t breathe” Tshirts during their warm ups in protest of police brutality and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The crowd that night responded with cheers after the organizer told them of the athletes’ demonstrations.

About a week before James and Irving’s demonstration, five players of the St. Louis Rams raised their palms up in the air while walking onto the field, demonstrating the “Hands up, don’t shoot” gesture, a form of protest that Black Lives Matter activists have been seen using.

OF THE

MONTH

Michel-Ange Siaba with The Campanile’s own

Kai Oda Junior Michel-Ange Siaba has brought consistent determination and physical power to his team for the past three years.

COURTESY OF USA TODAY

Cleveland Cavaliers star Lebron James wears a shirt paying homage to Eric Garner, who was killed by police officers.

Some athletes have social media accounts that have more than 27 million followers, are sponsored by popular sports brands such as Adidas and Nike and involve themselves by participating in charities and organizations such as the NFL Foundation and NBA Cares.

Athletes powerful influence spreads across the nation and can change and educate parochial minds.

When an athlete participates in a public demonstration of support for a political movement, they are lauded by their fans and gain new ones.

However, the athletes who are publicly supportive of activists’ movements only goes so far.

In late December 2015, Black Lives Matter activists called for Lebron James to sit out of games due to his lack of knowledge of the shooting of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old African American boy who was shot by Cleveland Police Department officer Timothy Loehmann.

Activists took to Twitter with the hashtag #NoJusticeNoLebron, demanding that James not play another game of professional basketball until justice was served for Tamir Rice.

James was met with backlash and disgust as he continued to play for the Cavaliers, and the New York Daily News described James’ apathy for the case as “appalling ignorance.”

Athletes are meant to be used as outlets for political movements to gain ground and accelerate towards accomplishing the movement’s end goal.

With the power of social media and television media, the demonstrations and actions that athletes partake in greatly impact and influence the fans that follow them.

Though some athletes today may be ignorant towards certain events or movements, many of them believe that the public should not attack them for detachment on the subject, and that rather, it should be an opportunity for activists to educate their fans and the general public.

In three months, NFL teams will begin its hiring process, bidding high for new talent NICHOLAS MELVIN

STAFF WRITER

A

fter a long, grueling season of the National Football League (NFL), only one game remains, and every team is looking excitedly towards the next season.

In three short months, free agency will open up in the NFL. Fans will be holding their breath and waiting for their favorite team to make a high profile move, snatching up a proven star and turning around the franchise.

However, these fans should not get their hopes up about making a big deal that transforms their team.

Over the past five years, teams have tried and tried again, dishing out big bucks to big-name free agents in order to turn around their franchise and make their move to the top. But very few of these teams have actually succeeded using this technique.

One example of a team who spent inpercievable amounts of money to draw in star players was the 2011 Philadelphia Eagles. In an attempt to build what Vince Young called the “dream team,” the Eagles dished out a whooping $177 million on free agents.

To put that into perspective, the NFL’s salary cap that year was set at $120 million. The Eagles finished the season at 8-8, meaning that each win came at the hefty price of $22 million apiece.

From there it just got worse. The Eagles followed that season up with a 4-12 season, and followed that up by firing the winningest coach in franchise history, Andy Reid, only to later hire Chip Kelly, who was unsuccessful in his three years as the head coach.

But just one team spending tons of money to no avail doesn’t prove that free agency isn’t the answer to a

ATHLETE

This edition featuring:

Free agency strategy needs rethinking

More often than not, signing big name free agents is not the answer. Rather, signing small name free agents and drafting talent should be the approach taken by most teams.

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In 2014, Chicago quarterback Jay Cutler signed a lucrative seven-year, $126.7 million contract extension with the team.

team’s woes. Surely there’s at least one team that has spent money on free agents and followed that up with a successful era of football. Well, there is.

In 2012, the Denver Broncos signed one of the greatest quarterbacks ever, Peyton Manning, to a 5-year, $96 million contract.

Denver followed this signing up by making it to the divisional round of the playoffs the next year, and making it to the Super Bowl the year after that.

But the Broncos are the only team in recent history to have done it; you have to go all the way back to 2006, when the New Orleans Saints signed Drew Brees to find another free agent to turn around the franchise.

Of the last eight teams to spend upwards of $80 million on free agency, only one has followed that period up with consistent success. That was the Denver Broncos in 2012.

But even then, Manning was not the only factor that led to their success. The year before, Tim Tebow led the Broncos on a pilgrimage to the American Football Conference (AFC) West title and through to the

Divisional round, which is exactly as far as Manning took them his first year at the helm.

Teams hoping to pay their way to the top this offseason should instead aspire to assemble a steady stream of talent through more dependable, and less flashy free agents, such as Jeremy Maclin for the Kansas City Chiefs and Ryan Fitzpatrick for the New York Jets, or through the draft.

One team who has done a great job of finding the balance between free agents and homegrown talent is the Carolina Panthers. The Panthers started off last season with a 1-8-1 record after ten games. This season they finished 15-1 and have a shot at winning the Super Bowl.

However, this 15-1 team is largely the same as the 7-8-1 team from the previous season.

The only thing that changed is maturity. The Panthers have grown as a team in the time between this season and last season. They have grown as a group and built a solid foundation of chemistry and talent.

Once they had this foundation, they went out and filled the holes, signing smaller market free agents

such as Tedd Ginn Jr. and Jerricho Cotchery. These free agents brought talent and potential, but not enough to change the team dynamic. These were players who could slide right on in.

Another example of a team which has found a perfect balance is the Arizona Cardinals. The Cardinals have set up a foundation of strong players in an unorthodox way.

The Cardinals have spent the past few seasons building up a strong core of veteran players who have proven their worth, but aren’t huge name egomaniacal prima donnas.

They are hard working, talented and team-first leaders who have put the Cardinals in a situation to win the Super Bowl.

There are lots of ways for an NFL team to be successful: good drafting, smart cheap free agent signings, insane coaching and so on, but signing one player to a mega-deal is almost never one of those ways.

More often than not, signing big name free agents is not the answer. Rather, signing small name free agents and drafting talent should be the approach taken by most teams.

The Campanile: What is your position on the soccer team?

Michel-Ange Siaba: I play striker and goalie.

TC: What would you say are your greatest accomplishments?

MS: I would say that I’ve been very consistent in my playing style and I’ve been putting the team ahead in a lot of ways. My biggest contribution so far was the preseason tournament as a backup goalie for Eli Friedlander.

TC: Do you have any special routines to psyche yourself up before the game?

MS: Usually I do things in the moment. I have my war cry to get pumped and I breathe really heavily through my nose so that I’m not nervous.

TC: Can you simulate this war cry for me?

MS: Uhh … Not while there is a class going on.

TC: Okay, we can go over here. [moves] Now? MS: Ha-ha ... EEEEYYYAA! Except a lot louder. Like “raaarrr.”

TC: What are some things that could be improved about soccer?

MS: If they could eliminate running from the sport, that would be great. Also, better officials. Most of them are not really good and it’s frustrating.

TC: If you could perform physical harm to those officials what would you do?

MS: Hmm ... I feel like I would just replace their eyeballs. I would gouge their eyeballs out and replace them because some of them are just clearly blind.

TC: How long have you been on varsity?

MS: I’ve been officially on for two years, although I played here and there when I was a freshman.

TC: Who do you admire most on the team?

MS: Eli Friedlander. He’s a good player, but it’s hard to find a good player who consistent every game.

As a goalkeeper that’s a necessity, but Eli pulls off crazy moves.

TC: What are you guys looking to improve as a team before CCS? MS: We’ve been talking a lot about having better practices. We get better during practice, but right now we aren’t focused and we can’t improve.

TC: What is your favorite part of soccer?

MS: Winning.

TC: Why do you like winning?

MS: Getting to celebrate, because you can get a good goal and then dish out a good celebration.

TC: Do you have any standard routines?

MS: Well, my go-to is usually the backflip. Or I open up my arms and just let everyone hug me and they touch my head and say, “Oh, you’re so good!”

TC: Is your head the only thing they touch?

MS: Head, amongst other parts.

TC: What are these other parts Michel?

MS: Is this necessary?

TC: Yeah totally!

MS: They touch me in the back and you know. Slap me in the — I don’t know.

TC: Okay! We’re gonna end it right there.

Friday, January 29, 2016

The Campanile

SPORTS

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COURTESY OF TULSA SHOCK

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rom its creation in 1996, the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) has proven itself to be a failure. Top athletes travel overseas to avoid the WNBA’s obscenely low wage cap, consequently lowering talent on the court. Abysmal viewer turnout and embarrassingly low salary limits have handicapped the league’s reputation beyond repair, which is reason enough for the WNBA to be shut down.

Perhaps the most crippling blow to the WNBA and its future is that, in its 20 years of existence, the league has never caught on with the American public.

Nearly all prefer to follow the National Basketball Association (NBA) due to the rapid pace of male basketball players, ignoring the slower-paced WNBA games. The sheer overwhelming athleticism of male players is considered far more entertaining to watch than the limited physical prowess of players in the WNBA. This has proven to be a major factor in the league’s microscopic viewership.

By 2014, only 11 dunks had been scored in the entire history of the women’s league; in contrast, Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green made 21 dunks so far in the 2015-16 season. Nearly everyone in the United States knows who Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant are; however, Sue Bird, Tamika Catchings and Lisa Leslie, considered to be three of the top women’s basketball players in the nation, have yet to become household names.

According to the Sports Business Journal, WNBA games averaged 7,318 viewers during the 2015 season. That same year, NBA games had an average of 17,826 people in attendance.

In a conference regarding women in sports, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver blamed the poor turnout on a lack of media attention.

“There’s virtually no coverage,” Silver said. “We thought ratings and attendance would be higher.”

WNBA GAMES AVERAGED 7,318 VIEWERS DURING THE 2015 SEASON. THAT SAME YEAR, NBA GAMES HAD AN AVERAGE OF 17,826 IN ATTENDANCE. WAGE CAP This absence of viewers severely limits profits, consequently forcing the league to monitor its money. The WNBA’s limits on its spending manifest in the form of wage caps that embarrass both players and the league as a whole.

Players in the league can only make a maximum of $111,500 per year; in contrast, Kobe Bryant made over $23 million solely during the Lakers’ 2014-2015 season.

This salary restriction has driven female players to play in other countries, the most notable instance being WNBA poster child Diana Taurasi. Considered to be one of the top women’s basketball players worldwide, Taurasi only made $107,000 in 2014 while playing in the United States.

This year, UMMC Ekaterinburg, Taurasi’s Russian Premier League team, paid her over $100,000 to sit out the 2015 WNBA season to avoid potential injuries and being worn down in the States.

“My agent said it would be financially irresponsible not to do it,” Taurasi said in an interview with the New York Times. “Why shouldn’t I try to make the most money I can?”

It certainly is more profitable for her to play overseas: Taurasi makes $1.5 million playing outside of the United States during the WNBA offseason.

Other countries, most notably Turkey, Israel and Russia, are more invested in women’s basketball than America is, and pay their players higher salaries.

UNPROFITABLE The fact that Taurasi has chosen UMMC Ekaterinburg over the U.S. team Phoenix Mercury poses a threat to the American league. Once other top players realize their skills are more valued elsewhere, the already-limited talent in the WNBA could further decrease, should they too choose to play abroad.

“At the end of the day, it’s definitely a business decision,” WNBA player Tamika Catchings said to ESPN. Catchings makes approximately $105,000 playing for the Indiana Fever.

Like many others, she plays overseas in the off-season, her specifically for Turkish team Galatasaray.

If more of the WNBA’s top players choose to play for their foreign teams over their American ones, the level of play in the league will drop. Even now WNBA games are slower and less explosive than those of the NBA; the loss of talent in the former will further reduce incentive for the already limited number of WNBA fans to continue watching women’s basketball games.

THE LEAGUE HASN’T GROWN THE WAY WE’VE HOPED...WE’RE NOT NOTICED VERY MUCH ON THE NATIONAL SPORTS SCENE. SHERYL SWOOPES RETIRED WNBA PLAYER EXODUS

Additionally, certain teams lose money with each passing season. In 2014, the Los Angeles Sparks management surrendered control of its team, citing an inability to regain the $12 million lost by the team from 2007 to 2014. The failing of the Sparks is not an outlier; one-third of all the teams ever to exist in the WNBA have folded.

The WNBA currently has a network contract with ESPN that Swish Appeal estimates being worth at $12 million per year; in contrast, ESPN gives the NBA $930 million annually. The media value of the women’s league is incredibly small, and it is doubtful it will grow. The stigma associated with women’s basketball, demonstrated by the microscopic value placed on its television rights, has ruined the WNBA’s reputation.

“The league hasn’t grown the way we’ve hoped,” retired WNBA player Sheryl Swoopes said to the Washington Post. “We’re not noticed very much on the national sports scene.”

The stigma attached to the female sport due to the failings of the WNBA is now inescapable. Many consider the women’s league to be the inferior sister of the NBA, and this sentiment has morphed into the mindset that women’s basketball as a whole is a joke. Unprofitable, unpopular, and impossible to repair, the WNBA should be shut down to save its players and women’s basketball’s reputation in the United States from further embarrassment.

TEXT BY

JACKY MOORE DESIGN BY

JACKY MOORE, COLE HECHTMAN & BO FIELD