Issue 8, 3/23/2018

Page 1

PALO ALTO UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT PALO ALTO HIGH SCHOOL 50 EMBARCADERO RD. PALO ALTO, CA 94301

Palo Alto High School 50 Embarcadero Road Palo Alto, CA 94301

NON-PROFIT ORG U.S. POSTAGE

PAI D PALO ALTO PERMIT #44

Centennial Edition

Vol. C, No. 8

FRIDAY, MARCH 23, 2018

INSIDE

Editors' note

the edition

Celebrating The Campanile's 100th anniversary

Through the Decades . . . . A2-A7 Paly Journalism. . . . . . . . . . . A8 History of The Campanile . . . B1 Awards and Advisers . . . . . . B2 Underground Publications . . . B3 Wartime Productions . . . . B4-B5 Protests at Paly . . . . . . . . . . . . B6 April Fool's Editions . . . . . . . B7 Comics and Cartoons . . . . . . . B8 History of Sports . . . . . . . . . . C1 Sports Victories at Paly . . . . . C2 Title IX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C3 Notable Atheletes . . . . . . . C4-C5 Intramural Sports . . . . . . . . . . C6 Sports Photo Collage . . . . . . . C7 Alumni Verbatim . . . . . . . . C8

A

WAVERLY LONG/THE CAMPANILE

Paly Journalism

An in-depth look at the history of Paly's publications. PAGE A8

WAVERLY LONG/THE CAMPANILE

Throughout The Campanile's 100-year run, its newspaper layout has undergone multiple redesigns.

DAVID/CC BY 2.0

Wartime production

Student cover stories during U.S. wars of the past century. PAGES B4-B5

Campanile's athletes

By Waverly Long Staff Writer

Almost all the articles The Campanile has printed over the past century can be examined in the Paly Journalism Archive, which was started in the library about 100 years ago by the librarian at the time, according to current Paly librarian Rachel Kellerman. Kellerman said librarians have been collecting and preserving Paly’s publications since 1901, when they started developing the print Journalism Archive. The digital archive was only started in 2014 and unveiled in fall of 2017. According to Kellerman, parent and community volunteers have played a large role in the execution of this project, including former Paly parent Elizabeth Trueman, the Media Boosters organization and junior Charlotte Kadifa. All these volunteers have been working toward achieving the same goal. “The primary goal is to preserve student voices and make this unique archive available to past present and future students, faculty, and community members,” Kellerman said in an email. The archive can be used to search for alumni, discover Paly student coverage of major historical events and find similarities and differences between generations, according to Kellerman. It can be found at http://palyjournalismarchive. pausd.org/. “I encourage people to explore how art and illustration and eventually photography (visual media) has changed over the years in the various publications,” Kellerman said. “Paly students have always been incredibly creative.”

amid a culture of censorship and prior restraint from the administration. Staff writers Tess Manjarrez, Sam Hwang and Shannon Zhao delve into student life during wartime, while News & Opinion Editor Renee Hoh and senior staff writer Grace Kitayama examine the impact of student protests from the ‘60s to modern times. News & Opinion Editor Noah Baum and staff writer Alyssa Leong also showcase The Campanile’s more lighthearted side in their feature on past April Fool’s special editions. In the C section, Lifestyle Editor Vivian Feng and staff writer John Tayeri highlight Paly’s fight for gender equality in sports through their article on Title IX. Staff writers Ujwal Srivastava and Leyton Ho and Sports Editor Eric Li cover two prominent Paly atheletes — Brooklyn Nets basketball star Jeremy Lin and Olympic ping pong player Lily Zhang — and their talents both on the court and as members of The Campanile. We welcome you in our celebration, and thank you for 100 remarkable years as the voice of Palo Alto High School’s students. — Allison, Ashley, Ehecatl, Maya and Niklas

1996: Board corruption exposed

Jeremy Lin and Lily Zhang on their Campy experience.

Paly Journalism Archive

lot can happen over 100 years. Through times of stability and turmoil, Palo Alto High School has constantly evolved — and The Campanile has been there to record it all. As honored as we are to be able to create this issue for the 100th year, this is not just our celebration. It is a celebration for all who came before us, the power of student voice and the changes this paper has brought over the years. In this issue, staff writers Waverly Long and Byron Zhang begin by investigating how The Campanile’s articles and investigatory pieces have prompted change in the Paly community. Moving on in the A section, various staff members highlight main events throughout the decades as well as changes in Paly lifestyle, from the wars in the ‘40s and ‘50s to the hipster and rock and roll phases of the ‘60s and beyond. Staff writers Kiana Tavakoli, Anna Meyer and Sophia Moore end the section with a feature on the evolution of our esteemed journalism program and the various publications that students have created. Continuing to the B section, staff writers Kaylie Nguyen and Yusra Rafeeqi detail Paly’s underground publications, which thrived in the ‘60s, ‘80s and ‘90s

Exploring our impact over the past century

LILY ZHANG/USED WITH PERMISSION

PAGES C4-C5

www.thecampanile.org

WAVERLY LONG/THE CAMPANILE

Ben Hewlett recounts writing the article that publicized Board fraud.

By Waverly Long

W

Staff Writer

hen staff writer Ben Hewlett published an article in March of 1996 that exposed the Palo Alto Unified School District Board of Education’s questionable decisions regarding a superintendent promotion and school funding, he had no idea what a significant impact the article would have.

After the article was published, further investigation revealed irregularities within the School Board, including the discovery that 17 administrators had abused school funds. The information soon became public, and resulted in withdrawn raises and the resignation of the superintendent and business manager. “All the way up through publishing, I didn’t honestly expect that [the article] would be such a

big deal,” Hewlett said. “I mean, I got the sense that people at the school would be possibly concerned about it, but I didn’t expect that it would be picked up by people outside of the school and by people in the community… So it was kind of surprising to see that it got traction.” Hewlett’s article shed light on the promotion of Associate Superintendent Pat Einfelt to Deputy Superintendent, which was coupled with a $9,000 raise per year. The topic of the promotion emerged in a closed Board meeting at 10:35 p.m. and a unanimous decision to approve the promotion was made within the same minute, according to Hewlett’s article. The meeting was adjourned just a minute later. After noticing the odd timing of the decision in the meeting minutes, Hewlett investigated further and discovered several red flags in the situation.

Story continued online thecampanile.org

1993: Poll sparked Living Skills reform By Byron Zhang

A

Staff Writer

national survey from 1988 found that approximately one out of every 10 American girls between the ages 15 and 19 had become pregnant from unprotected sex each year since 1973, according to the Jan. 18, 1991 issue of The Campanile. As school officials and parents grew more alarmed by this data, The Campanile shocked them once more in 1993, when it published the results of a poll, revealing that 55.8 percent of sexually active Paly students had engaged in unprotected sex. The poll’s findings prompted District officials to revise the curriculum for Living Skills, a course implemented in 1992. The poll, administered to 344 students, also revealed that 1.7 percent of those surveyed had contracted sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Brian Henderson, the editor-in-chief of The Campanile in 1993, suspected that the actual percentage might have been significantly higher than the reported. “True statistics are likely to be substantially higher, as many teenagers either are not willing to admit that they carry, or have carried, an STI, or do not have themselves tested frequently,” Henderson said. Following the publication of

BYRON ZHANG/THE CAMPANILE

A graph that was run in The Campanile in 1991 shocked many adults. The Campanile’s poll results, the Palo Alto Youth Council (PAYC) also conducted a survey and received similarly high statistics, confirming the The Campanile’s data and the need to reform the sex-education curriculum. To prevent students from practicing unprotected sex, the PAYC advised the Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) Board of Education to revise the Living Skills curriculum, which did not offer much information to students about using contraceptives. Prior to publishing the survey's results, staff writers authored multiple articles regarding STIs and sex education at Paly. In an editorial written in 1991, The Campanile brought attention to

the need for an in-depth sex education course and proposed to install “condom vending machines” in school bathrooms to encourage safe sex. “The people who are having sex will be more willing to use a condom if it is easy to get than if they have to go to great lengths to get it,” the editorial argued. In 2000, seven years after the revision of Living Skills, The Campanile conducted a new survey, administered to 823 students, which revealed that only 40 percent of sexually active students reported having had unprotected sex, a 16 percent decrease from 1993. The number of students who had engaged in intercourse also reduced from 31 percent in 1993 to 26 percent in 2001.

BYRON ZHANG/THE CAMPANILE

Prior to the survey results, all students in one grade shared one couneselor.

1992: Survey prompted Teacher Adviser system By Byron Zhang

T

Staff Writer

o this day, schools across the country use the counselor system, in which all students in a given grade consult with a single guidance counselor on issues such as class schedules to college applications to mental health. However, at Paly, this system has long been abolished, due to the results of all-school survey published in The Campanile on Jan. 17, 1992 that revealed widespread student dissatisfaction with the counselor system. This controversy ignited a school-wide discussion on the reformation of the Guidance Department and eventually led to the creation of the Teacher Advisory (TA) system. Although the Guidance Department stated “developing an individual educational and career plan that will be updated annually with each student as the top priority,” according to the January 1992 issue of The Campanile, 68 percent of juniors and 87 percent of freshmen indicated that they had never formulated a four-year plan with their counselors at any point during high school. In addition, 52 percent of those who did receive help from guidance counselors still found the counselor system inaccessible. “My counselor called me in for an appointment and made me wait 45 minutes before she finally had time to see me,” one respondent of the survey said in the January 1992 issue. “She looked at her list and said, ‘oh are you here to see me, too?’ She called me in, and she’s asking me that?” Moreover, the poll showed that the vast majority of students were inclined to turn to their counselor for mostly clerical tasks, such as academic planning and

college applications, but not personal issues such as mental health. “It’s amazing to me that I can spend more time restructuring a student’s schedule until it’s just perfect than I can spend counseling a suicidal student,” said Jack Phillips, one of the four guidance counselors in 1992. One month after the poll’s publication, former Principal Sandra Pearson requested the Site Council, which oversees the school budget, to form a committee to develop plans for a more accessible and efficient counseling system.

The results of an all-school survey reavealed widespread student dissatisfaction with the counselor system. The committee quickly submitted its proposal for a new TA system, which increased the counselor-student ratio significantly by training teachers to become counselors, thus relieving the school of the financial burden of employing more counselors. “It is clear that the department is meeting the needs of less than a quarter of the student body,” stated in an editorial in the March 9, 1992 issue of The Campanile. “It is a waste of time and money for three professionals to be performing tasks that could easily be carried out by paraprofessionals.” The TA system went into effect in fall of the 1992-93 school year and received positive responses from a majority of students, according to multiple surveys conducted by The Campanile. In contrast, Gunn High School uses the counselor system to this day.


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