Issue 5: February 14, 2023

Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2023

City plans to mitigate future oods. A3

SPOTLIGHT AI creates education challenges. A4-5

LIFESTYLE Community celebrates Chinese New Year. B3

The Campanile

THE CAASPP CRISIS

To encourage students to take the the CAASPP tests, the SmarterBalance testing agency has implemented harsher punishments for schools that do not achieve 95% student participation on the tests.

As a result, Paly’s CAASPP score dramatically decreased last year, falling below state standards by 59 points on the English Language Arts test and 66 points on the math test.

tests achieved or exceeded the standards in both sections.

e students that take the test do very well,” Olah said. “In the past it never mattered that we didn’t have everybody taking it or a certain percentage taking it, but it matters now that (the 95% rule) is being enforced.”

Senior Ishaan Batra said he opted out of the CAASPP tests last year because he saw no bene t to taking them. gured that there would be a better use of my time,” Batra said. “(Opting out) other work, and I didn’t see any bene for myself to take it at the time.”

Batra also said school rankings should not be based on CAASPP testing when there are other national tests that are

“For example, you could look at ACT or SAT test averages or percentage of kids that take AP or Honors classes to get the same results,” Batra said. ere are a bunch of other factors that one could use to determine the competitiveness of a school. I don’t think (CAASPP ratings) would play a huge role as long as it’s noted that only a small

of those times that as a school, we’re asking you to give back to the school. For juniors, you have the chance to set the bar for when you are applying for colleges the next year when the scores come out.”

Dinu Deshpande Sports Editor

Black Student Union hosts Black History Month

icans in class was slavery and Jim Crow,” Conaway said. “ at was it. No one told me about the triumphs, the innovation, the genius and the creativity.”

will receive a 7% pay increase after the Board of Education approved a negotiated agreement reached by the unions e deal, retroactive for the 2022-2023 school year, increases employee pay by 7% excluding the district’s top six administrators. A 5% raise retroactive to the start of the school year and a 2% one-time payment will be given e Palo Alto Educators Association and the California School Employees Association e agreements were separate, with the district negotiating with e Palo Alto Managers Association represents administrators but did not participate in negotiations. e 7% increase is higher than previous increases. In the past two years, employees have received a 3% pay increase. PAEA President Teri Baldwin attributed the ation. e reason for a higher salary increase is that we are trying to keep pace with the cost of living and ation increases over the years,” ation rate was 8% compared with an average yearly rate of 1.88%

PAUSD Deputy Superintendent Trent Bahadursingh said the district’s main focus during negotiations was on making smart

“A lot of (the agreement) depended on nancially,” Bahadursingh scally responsible while still considering the compensation we give to sta .”

Bahadursingh said the increase will allow the district to recruit more experienced sta Furthermore, Bahadursingh said retaining and recruiting high-quality teachers will directly impact students’ education.

“Like any business, the goal is attracting and retaining sta ,” Bahadursingh said. “PAUSD’s prestige and salary makes us very competitive.”

ary’s Black History Month, the Black Student Union and ASB will host events including guest speakers, a multicultural day, a Mardi Gras celebration and a PRIME to learn about historic Black gures.

Carter Blair, president of the BSU, said the club has planned several new events throughout the month.

“We plan on having a second guest speaker later in the month, hosting the San Jose State University step team and having a (historically black college and university) T-shirt day for BSU and Multicultural club members,” Blair said. “Finally, we’re planning a school-wide Mardi Gras celebration with traditional Creole food and decorations.”

Blair said ASB has supported BSU this year by helping fund these events.

is year, they came to us and made sure that we were aware that if we had an event that could bene t the entire student body, we could very easily receive funding for that,” Blair said. “ at’s enabled us to do a lot more than we thought was previously possible given our capacity to fundraise as a club rather than as a school.”

In addition to school events, librarian Sima omas said she will arrange several displays to promote Black literature.

Yolanda Conaway, Assistant Superintendent and Director of Equity and Student A airs, said PAUSD also hopes to promote the signi cance of Black History Month throughout the year.

“Honoring and commemorating the contributions of African Americans in this society is important every month, not just in February,” Conaway said.

“We (want to) gure out how to (expose) our community, students and sta to the positive contributions of African Americans and not just the negative stereotypes.”

Conaway said Black History Month also tackles the lack of inclusion, which is exacerbated by how Black history is taught.

Conway said these classes often focus on the setbacks of Africans and African-Americans rather than their accomplishments.

“As a student, the only thing I learned about African-Amer

Sophomore Eyiloluwasefunmi Ogunlade said she agrees.

“Most of the time (when) we learn about Black history, it’s just about some Black man being prosecuted,” Ogunlade said.

Mary Sano, the instructional leader of the Social Science department, said despite the challenge of accurately educating students on Black history, the department is constantly working toward improving curriculum.

“ e teachers in our department are consistently re ective and thoughtful about our task, (which) includes adhering to the state standards, keeping an eye on the larger conversation about teaching history — both nationally and locally — and of course, trying to meet all of our students’ needs,” Sano said. “We have been working on shifting the approach of the way Black history is taught and addressed, and I would welcome the opportunity to continue the conversation that was started last school year between the BSU and our e orts.”

Conaway said part of the 2023 PAUSD Promise re ects “Equity and Excellence,” with an emphasis on the service and celebration of others to build community and diversity.

“(Celebrating Black History Month) falls squarely into the (PAUSD) promise and an element in the promise called our SWIFT plan,” Conaway said. e Systemwide Integrated Framework for Transformation, or SWIFT, is a plan to advance equity, diversity and inclusion in the district and at Paly where only about 2% of the student population is Black.

Blair said schoolwide observances of Black History Month can be used to mitigate these racial disparities.

“With so few Black students, a lot of people don’t really consider the weight Black history carries,” Blair said. “Having an opportunity to promote it schoolwide gets a lot of people thinking.”

In addition, Conaway said that the small population of Black students should not a ect Paly’s celebration of Black History Month.

“It (shouldn’t) make a di erence at all whether we had one student or 1,000,” Conaway said. “It’s important not just (for) black students to have exposure to the positive contributions of African Americans, but it’s just as important for white students and students of all cultures to have that experience because otherwise, they walk away with one narrative.”

Bene ts of the pay increases extend not only to PAUSD sta Math teacher Daniel Nguyen, who is part of the PAEA Rep. Council and also part of the Negotiations Team, said better compensation allows teachers to focus more on their students rather than on making a living.

“When (teachers) can focus on their jobs more, they may be more likely to supervise clubs, maybe coach sports, maybe stay after school or come before school to help students,” Nguyen said.

Nguyen said while the negotiations process usually begins in the fall, this year’s negotiations ended much earlier than usual.

“ e last time we had a tentative agreement, it was reached at the end of April,” Nguyen said. “ is time, we were able to get a tentative agreement at the beginning of December. e process was a lot smoother and a lot faster this time around.”

In addition to salary increases and medical bene ts, unions also negotiate on class size, working conditions and leave provisions, which are part of PAUSD’s Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Even though pay has steadily risen for teachers, many educators in California are still dissatis ed. In a 2021 national survey conducted by the Teacher Salary Project, over 82% of 1,200 classroom teachers surveyed said they have worked at multiple jobs to make a living.

With all that in mind, Nguyen said he is grateful to work in PAUSD where sta currently earn between $71,484 and $144,239.

“We have a lot of privilege living in this area,” Nguyen said. “We are fortunate to live in a strong economic area where the district will still be in a strong nancial situation, even with this agreement.”

Lucas Yuan

PAUSD approves plan to build subsidized sta housing

To provide district employees with more a ordable housing options, the Board of Education voted 4-1 to approve plans to participate in a subsidized housing project at 231 Grant Ave. for teachers and sta during its Jan. 17 meeting. Board member Todd Collins was the only “no” vote. PAUSD employees will have access to 29 of the project’s 110 units.

Math teacher Daniel Nguyen said he is glad the board approved being part of this program because the need for teacher housing in the area is a growing concern.

“A big part of the cost of living is buying a place, and it's very di cult to do,” Nguyen said. “Some people have to commute an hour each way. e more time a teacher or an educator spends commuting, the less time they have to prepare meaningful lessons.”

Housing costs have risen 88% in the last decade in the Bay Area according to a report from Compass, a realtor company.

“Rents and houses in this area are outrageous and (it’s) hard for teachers to a ord,” Palo Alto Educators Association president Teri Baldwin said.

California School Employees Association representative Meb Steiner said there is also a severe lack of a ordable housing for educators.

ey make too much money to qualify for low-income housing, but they don't make enough to a where they work,” Steiner said.

is project is developed to help a sector of the community that is often neglected in housing according to Steiner.

“ project is designed for what's called the missing middle: teach ers, nurses, police o employees — people who do critical jobs within a community,” Steiner said.

According to Mercy Housing California and Abode Communities, the primary housing authorities for this project, the units at 231 Grant Ave. were designed to mitigate these concerns. To alleviate costs, rent will be set below market prices ac cording to the Board of Education.

Board President Jennifer DiBrienza said the location for the project was chosen partly due to local support from the City of Palo Alto as the project is based in Palo Alto.

Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian said the site for the project is located on county-owned land.

“It's a site that is underutilized, and it's probably about 8,000 square feet on the property,” Simitian said. “I just thought surely we can do something that is of greater bene t to the public.”

Simitian said the project received $3 million from the City of Palo Alto and $6 million from Santa Clara County.

In addition to city and county funds, Meta put in $25 million for the San Mateo school district units. DiBrienza said a project of this magnitude usually costs more than $100 million, making Meta’s contribution signi cant.

“When Meta (expanded to) San Mateo County and Menlo Park, part of the agreement was (to add) workforce housing for educators,” DiBrienza said.

DiBrienza said legal challenges for 231 Grant Ave. were the primary issue with the project.

“ e California State Constitution says a school district can't donate money, lend money or give money without getting an interest rate in return,” DiBrienza said. “Because we also can't give a loan, the money will sit in

until both parties have met their contractual obligations. DiBrienza said another issue with the logistics of the project is PAUSD employees’ eligibility to stay within the housing.

“California state law says you can't just kick someone out of your house because their employment changed,” DiBrienza said.

Steiner has encountered a similar issue with discussing term limits for the rental.

“ ere isn't a term limit because part of that lies in how a ordable housing laws are written up,” Steiner said.

According to Steiner and DiBrienza, the district is still working to address the issue of term limits and eligibility requirements.

Despite the setbacks, Simitian said the county remains dedicated to improving educator welfare through this latest housing project.

“We want to use this to attract and retain great sta ,” Simitian said. “I was very clear that from day one the goal of this exercise has been to help schools and school districts stay strong.”

Asha Kulkarni plays a cello in the library. “How many times have you seen people play in the library?” conductor Je rey Willner said. “Exactly.”

As an opportunity for students in Visual and Performing Arts classes to showcase their work, the VAPA department celebrated “Arts in Unusual Places” during the week of Jan. 30. is annual event results in student work appearing in unexpected places all around campus.

“We put up art on the pillars of many Paly buildings that was based on the work of Henri Matisse — what he called his ‘cutouts,’” AP Art History and Art Spectrum teacher Sue La Fetra said.

Across campus, drawings and paintings of all sorts popped up. Some depicted everyday objects, such as a cup. Others depicted more abstract things. One student attached a small picture of someone’s face to a rain gutter.

Tracey Atkinson teaches Advanced Painting and Drawing, Digital Art Spectrum and Art Spectrum. Atkinson said all of her classes put their best pieces up around campus.

“My advanced class created chalk drawings in the Paly Alley next to the Haymarket to brighten the outdoors as people walked by.” Atkinson said.

Concert choir performed songs near the music building on Tuesday, while the orchestra performed songs in the upper oor of the library under the guidance of teacher and conductor Je rey Willner.

“How many times have you seen people play in the library?” Willner said. “Exactly.” e band played “Green and White” during the winter rally on Feb. 1.

Kenna. Gallagher’s photography classes stacked sticks in circular formations near the football eld, following the style of sculptor Andy Goldsworthy. e tallest stacks were around two feet tall, with the shortest ones measuring a few inches.

La Fetra said, “(Arts in Unusual Places) is about highlighting the art all around us, and the fantastic opportunities for Paly students to participate in making art.”

Lea Kwan Sta Writer

e City Council appointed Lydia Kou as mayor and Greer Stone as vice mayor in its Jan. 9 meeting. Both positions are one-year terms.

Stone, an attorney who previously served on Palo Alto’s Human Relations Commission and Santa Clara County’s Human Rights Commission and Justice Review Committee, said he is excited for the next part of his public service journey.

“(I enjoy) being able to help people, especially Palo Altans who have various issues or needs and who feel that they don’t have a voice in the community,” Stone said. “To be able to talk to them, (to) make change for them, is something that never gets old.”

Stone also said he hopes to nish long-term projects the city has planned.

“With regard to a lot of issues, we have the housing element and economic uncertainties with a possible looming recession,” Stone said. “We have the climate initiative we’re trying to get over the nish line too. ere’s so much that needs to get done next year, which is why I felt it was a good time to be in leadership to make sure that those continue to progress.”

Stone said involving youth in local government is also one of his priorities and he hopes to gain input through the Palo Alto Youth Council.

“I know so many teenagers within the community (who) are incredibly invested in issues such as climate change,” Stone said. “We have an annual meeting with the City Council, where (the) youth can share their views, and they work on projects to increase youth connectivity across the city.”

Kou, a former real estate developer with six years of experience on the council, served as vice mayor in 2022.

Kou said that when she rst moved to Palo Alto her involvement in the community expanded when she joined the City Council.

“My civic engagement expanded to emergency preparedness in my neighborhood expanding to the rest of the city,” Kou said.

“I know a lot of the neighborhoods around here in Palo Alto, but not to the depth that I know having been involved in civic engagement.”

Kou said in her one-year term as mayor, she also plans to focus on resident input.

“We should make sure that the residents who live here are communicating to understand what the local government can improve on,” Kou said.

Kou also said she wants to ensure the needs of every resident are prioritized, especially young people.

“We’re all parents, and even though our children may be grown up, we want to ensure that our youth are looked after and they have what they need in this community,” Kou said.

“Whether you’re from Paly or Gunn, someplace in the city will a ect you.”

Kou will also review the city’s economic development during her term.

“We’re looking at where the gaps are to attract new businesses to come into Palo Alto so that it would be more catering to its residents; that’s one part,” Kou said. “ e other part is climate change. We have extreme weather, so as we start experiencing this, we really must consider climate change.”

Julian Hong Sta Writer

MAGALI GAUTHIER/USED WITH PERMISSION

CAYDEN GU/THE CAMPANILE

Gabriella Gulman Sta Writer

e City Council appointed Lydia Kou as mayor and Greer Stone as vice mayor during its Jan. 9 meeting. “We should make sure that the residents who live here are communicating to understand what the local government can improve on,” Kou said.

ART BY KATE XIA

Historical ood hits city

The second largest ood in Palo Alto’s history impacted hundreds of residents on Dec. 31, leading the city to create new initiatives to combat future ooding.

Near the Pope-Chaucer and Newell bridges spanning Palo Alto and Menlo Park, the San Francisquito Creek over owed, quickly lling the streets of Crescent Park on the morning of New Year’s Eve.

Michael Anderson, the climatologist at the California Department of Water resources, said a signi cant weather pattern change in the atmosphere triggered an unexpected wave of storms over the state.

“A jet stream shot across the entire Paci c, bringing a parade of nine storms into California with atmospheric rivers,” Anderson said. “ e storm right after Christmas was our biggest one.”

Felicia Marcus, a member of Stanford’s Urban Water Policy Institute, said the recent ood is an indicator of future weather turbulence.

“We’re going to have weather whiplash (with) more frequent, drier and hotter droughts punctuated by big storms like we just saw,” Marcus said.

To prevent another ood of the magnitude of the city’s largest ood in 1998, which led to $40 million in damages to more than 1500 homes, many residents say the “Upstream Project,” also known as Reach 2, must be completed. e project includes remodeling the Pope-Chaucer and Newell bridges as well as widening parts of the San Francisquito creek. ese residents say the New Year’s Eve ood this year only goes to show how important completing this project is.

Part of this project has the cities of Palo Alto, East Palo Alto and Menlo Park working with the San Francisquito Creek Joint Powers Association to rebuild the narrow PopeChaucer and Newell bridges, which many residents think caused the oods in Palo Alto.

omas Rind eisch, a retired Senior Research Scientist at Stanford and resident of Crescent Park, said remodeling both bridges is necessary because their designs cause water to build up behind them and over ow.

“Pope Chaucer is the ultimate thing that has to be xed,” Rind eisch said. “If Reach 2 is completed, then the creek should handle, with out any over ow, 7500 cubic feet per second, which is more than the 1998 ood.”

Palo Alto City Councilman Patrick Burt agrees but said the project needs multi-city cooperation for its success.

“We really needed (the cities) to work together,” Burt said. “We have done a series of simulation drills where all the agencies get together.”

Under the direction of the San Francisquito Creek Joint Powers Association, the “Downstream Project,” more commonly known as Reach 1, was completed in 2019, increasing creek capacity from Highway 101 to the Bay by increasing the height of levees and widening the oodplain near the Bay.

Margaret Bruce, executive director of the SFC JPA, said Reach 1 was crucial in limiting the magnitude of the recent ood.

“East Palo Alto downstream of Highway 101 would have ooded (on Dec. 31),” Bruce said. “If (the channel) had been skinny, water would have backed up even more (upstream) and would have spilled over the banks.”

With the recent ooding fresh in people’s minds, the a ected cities are aiming to speed up processes. East Palo Alto councilman Ruben Abrica, a SFC JPA board member, said he is committed to preventing any future ooding. “ is year in particular, we’re going to put even more emphasis to try to speed up some of these processes,” Abrica said. “It will be done.”

After the San Francisquito creek over owed on Dec. 31, city o cials said communication and sandbag stations became the priority in order to reduce the impacts of the ooding.

Residents familiar with the 1998 ood began preparing days before Dec. 31. Kirsten Essenmacher, a Palo Alto resident since

because some of these people had lived here for years,” Essenmacher said.

Burt said the city hopes to improve sandbag stations to increase e ciency and safety before and during oods.

“We had times where we ran out of sand or bags at the sandbagging stations, and our sta is now much more prepared for something like that,” Burt said.

However, Bruce said that some elderly residents still need assistance from able-bodied people, speci cally students, to lay sandbags around their homes.

“Being able to support your neighbors who may not have the physical ability to lift a 50-pound sandbag is huge,” Bruce said.

While oods can be dangerous, one positive outcome during heavy storm periods is that the water supply can increase through the collection of stormwater runo

Rebecca Eisenberg, Palo Alto’s representative on the Santa Clara Valley Board, said the

to increasing water supply as it allows rainwater to seep into the ground.

“ e way to capture stormwater is to tear up the concrete on the ground and replace it with porous surfaces,” Eisenberg said.

Marcus agreed and said allowing water to run over a large basin allows for a ood’s force to also be weakened as well.

“Instead of having levees and channeling water to the ocean, taking people out of harm’s way in those areas that the water would normally ow dissipates the force of the water,” Marcus said. “Sacramento would have ooded if it weren’t for (previously-implemented ood prevention) projects in this last rain.”

Bruce said being mindful of the large risk of future ooding at the magnitude witnessed this past month is essential to getting these projects completed.

“We think of this as an extreme event, but it may be followed by other extreme events in close succession,” Bruce said. “What we’re really trying to do is reduce the risk. We can’t eliminate it.”

Teslas equipped with the company’s advanced driver assistance systems, also known as autopilot, were involved in at least 18 fatal crashes since summer of 2021, according to the National Highway Tra c Safety Administration, leading some to doubt the future of self-driving cars.

As recently as December, a Tesla Model S with the brand new Full-Self-Driving system caused an eight car pileup on the Bay Bridge, injuring nine people.

Security footage from the tunnel, released on Jan. 11, shows the selfdriving Tesla attempting a dangerous lane change before slamming on the breaks, causing the pileup.

In recent months, the NHTSA has investigated 35 incidents involving Teslas with FSD, or

autopilot, activated. ese incidents have collectively killed 19 people.

Tesla rst developed its autopilot feature in 2016, when its cars came equipped with cameras and sensors, and software updates utilized this hardware to self-drive on freeways. After years of testing and delays, the FSD system became available in November 2022. ese AI features, however, have built up a questionable reputation.

Courtney Mitchell, who has owned a Tesla for ve years, defends Tesla because he said FSD isn’t meant to allow people to not pay attention while driving.

Instead, Mitchell said the negligence of the driver is to blame in most crashes involving FSD.

“When you’re choosing to move into a hands-o -the-wheel mode on the freeway, you need to still pay attention and be ready to grab that wheel instantly,” Mitchell said.

Steve Beck, another Tesla owner in Palo Alto, isn’t so sure.

“I’m not ready to trust full selfdriving,” Beck said. “When it gets to the point that it is demonstrably safe, I would consider it at that point.”

A MotorTrend article from January, reporting on car crashes that involve Teslas on autopilot, said it’s possible that Tesla is trying to get FSD on the market before it’s ready.

e excitement surrounding FSD draws back to a video that Tesla released in 2016, demonstrating the cars’ ability to drive around city streets without a human in the driver’s seat.

However, on Jan. 17 Tesla’s director of Autopilot software Ashok Elluswamy testi ed that the promotional video was staged.

An article from Fortune Magazine said Tesla built excitement too early in the development of FSD, which led Tesla to prematurely release a version of it. e car’s shortcomings on the roads gave rise to concerns over a potential threat to drivers and pedestrians, especially in the Bay Area, where there many people own Teslas. e company is based in Fremont.

Palo Alto’s Transportation Planning Manager Sylvia StarLack said there’s not much a city like Palo Alto can do about autonomous vehicles.

“On a sta level, we can’t really do much (about autonomous vehicles),” Lack said. “We talk about it in the o ce, but we don’t have any additional insight into the testing or regulation of those vehicles.”

Using autopilot is a personal choice, however, and there is a community of people who decide not to use it.

Senior Anna Gurthet is a part of this community and said she prefers gas cars. “I like the feel of an engine and the actual driving experience more of a gas car, (and) I personally like driving, so autopilot is useless to me,” Gurthet said.

Regardless of people’s preferences, Beck said he is concerned for the future of Tesla as a company because of some of its recent missteps, including those of its CEO. Beck said, “As a Tesla owner, I want the company to be healthy and still be there if I ever need service.

(Elon Musk) is neglecting what he needs to do.”

Rohan Bhatia Sta Writer

ART BY KATE XIA

ART BY GRACE HE

Holden Lee & Kate Xia Sta Writer & Assistant Photo Editor

> not another

Among the responses to Wharton Business School’s nal MBA exam lay a “superbly explained” essay whose author relied less on critical thinking than it did on arti cial intelligence. e mastermind behind the essay was ChatGPT, OpenAI’s new cutting-edge machine-learning Generative Pre-trained Transformer that operates on trillions of bytes of training data.

ChatGPT has not only written college essays comparable to humanwritten ones, but it has also passed multiple law school exams, the U.S. Medical Licensing Exam and the AP Computer Science A test. Since becoming free to the public in November 2022, the AI writing assistant is also increasingly being used in Paly classrooms for discussion board posts, English essays and science Claim-Evidence-Reasoning responses, sparking discussion over where to draw the line between ChatGPT as a plagiarism tool and a useful educational one.

In 2015, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and former Stanford student Sam Altman founded OpenAI, ChatGPT’s parent research institution. eir focus was on creating Generative Pre-trained

evolved into ChatGPT. OpenAI’s GPT models are designed to produce human-like text in widely varying contexts.

Unlike pre-programmed virtual assistants like Siri that search the internet to generate responses, ChatGPT generates original, human-like responses with its predictive machine learning technology, according to OpenAI.

Laura Biester, a Ph.D. researcher in natural language processing at the University of Michigan, said ChatGPT uses a multi-layer neural network to produce an output.

“ChatGPT takes in hundreds of billions of words, and then it’s trained to essentially predict the next word in a sequence,” Biester said. “So given the sentence I’m saying right now, (the model will) try to predict each subsequent word. ChatGPT is trained to do that on this huge amount of text.”

Stanford freshman and Paly alumnus Neil Rathi, who studies human and machine language processing, said ChatGPT’s model is similar to the way humans process words using the Surprisal eory.

“Surprisal eory is essentially that humans are trying to predict the upcoming word in the sentence,” Rathi said. “So if I have a sentence like, ‘ e children went outside to blank,’ the next most likely word in my sentence is ‘play,’ (the word) almost every human will (say) if they speak English.” Biester said ChatGPT’s large, comprehensive training set, combined with its input of the conversation’s previous history, allows it to remember context and perform complex tasks like writing essays and translating between languages. Despite these advances, Rathi said the threat ChatGPT poses to society is in ated. e public hasn’t really seen GPT, GPT-2 or GPT-3,” Rathi said. “ ey’ve gone from essentially nothing to ChatGPT. It’s not that meaningful if you’re a researcher, but the public has seen this massive increase in the ability of AI models, so (ChatGPT) has become this very interesting thing for people and newspapers to xate on. But Rathi said ChatGPT only imitates human language and does not understand human nuances like context and ese language models are not trained to understand language the way that a human can, so what they’re doing is more of an emulation of the output that a human can do,” Rathi said. “ ey’re producing language that looks like a human could have produced it, but they’re not producing it in the way that a human produces it. So, they’re not necessarily the most ective ways of getting cial general intelligence

Rathi said ChatGPT’s lack of human comprehension should make it evident to teachers when someone uses it for school

However, Biester said by introducing human input into the model, OpenAI has potentially introduced bias into ChatGPT.

“Anytime that you’re using human annotations for a model, there’s some opportunity for bias,” Biester said. “I don’t think OpenAI has given any information about demographic information or where ltering content) are from.”

Rishi Bommasani, a Ph.D. student at Stanford University, said the type of people who label data could impact the model, cally those who train ChatGPT to ensive questions as lter.

50% of students have used ChatGPT for either recreational purposes or school assignments.

“One important class of (considerations) is trying to make sure the model doesn’t generate toxic content,” Bommasani said. “An important ethical question is who labels this toxic content and under what

Usages

As an arti cial intelligence tool that generates readable text with a human-like tone, ChatGPT can complete assignments on everything from understanding and developing code to composing a polished English essay by following a given prompt.

Biester said the tool can be used like since the emergence of new technology a subject to go away.

“Even if you assume that students certainly still need to learn and (understand) on the exams,” Biester said.

And junior Mihir Menon said he thinks or positive tool depending on how it is

“While the calculator may have stripped arithmetic, it has allowed students to math topics much more e ciently,” Menon leverage ChatGPT-type tech to handle students can move on to (more) challenging

As a computer science instructor, though, students might use ChatGPT to write assignments.

“We’ll need to change how we’re doing take output from ChatGPT and run it

variables were learned during training GPT-3 and ChatGPT to predict human language.

Rathi also said ChatGPT is a useful but does not replace human cognizance.

“Unfortunately, when you ask ChatGPT going to be able to control the output give you the answer, so you don’t have asked it to explain or provide the rst the problem, but it cannot listen to those of a tutor.”

School reflects on

ough ChatGPT has limitations,

According to a Schoology survey conducted 70 Paly students have heard of ChatGPT recreational purposes or school assignments.

With ChatGPT becoming increasingly teachers say they have had to reevaluate methods, particularly in the English curriculum focus on establishing a defensible argument with speci c contextualization.

English teacher Keith Tocci said while generic responses that lack sophistication, dents will face a situation where they “AI can’t necessarily do that because done before,” Tocci said. “Even if it can not trust a robot to have as nuanced (of)

While ChatGPT-generated essays

Keerath Pujji said it can be a useful resource graph structure and grammar.

“If people are using it to further their vocabulary and sentence structure, it could otherwise, I don’t see students using it their learning.”

Pujji also said AI could change teaching students, if teachers start using it to create assignments.

“Personally, I think this takes away and it could lead to the future of education Pujji said.

Accessibility increases

Because ChatGPT does not copy from detect the use of AI in writing with traditional com’s Similarity Report. Because of this, ley Tokheim said plagiarism is a signi Tokheim said the English department assess student writing to avoid the risk “We’ve talked a lot about di erent process or having students write their them in class by hand,” Tokheim said.

ChatGPT emulates human language

like how a calculator is used in math technology doesn’t cause the fundamentals of have access to a calculator, they (understand) the core concepts to do well thinks ChatGPT can be a negative is used and regulated. stripped away the challenge of manual tackle more advanced or complex Menon said. “So, if we are able to handle surface-level thinking so that challenging topics, it will be bene cial.” though, Biester said she is concerned write code for short programming doing things because if you’re able to it against a bunch of test cases, that solves your whole homework problem,” Biester said. “It makes it so much harder for students to stay motivated (to complete their own work).”

Regardless of the program’s ability to listen to instructions and follow prompts, Biester said ChatGPT has its downsides, especially because it cannot mimic human creativity.

ere’s still a lot of creativity that’s needed in computer science, and ChatGPT only focuses on how to write a small function rather than the architecture of the overall system you’re building,” Biester said. “So I don’t think we’re at the point now where it is not going to be creating the next new algorithm, and there’s de nitely still a need for people who are trained.” useful tool for solving simple problems cognizance.

ChatGPT a math question, you aren’t output because all it can do is immediately have to do any work,” Rathi said. “I’ve step to help me work through those instructions to act in the role

is to gure out what works and what doesn’t, especially given that we’ve spent the past few years since entering COVID-19 developing all the online tools for assessing and writing.”

Tokheim said it is also important for students to be authentic with their work and challenge themselves as writers to build their con dence.

“Don’t be so quick to give up your ability to think critically,” Tokheim said. “Don’t turn it over to a machine. Really hold on to your willingness to struggle with knowledge and writing and presenting your ideas in a way that is hard. Don’t give that up so quickly, because then you really lose that ability to think clearly. is something writing helps students do.”

To help discourage plagiarism with AI, Pujji said the honor code should prohibit the use of AI assistants.

“I would probably consider using ChatGPT to brainstorm ideas or to create a very basic outline for an essay, but anything beyond that is unethical,” Pujji said. “Without putting it as academic dishonesty, students wouldn’t be punished for using AI to write their essays, and this would open up the stage for many more Paly students to use it freely.”

And Menon said using text-generation models, even when allowed, should be cited.

“Even when it is allowed, every one should acknowledge if they used it — similar to citing a source,” Menon said. “Teachers should know whether or not their students’ work was aided by ChatGPT.”

e breakthrough launch of ChatGPT has fueled debates over how to wield the power of AI in classrooms.

ough it may be too early to see the full repercussions of ChatGPT in school systems, Menon said high school curricula should adapt to the growing technological advancements and should maneuver around the use of AI.

“Assignments, essays, problems, etc. should be restructured so it wouldn’t be bene cial to use ChatGPT,” Menon said. “Additionally, all classes could shift toward more discussion or presentationbased learning, which is an example of (a space) where ChatGPT wouldn’t be useful.”

Bommasani, the former head teaching assistant of multiple language learning classes at Stanford, said ChatGPT could a ect how computer science curriculum is taught at the university. e concepts we’re trying to teach won’t really change, but how we teach it might change more signi cantly,” Bommasani said.

“One of the great things in computer science is you can teach the same concept in many different ways, so we’ll learn some new ways of teaching (concepts) inspired by ChatGPT out of necessity because the old way is maybe less e ective.”

However, Rathi said the capabilities of ChatGPT and AI chatbots are not pressing problems since these technological models will have major limitations for the foreseeable future.

“It’s not something to necessarily be worried about right now, since (when) people are using ChatGPT, you can tell they’re using it,” Rathi said. “But if you give it a couple of years, AI is progressing so fast that we might get to a point where it is going to become useful. At the same time, AI has been progressing at a high rate because (developers) have been adding more data (to) these models, but there’s going to be a ceiling at which either we have no more data we can give them or the amount of data is too saturated, and we can’t get better performing models.”

limitations, it is still popular among students. conducted by e Campanile, 84.3% of ChatGPT and 50% have used it for either assignments. increasingly prevalent in the classroom, reevaluate their curriculum and teaching curriculum where teaching methods argument and a strong line of reasoning while ChatGPT tends to write sophistication, at some point in their life, stuhave to respond to something new. because it’s working with what has been can produce (written work), I would (of) a response.” essays may lack sophistication, sophomore resource to provide feedback on paratheir writing skills and gain new could be good,” Pujji said. “But it in a way that would be bene cial to teaching in a way which disadvantages create lesson plans and grade writing away the personal aspect of teaching, education being completely AI-based,”

from any source, it is di cult to traditional methods such as Turnitin. this, English Instructional Lead Shircant challenge with ChatGPT. department is exploring alternative ways to risk of plagiarism. options and focusing more on the essays in class or write pieces of said. “ e biggest challenge right now

is trained to predict the most likely continuation of a sequence of words given the previous context of the conversation, similar to how humans process language according to the Surprisal Theory

Student leadership organizations deserve greater voice

When the Associated Student Body held the annual winter rally this February, students and teachers cheered as their teams scored in the facultystudent basketball game.

e band played upbeat music in between the action, and the atmosphere was vibrant. e reveal of the prom location at the end of the game brought on another round of cheers from students.

en the bell rang, and everyone shouldered their bags and left for class. Life went on, completely unchanged by the winter rally, following the trend for every other event ASB has hosted.

Paly has historically had issues with student stress levels, academic workload and mental health. Administrators may conduct rare surveys to ask about students’ mental health and journalism publications print articles about the subject, and yet, the in uence the student body has to change the environment at the school is low.

To x this problem, Paly administration should let students have more say in rules and policies, by allowing ASB and members of the Principal’s Advisory Committee to have a greater leadership role.

Students have little in uence in policies a ecting their everyday life at Paly, and a good example is the recent bell schedule survey. Many students thought none of the recent options we were presented with were good.

None of the schedules presented to us are that di erent from what we currently have, and none of them will make an impact on student mental health.

In fact, unless you blitzkrieg through your makeup tests or are in dire need of help in two classes, what we were presented with is at best a sidegrade to the current study hall system. e two Paly organizations where students have a direct voice are ASB and the PAC, and these are formed by having students compete against each other for the power to represent their grade.

And yet their impact is minimal. ASB is focused on planning events. eir website displays graduation merchandise and miscellaneous events, and it seems as if the adults at school try to keep them from the decision making process.

I tried reaching out to the ASB adviser to ask if this was the intent of the club, but he could not do an interview before we went to press. And when is the last time students on the PAC were given the chance to make a di erence? Exactly.

Principal Brent Kline for his perspective on the purpose of the PAC but he did not respond to my email.

Regardless, Paly would bene t from more student voice, beyond student publications, to represent their perspectives on stress, adolescence and growing up in a hypercompetitive environment.

While ASB’s role is to represent the voice of Paly’s student body, I’d like to see them balance the social events they sponsor with events that address the more pressing issues.

For Paly to address its students’ needs, wants and wishes, it needs to rst ask students what their needs, wants and wishes are. And it doesn’t seem like adminis

is gap leads to a deeper issue: the school does not seem to care about nding out more about its students. And if it does, then it is going about it in an unpublicized way.

When many graduates who go to top-tier colleges say college is more lax than Paly, there is something wrong.

Why are we under more intense pressure as high schoolers than we are as young adults? And why does the school do nothing about it?

Some may argue that adolescents should not have a role in making major decisions for the school.

at it is too big of a responsibility, and it would add to our already full plates. at our young, developing brains are too short-sighted and inexperienced to see some glaring pitfalls in our suggested revisions.

Others may argue that placing so much importance on a select few students would give them too much power.

But it is glaringly obvious that a large percentage of students don’t enjoy being in school, and students should get a say in goingons for an institution they spend four years studying in.

Would all suggestions made by the students be worth it? No. But is it a start? Yes.

e rst step in creating change is to allow students to share more ideas about what they want to change.

Administrators needs to spend more time gather information about the student body, their wants and their needs.

en then need to make a bigger e ort to give student-centered leadership organizations more of a voice on important issues a ecting the student body, even if they don’t agree with the student leaders. at would be a good start.

Lea Kwan Sta Writer

fell through. Unable to operate without their nurses, the Stanford hospitals quickly agreed to issue new contracts that ensured the nurses’ well-being at work.

According to Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, the number of labor strikes in the U.S. rose nearly 50% between 2021 and 2022.

COVID-19 played a key role in deteriorating working conditions in various ways. Business closures and reduced consumer demand resulted in wage cuts, reduced job security and layo s. When the nation nally opened up shop again, the cutthroat competition for available jobs resulted in continuous periods of unemployment for many people.

In an economy where 44% of Americans earn unlivable wages, in ation is at an all-time high and women and minorities continue to make a fraction of their male and white counterparts, there has never been a clearer bright line for workers to start striking and for bystanders to begin supporting them.

Supporting strikes ampli es the voices of workers who are ghting for living wages, humane working conditions and basic rights. In an era where companies actively ght back to stop workers from unionizing, public support for labor strikes has become critical.

While labor unrest has risen in our own community, support for it has not nearly been strong enough.

In early November of last year, 48,000 academic workers at the University of California system launched a six-week long labor strike, creating the biggest work stoppage ever in U.S. higher education.

In the aftermath of the strike, three labor unions representing these workers negotiated deals with their respective universities for an array of bene ts including higher wages, increased healthcare guarantees and protection against workplace harassment. In doing so, they revolutionized our de conditions, setting the stage for labor strikes to continue gaining momentum.

While the UC strike was the largest of 2022, it wasn’t the

Just six months earlier, thousands of nurses at Stanford’s hospitals went on strike when negotiations between the nurses union and hospitals that promised higher wages and increased health coverage

ese examples are not only highly relevant to the Bay Area community but also exceptionally re ective of two ongoing trends in our nation: the rst being a resurgence in the popularity of labor unions, but the second being an overall ignorance toward strike situations. Hearing about strikes through the news is too passive to invoke meaningful change; only real action has the power to help turn the tides of ongoing strikes in favor of workers.

Providing support to strikes is simple, and there are a variety of ways to do it. First, rather than just reading about strikes, reposting stories about them can spread media coverage and raise public awareness. Second, signing petitions or donating is a great way to strengthen the causes of unions and place pressure on corporations to change their working conditions.

If you happen to live near an area where strikes occur, consider contributing to the noise instead of complaining about it. Take a few minutes to walk alongside workers or honk your horn when driving by a strike to show encouragement and magnify this strike. Union support is at a 57-year high right now, and it is up to everyone, not just a select number of workers, to continue that trend.

If unions represent one saying, it is that there is strength in numbers. Strikes are the linchpin of labor unions; they give workers the leverage necessary to ght for more humane working conditions. Lending our unconditional support to these strikes is the key to ensuring their success, because it strengthens workers and places additional pressure on corporations to change their ways.

e refusal to support strikes typically stems from views that strikes are disruptive, unmanageable and ultimately undesirable. ey can deal blows to the economy in both the short and long runs by reducing productivity or by decreasing investments and capital into

Despite these potential harms, it is crucial to realize that strikes are used as a last resort when all else fails, and the fact that strike rates are climbing in our nation is indicative of our failure to provide the bare minimum for our workers.

With college applications submitted, seniors around the country, and especially at Paly, rejoice. e pressure to ace every test and paper to impress colleges is nally over, and many seniors begin counting down the days until graduation.

But with the nearing of graduation comes the pressure to savor every moment until that fateful day. From peers and the media, seniors are pressured to leave school with zero regrets, spend hours with friends they might never see again, and go to concerts or the beach on school nights instead of studying.

It’s nally time to have the “typical” high school experience — the fun, social dramatization shoved down teenage throats with every teen movie released — that I anticipated and was “too busy studying” to have before. And I only have one semester to make my dreams come true, to have something to show for high school besides perfect grades.

But as I’ve watched others slip into traditional senioritis and experienced senior year for myself, I’ve come to the conclusion that those who are happiest follow their own desired paths, not the paths they are supposed to or expected to take, and it’s OK, even necessary, to let go of unrealistic expectations.

e idea that second semester senior year — even high school in general — must be a certain way is damaging and divisive.

Instead of chasing unachievable expectations, seniors should spend their extra time this semester doing what they feel is right for their well-being — whether that be spending time with friends or watching reality TV by themselves.

ough freeing, this semester is also stressful because I, like many other seniors, am trying to gure out what my future will look like — where I’ll spend the next four years of my life — and everyone seems to have an opinion about which college I should attend and how to prepare for this endeavor.

As I anxiously await college decisions, it’s hard to believe they don’t contain my selfworth when I’ve built my whole high school identity around getting perfect grades and balancing extracurriculars as a foundation for my future.

Furthermore, at Paly, senioritis seems more severe and pressurized than other schools because it’s the only time throughout high school when Paly seniors — previously in a rat race to the most prestigious colleges — are allowed to let go of their overachiever mindsets. We’re nally allowed to have fun and prioritize experiences over accomplishments and awards, but some of us don’t know how to do that.

For me, the expectation that I should let loose makes me want to disprove it as the high-pressure environment of Paly has trained me to do.

Even though I’m burnt out, I’m desperately ghting the stereotype that second semester seniors are lazy and indi erent by clinging to one of the only constants in my life throughout the last four years — the familiar, stressful rhythm of completing assignments and studying for tests. ough perfect grades no longer directly determine my future, they are the only tangible thing I have control over.

I’ve also been spending more time by myself over the past month. I’m now desperate to avoid uncomfortable, anxiety-inducing conversations about my future and instead enjoy reading a book, watching junky television and writing poetry to express my complex feelings. ough this time is an opportunity to goof o with friends, it’s also an opportunity to reconnect and spend time with yourself as I’ve chosen to do.

Spending time doing what makes me happy will help me make an informed decision about my future that re ects what I want out of the next four years, not what I’m expected to want.

Whatever your semester may look like, know that you’re not alone and your feelings and fears are valid. Forget the movies and expectations.

Doing what makes you happy and bene ts your mental and physical health this semester is much more important than completing a senior year bucket list.

Rachel Feinstein

Lucy Li Sta Writer

ART BY JANYAJAIN

Stop giving unsolicited college advice, promote self-discovery instead

“So, have you taken the SAT yet?”

I stopped dead in my tracks. A wave of anxiety rose in my chest. e score I give them won’t matter, and my words will have no impact on their livelihood. It will only be my pride and self-worth that takes the hit.

As I transitioned from sophomore to junior year, people’s perception of me suddenly changed. Prior to the SAT, I felt as though the extent of my intelligence was unknown. However, now, it’s as if one test will be an o cial measure of my worth and mental capacity. I have many more gripes with the college application system, but this isn’t the center of my argument: unsolicited advice about college. I can tell it comes from good intentions, but it’s so bland and unhelpful. All it does is reinforce the perception that I’m not doing enough or that I should be doing something di erently.

People feel entitled to explain everything they know because their children went through the same arduous process. In part, I feel as though this entitlement may stem from a need to justify all the work they went through researching the college admission process, that this advice can bene t others instead

of going to waste the moment their child has passed through the revered college gates.

Whatever the cause, I feel an underlying pressure to marvel in gratitude over their brilliant remarks, as if they have done me a favor.

In reality, the majority of these conversations are short and surface level.

ey seem like simple small talk, with insigni cant statements that would have normally ended with “How is school going,” but instead continue monotonously into, “Have you started studying for the SAT?”

Even though these small conversational snippets seem innocent and well-intentioned, they act like daggers. Straight to the gut, slicing right at the core of my hidden panic. ese questions yield no bene t to the person posing the questions, nor to me, the person on the receiving end. Due to their brief nature, these exchanges normally center around the same, overused advice that would seem obvious to any outsiders listening in. e problem with these discussions is that they never delve into the deeper purpose of the college admission process. Ultimately, the greater importance of all of this is my journey in college as a stepping

stone to the future, not the arbitrary hoops one needs to leap through to get in. What truly matters as you become an adult is who you are as a person and what your aspirations are. Maturing is about self-discovering and building your own identity. Instead, this rite of passage has become muddled with the lure of being accepted into college, but getting in is just the beginning.

Instead these simple conversations should branch out and emphasize self-re ection, such as discussing your aspirations to who you want to be. Life’s journey is about creating your future. You should be the judge of what you do and who you become. is process shouldn’t force you to pretend to be someone you aren’t just to please the exhausted admission’s o cer who will likely take a mere 10 minutes to determine your fate.

ART BY RACHEL LEE

In the name of maintaining all of our sanity, please let us all just stop these bland conversations about the SAT or college applications and instead delve into the meatier discussions of substance.

Olivia Atkinson Sta Writer

America’s ignorant liberalism foreshadows polarization

Lucas Guan Guest Writer

As a Canadian, I often joke that 2015 was the year most Americans found out their neighbor to the North has its own independent political system. e 2015 election was one of the greatest political realignments in modern Canadian history, but instead, most Americans know that year as the one when we elected Justin Trudeau, our famously handsome Prime Minister.

I vividly remember 2015’s election night. e Conservatives had been in power for

Liberals were decimated, retaining just 34 seats in Parliament out of 308 nationwide.

However, Trudeau e ectively won over voters with a progressive, inclusive agenda, winning an astronomical 184 seats, enough to form a comfortable majority government for the next term. And the mood during his victory speech couldn’t have been more hopeful, multicultural and progressive.

Cue the rainbows. Cue the unicorns. Cue the confetti.

But I’m afraid that’s where the majority of Americans’ knowledge about Canadian politics ends: that we elected Trudeau — riding on a hippy, progressive, inclusive wave — who passed countless liberal policies such as increasing immigration, legalizing marijuana and setting new goals for carbon neutrality.

But that’s hardly the case. Seven years into his premiership, the cracks in this progressive foundation are becoming painfully clear, with the Liberals regularly polling 3-5 points behind the Conservatives. As a Canadian, it’s become evident to me that the Democrats in the U.S. are heading down the same path as the Canadian Liberals: the same path that might bring the era of Justin Trudeau to an end in the next federal election.

So what path am I referring to? An excessive focus on so-called “wokeness,” progressiveness and minority rights. Let me explain.

Despite the rainbows, unicorns and confetti, Trudeau’s political honeymoon slowly faded. Opposition to his policies grew from a group of fringe voters – dismissed as racist, misogytting for modern Canada – into a national movement representing an entire generation of those left behind by prois was made especially evident by the Convoy Protests this past year, where individuals dissatis ed with the Liberal government blockaded the streets of the Canadian capital Ottawa with hundreds of trucks, blaring their horns and blowing toxic amounts of smog into the air.

Furthermore, the painful visual juxtaposition between the protestors, overwhelmingly white, rural and male, and

the multicultural, wealthy citizens of Ottawa couldn’t have better illustrated the tensions at play.

Most of all, it was the Convoy protests that directly propelled the new Leader of the Opposition, Conservative Party, Pierre Poilievre, into the national spotlight. During the protests, he was one of the few federal politicians to openly encourage the Convoy and its movement. And it was largely the demographics that made up the protestors that elected him to the Conservative Party leadership. us far, he’s expressed his disdain for the Bank of Canada (the Canadian equivalent to the Federal Reserve), fervently supported the abolition of vaccine mandates and even expressed his desire to never send a Cana dian delegation to the World Economic Forum again, implicitly endorsing a conspiracy theory that the WEF is run by a dystopian New World Order. Guess which demographic is most likely to support that theory.

Many commentators equate Trump and Poilievre, but they are by no means the same. But the similarity they do share is the demographics of their base: overwhelmingly rural, white men who have been largely shunned by the liberal policies of Obama and Trudeau respectively. e left wing often too easily laughs o these right-wing reactionaries, but as Trump’s election in 2016 clearly showed us, politicians can still win big with their appeal to this demographic.

While Poilievre’s supporters are more diverse than Trump’s, which can partially explain his higher polling numbers proportionally, it can’t be denied that rural white men comprise a major part of his political base.

What many individuals on the left fail to understand is that every decision we make is inherently a trade o , and therefore when one group

bene ts, another must be inherently harmed. e unfortunate truth is that left-wing leaders are largely neglecting the consequences of their progressivism.

So call supporters of Trump and Poilievre racist, misogynist and un t for the modern world, but racist, misogynist white men still command signi cant political power in our democracy. And as Trump’s election made clear, politicians can still win big with their appeal to this demographic.

Unless the left nds a way to incorporate them in their progressivism, our politics will continue to polarize, and the U.S. and Canada will continue to become breeding grounds for right-wing reactionaries.

PAUSD should adapt to ChatGPT

Anew innovation in arti cial intelligence, OpenAI’s free-to-use ChatGPT assistant, is a language model that can respond to questions with factually-correct information, write short stories or even code computer programs, all according to a user-speci ed prompt.

However, ChatGPT has presented new challenges to educators. Now, students can use machine learning to generate essays comparable in quality to human-written ones. While ChatGPT makes academic honesty more di cult to track, e Campanile thinks arti cial intelligence, if used properly, can enhance education by providing useful research and encouraging a focus on real, purposeful learning for students.

In response to potential academic dishonesty, some schools have blocked ChatGPT on campus wi ; however, restricting access to any technology is a naïve solution. is new wave of arti cially intelligent assistants resembles the initial rise of the internet: access to limitless information also presented problems for educators regarding searching for homework solutions and receiving unauthorized aid on tests.

Clearly, it does not make sense to ban the internet in schools and deprive students of all the learning resources available on the web. But that’s what many school o cials tried to do in the early ‘90s as internet access became more widespread. Similarly, banning ChatGPT is an inadequate solution. Not only could students still use ChatGPT outside of school, but a ban would also limit productive use of OpenAI’s tools for inspiration or research.

Instead, PAUSD should revise its academic integrity code to explicitly prohibit using AI tools for completing written assignments. e district needs to emphasize that using ChatGPT to gain an unfair advantage is an honesty violation on par with cheating or plagiarism, and it should be treated with the same consequences.

Following changes to the way scores are reported for the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, Paly’s state standardized test scores plummeted earning designations of “Very Low” and “Low” in the ELA and Math sections respectively.

But these designations are misleading. When schools fail to achieve 95% CAASPP participation, the State now assigns a failing score of zero for any student who opts out.

In reality, out of Paly students who took the test, 88.04% and 83.74% met or exceeded standards in ELA and Math respectively.

While e Campanile recognizes that the CAASPP testing system — like any standardized testing system — is inherently awed, to accurately re ect Paly’s elite status, school administrators must increase CAASPP participation rates by spreading more awareness of its importance.

Even though Paly’s CAASPP participation rates have steadily increased over the past four years, from 19% in 2019 to 51% in 2022, we still lag far behind the 95% state threshold and Gunn’s 86% participation.

Despite their aws, the low test scores negatively impact the school and the district in serious ways.

Because the California Department of Education State Dashboard is widely accessible to the public, low CAASPP participation and thus low CAASPP scores under the new system harm the academic reputation of Paly.

Quality of education frequently plays an in uential role in determining where a family moving into the area decides to live, and when the state’s metrics show dismal results, families may look elsewhere.

Additionally, since ChatGPT especially excels at completing busy work, teachers should rebalance their curriculum for assignments that engage students and promote real, useful learning. And more essays and tests could be given using pen and paper to make it more di cult to access ChatGPT.

And students should understand that using ChatGPT to do work for them will limit their skills in writing, analysis and critical thinking.

Despite these risks, though, e Campanile thinks ChatGPT and similar AI tools have enormous potential to improve education. e biggest advantage ChatGPT has over traditional search engines is its ability to accurately interpret the meaning of a question rather than extracting and matching keywords. As a result, ChatGPT allows students to e ciently search its vast trove of information to answer a question or nd additional sources, greatly increasing the productivity of research.

Furthermore, ChatGPT’s deep understanding of language gives it novel uses. For instance, ChatGPT can analyze the meaning of an article and generate a summary, saving time for students who need to scan multiple sources to see which ones are relevant to a particular topic. Also, if part of ChatGPT’s response is confusing or incomplete, a student can prompt the model for an explanation instead of entering another long search query into a search engine. Ultimately, ChatGPT’s impact on students and schools raises questions about the e cacy of the educational system. While the district should update its honor code to encourage academic honesty even with access to OpenAI, it is critical for teachers to replace busy work assignments that could easily be completed using ChatGPT with ones that challenge students to develop critical thinking skills. One thing is for certain: AI is the future, and we believe education needs to adapt to re ect that.

Especially given PAUSD’s declining enrollment in recent years, e Campanile thinks it is critical that students take the CAASPP to help maintain Paly’s strong academic reputation. is is where administrators and student leaders have work to do, as there are only a handful of perceived bene ts to students who take the CAASPP.

Scoring well does make students eligible for individual honors such as the State Seal of Biliteracy, and it o ers advantages in course placement at some California State Universities.

But considering that less than 10% of our graduates attend CSUs, for most students there is no real direct repercussion for not taking the test or reward for taking it.

Once administrators have given students a good reason to take the test and provided some incentives for them to do so, e Campanile hopes all this year’s juniors will take the CAASPP to support the district and ful ll an ethical duty to help the school and the district.

Students must learn the value of working together to uplift a community even at the expense of some personal freedom — an attitude e Campanile believes is necessary for a properly functioning democracy.

Working under a awed standardized testing system, Paly and PAUSD remain accountable for ensuring high CAASPP participation rates.

e Campanile hopes a collective e ort between administrators and students will enable us to re-establish Paly’s prestige and reputation when

comes to CAASPP testing rates and CAASPP scores.

Juniors should take CAASPP test

Dear Editors,

As CAASPP testing nears, I would like to ensure that all juniors are well informed of the importance of the test. e following is only representative of my perspective and has no a liation with ASB. In past years, Paly’s CAASPP participation has dwindled, sinking below 20%. Admittedly, it is easier to opt out and spend those hours relaxing from the hamster wheel of junior year. However, this annual test represents more than we might think. For you as a student, taking the test o ers numerous opportunities. You can earn the Seal of Biliteracy, Golden State Seal Merit Diploma and potential college credit from California State Universities.

Our collective test scores impact the perceived prestige of Paly. ose who have opted out have their scores counted as a zero, decreasing our overall performance. Paly is a strong school with rigorous classes, yet our test scores indicate the contrary. Since individual scores are not reported (unless for potential class credit), there is no direct consequence of opting out. However, our collective CAASPP performance is documented, so in the end, it does impact all of us a little.

At the end of the day, taking the test will only help you and the school. How about you give it a go this year? If you don’t vibe with the test, don’t take it again. In fact, you can treat it like it’s your last CAASPP test ever. My goal is not to convince you, but rather to inform you. Paly is one of the few schools that has an opt-out option, so use it wisely. e only way for us to reap the bene ts of the CAASPP test is if we all contribute our participation.

Sincerely,

Sophia Kim Junior Class President

BY OLIVIA ATKINSON & ANNIKA CHU

The Campanile

Editors-in-Chief

Margot Blanco • Rachel Feinstein • Cayden Gu

Justin Gu • Jerry Xia

News/Opinion Editors Ti any He

Hannah Singer

Sports Editors

Dinu Deshpande

Brianna Zhou

Business Manager

Shiki Toyama

Managing Editor Erik Feng

Olivia Atkinson

Rohan Bhatia

Alec Bonnard

Annika Chu

Lucas Guan

Elizabeth Gulman

Gabriella Gulman

Julian Hong

Lifestyle, Sci/Tech Editors

Lillian Clark

Christie Hong

Art Director Rachel Lee

Photo Editor

Tyler Wong

Assistant Photo Editor Kate Xia

Writers

Claire Jittipun

Albert Jung

Lea Kwan

Holden Lee

Lucy Li

Henry Liu

Gavin Lin

Neel Sharma

Dhruv Shetty

Shamsheer Singh

Heather Song

Nidhi ummalapalli

Luca Vostrejs Lucas Yuan

Naveen Narayanaswami

Illustrators & Photographers

Katie Wu

Janya Jain

Grace He Ivy Lee

ea Phillips

Teresa Wang

Adviser Rodney Satterthwaite

Cherianne Yoon

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ART BY RACHEL LEE

Two seniors place as nalists in national science competition

Moments later, she gasps as she nds out she has been named a nalist in the Regeneron Science Talent Search.

“My friend, who saw me on the phone call, later told me I was visibly shaking,” Wu said. “I didn’t realize that, but I was just really overwhelmed and excited, just grateful to be named a nalist and have the honor.”

Wu and senior Ryan Lee are among 40 nalists selected out of 1,949 entrants, with each nalist awarded at least $25,000.

e Regeneron Science Talent Search is the nation’s oldest and most prestigious science and math competition for high school seniors, according to the Society for Science, which hosts the competition with Regeneron

Pharmaceuticals. e annual competition recognizes exceptional scienti c research projects done by high school seniors.

In March, the 40 nalists will attend a national convention in Washington, D.C., where they will present their projects to judges and compete for the top 10 awards, which range from $40,000 to $250,000.

College freshman Anisha Gandhi often enjoys spending her free time watching Net ix whether it’s by herself or with her friends. Net ix’s teen dramas, original shows and movies keep her especially delighted with her family’s subscription. So when Gandhi rst found out about Net ix’s plan has to crackdown on password sharing, she was disappointed and slightly frustrated.

“Net ix is already overpriced and families come in all shapes and sizes so there should not be restrictions on who can access the accounts,” Gandhi said.

But despite Gandhi’s concerns, starting in March, Net ix will implement a monthly fee of $3-4 for anyone living outside of an account holder’s household who wants to share a Net ix account. Net ix said it will nd those sharing accounts by monitoring user data including IP addresses, device IDs and account activity. e company sees the fee as a way to crackdown on password sharing which they say led to almost $1 billion lost in revenue during 2022.

Wu was recognized for her research that contributes new insights into how formic acid a ects honeybees’ foraging behavior, or bees’ ability to gather food. Beekeepers use formic acid to kill varroa mites, parasites that transmit deformed wing virus to honeybees and can collapse a hive within one to three years.

Wu said her research concluded that using formic acid during nectar ow — the time when nectar sources are in bloom and bees make most of their honey — could ultimately harm bees.

“I found that formic acid treatment suppressed the foraging performance of honeybee workers,” Wu said. “ e results suggest that formic acid treatment during nectar ow could negatively a ect honey production and potentially also the long-term health of honeybee colonies.”

To track bees’ foraging behavior, Wu said she documented their ight activities, which she did by attaching small location-tracking devices called Ra dio Frequency Identi cation tags onto individual bees.

“I used radio frequency identi cation technology for that, basically attaching these mini RFID tags to the bees,” Wu said. “And then with the data logger, I accumulated huge amounts of data on the ight activities that I then used algorithm analysis (on).”

Wu said she became inspired to conduct her research as a result of her beekeeping hobby, although she did not initially expect the hobby to evolve into a research project.

“I got a hive for fun and gradually got more hives, and then this research started,” Wu said. “I made an observation one day that catalyzed my research, but I didn’t get into it with the intention of conducting research necessarily.”

Wu said she entered the Regeneron contest in hopes of both publicizing her ndings and meeting other students who are passionate about their research.

“Part of it was to get my research out there and have the opportunity to share it with other people,” Wu said. “ e other huge part is the connections and meeting other people. I’ve already had the chance to talk with a lot of other scholars and nalists, just connecting with them and hearing about their research. Everybody is incredibly smart, passionate and motivated, so being able to connect with them is really amazing.”

Wu said she would seek guidance from her mentor, a professional beekeeper, when she felt like she was making slower progress in her research.

“My mentor was a big source of help,” Wu said. “I’d communicate with him and (tell) him, ‘Hey, I’m a bit stuck on this’ or, ‘I’m not sure how to proceed,’ and he’d guide me and help me get into more of a scienti c-thinking mindset.”

Wu said even though research may seem daunting at rst, she encourages students to consider the bene ts and ful llment it can bring.

“Overall, I encourage everybody who’s interested to pursue research because there’s so many skills that you get from it, like persistence and hard work, (in addition to) creativity and communication skills,” Wu said. “I think it’s really rewarding at the end when you see everything come together.”

While Net ix said the new policy will help it improve revenue growth, sophomore Divya Gandhi said the fee is especially unfair for families with children in college and will leave many frustrated users unsatis ed with their subscription.

“People are going to get (so) fed up with having to pay extra that they’re going to quit altogether,” Gandhi said.

Sophomore Oliver Levine said although this sharing fee may increase subscriptions in the short term, longterm consumer loyalty will decrease.

“I do think password sharing will increase subscriber count,” Levine said. “But being able to password share to a friend outside of your house is de nitely one of those things that makes people think, ‘Oh hey, this company is at least nice to me.’”

Levine said a negative opinion of Net ix could also be a deciding factor in whether or not someone continues their subscription.

And senior Ariana Cao said since there are so many other competing streaming services, Net ix should be careful about how it treats current customers, even though she said the company’s prominence gives it an advantage over its competitors.

“Net ix is like a basis of our pop culture,” Cao said. “A lot of other streaming services have good shows, but it’s just not as many as Net ix.”

Levine also said each streaming service’s own unique variety of programs decreases the need for others.

“TV networks are spinning o their own streaming services … which devalues every other streaming service because you’re paying the same amount of money for less value,” Levine said.

Lee’s research focuses on how mitochondria, which fuel cellular processes, impact the brain.

“I’m interested in structural plasticity, which is the ability of your brain to change in order to re ect new experiences, and how mitochondria power the ability of your brain to move and change its shape and size,” Lee said. “ is is an important feature of the brain that underlies important abilities such as learning and memory formation.”

To conduct his experiments, Lee said he used fruit ies as a model organism because of their accessibility and genetic similarities to humans. He also said he genetically modi ed fruit ies to have certain mutations that make them light up, which enabled him to visualize his data.

“(Fruit ies) are really easy to use, and there’s a lot of genetic power,” Lee said. “You inject a uorescent dye into the cell, and then it glows, which is kind of crazy.”

Lee said he discovered that damaged mitochondria can hinder brain functionality and accelerate aging in fruit ies.

“What I found is that if (fruit ies’) mitochondria aren’t healthy, then (their) brains lose plasticity,” Lee said. “My research identi es a potential underlying cause for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.”

Lee described the research process as two mini experiments within one project. He said removing a protein important for mitochondrial health called Dynamin-related protein 1 a ected the fruit ies in two distinct ways.

“Removing this (Drp1) protein has two di erent e ects,” Lee said. “(Fruit ies’) neurons don’t move as much, and their neurons lose their synapses.”

Lee said he gradually became interested in the study of neuroscience because it is relatively unexplored, and there are many questions left to be answered.

“Neuroscience, or the brain at least, is often called the last frontier of science, so it’s the last thing we don’t fully understand,” Lee said.

“It’s still a little bit of a black box, so that’s something that’s always appealed to me.”

Lee said that he became motivated to submit to Regeneron after a senior who graduated from Paly last year, Neil Rathi, placed as a nalist in the competition. Lee said he hopes his achievement can inspire younger students interested in research to also consider the competition.

“It’s partly why I’m happy to do these things, because hopefully someone else who does research or is interested in research will submit a project too,” Lee said. “ e competition builds a structure in many ways. Otherwise, sometimes it’s hard to have direction.”

As a result of his experience researching the brain, Lee said he hopes to continue studying neuroscience and is considering a potential career path as a physician-scientist.

“Being a physician-scientist would be an interesting way to tie together doing research and trying to understand the unknown and (understand) how we can use this to better help patients in the present,” Lee said. “Because a lot of research, including mine, is very future focused, this will probably have implications somewhere down the road.”

Lee said he thinks research should prioritize the higher goal of helping human lives, which drives his own research.

“Ultimately, in my research and in research in general, the end goal is to have new medicines and to help people,” Lee said. “ e question every research project should (answer) is, ‘Why does this matter?’ and that could ultimately be something about improving human lives.”

But Economics teacher Grant Blackburn said he thinks implementing the sharing fee is a necessary step for Net ix’s business model. “ ey have to gure out a way to monetize their consumer base, and they can’t just let everybody jump onto one password,” Blackburn said. “Otherwise, Net ix goes away.”

But Cao said instead of increasing fees, Net ix should resolve the pro t issue by listening to users for input on which programs to renew and cancel.

“ ey need to renew shows that people really love and that everyone’s buying (Net ix) for,” Cao said.

Blackburn, though, said Net ix and other streaming services have a tough trade-o to make between costly features and keeping subscribers. Ultimately, he said the success of cracking down on password sharing will depend on Net ix’s ability to provide for their consumers.

Blackburn said, “At the end of the day, if (Net ix) has something that you want, you’re going to be willing to pay for it and Net ix has to deliver.”

Senior Vivian Wu attaches a radio frequency identi cation tag onto a honeybee. “I found that formic acid treatment suppressed the foraging performance of honeybee workers,” Wu said.

Senior Ryan Lee places fruit ies under a microscope to examine. “My research identi es a potential underlying cause for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s,” Lee said.

Heather Song Sta Writer

Text by Justin Gu, Editor-in-Chief. Photos by Cayden Gu. Additional photos courtesy of Ryan Lee & Vivian Wu.

Students facing senioritis lose motivation

As the 9 a.m. bell that once brought in the majority of class rings, AP Literature & Composition and Humanities teacher Mimi Park sighs as she marks yet another student absent. Her classroom is a ghost town as many of her seniors have succumbed to senioritis –– the decline in motivation as students near the end of high school.

But as the number of absent students in her class increases, Park is not alone in being forced to confront the reality of this all-toofamiliar phenomenon.

Park said overcoming senioritis is a giveand-take situation for both the teacher and student.

“It’s frustrating when I have students who are falling behind because, as a teacher, I can help them make it across 95% of the way, but I still need that 5% from them,” Park said. “We want to make sure that they’re going o to college or other post-secondary plans and don’t want them to have to do summer school to graduate.”

Park also said the school can play a part in deterring senioritis by making consequences more strict. “ ere’s a huge correlation between an excessive number of absences and tardies and work completion,” Park said. “If we kept track of (attendance) a bit better, maybe it would encourage students to try to make it to class more frequently. It gives me, as a teacher, a chance to talk to them in person and help them make a plan.”

Although Park’s AP Literature & Composition is an elective English class, Living Skills is a graduation requirement students often take their senior year. Living Skills teacher Alyssa Bond said the need to pass the class in order to graduate lessens the e ect of senioritis in that class.

“I don’t have to do a lot to remind students to get their stu done so they can pass the class and graduate,” Bond said. “ ey have to take the class, but they also have to pass it so there is still that motivating factor to at least do well.”

However, Bond said she still notices senioritis in her students and changed her curriculum as a result.

“We have sex education and drug and alcohol curricula typically towards the end of the semester when we’ve built really good relationships with our classes,” Bond said. “But because of senioritis and fatigue for all grades in the class, we moved it up so there’s more engagement.”

Although Park said senioritis is more prominent in her second semester classes, she doesn’t change her lesson plans to accommodate a ected students and instead gives repeated reminders to stay on top of their work.

“When we get to the beginning of second semester, I do more frequent check-ins, especially if I feel like a student is starting to fall behind because I know it becomes really hard to make all of that up later,” Park said.

English and Humanities teacher Lizzie DeKraai also said she doesn’t change her Humanities curriculum for seniors but does provide resources for students to catch up on missed material.

“I refuse to change my lesson plans because students are not showing up because it is not fair to the students that are there to do nothing for the rst 20-30 minutes of class,” DeKraai said. “However, all of the lectures are recorded. ere’s resources online so kids who choose to not come to class can get caught up.”

But even with her extra e ort to accommodate Humanities students missing class, DeKraai said the lack of attendance impacts other students.

“ ere was one day that I had 12 out of 32 present at the bell,” DeKraai said. “For work

from its stereotypical perfect weather, and Californians like Eng are caught in the middle of a lifestyle change.

periods, it was frustrating because you’re losing opportunities to get help from me and from your classmates, and that’s protected time that I’m sacri cing by not teaching something to you to help you with your work.”

Park said the di erence in workload between her AP Literature and Humanities class may lead to di erent motivating factors that a ect the magnitude of senioritis.

“Senioritis didn’t hit very hard for my seniors in AP Lit because they knew the AP exam was approaching,” Park said. “However, in Humanities, it’s more di cult because there isn’t a major AP exam at the end of it that’s looming over students. It becomes much easier to push aside the work when there’s tests (in other classes) to prepare for.”

No matter the class, Park said students should gure out a method that allows them to nish their work.

“What works is di erent for everyone, but communication is the biggest thing,” Park said. “If (you’re) falling behind or feeling reluctant

to go to class, talk to somebody who can help, like a TA, teacher or counselor. But don’t try to do it alone.”

Along with nding ways to deal with fatigue, DeKraai said high school is a time to build good habits for the future.

“You will never regret going to class,” DeKraai said. “Learn, talk to your friends and get some work done. is is just life; you have to show up and do the things that you don’t want to do in service of higher desires or goals.”

Park said she hopes seniors won’t let senioritis undermine the hard work they’ve accomplished throughout their four years.

“It’s like someone who just ran a marathon and is 100 yards from the nish line deciding they’re going to stop,” Park said. “You’ve come so far, so don’t let that e ort be wasted.”

Ti any He News/Opinion Editor

When junior Austin Eng looked out his window one morning this January, what he saw was not just some typical California rain. e storm beat harshly against his roof and the water level crept up the sides of his house, threatening to damage it.

He knew that his all-purpose jacket, the one that couldn’t withstand more than a drizzle without looking like it had gone through the washing machine, was not enough; he needed to innovate.

One quick search later, he emerged from his dad’s closet with a rain jacket from the ‘70s to borrow for the week.

“During rainy mornings, I always make sure to check the weather before anything so I can plan my day around breaks in the rain and how to dress accordingly,” Eng said.

As climate change alters global weather patterns, California has begun to shift away

Senior Jade Minsko , co-president and founder of the Project Eco club, said California’s weather has become more extreme in the previous few years. e 10 warmest years on record in California occurred between 2012-2022,” Minsko said. “ is example of extreme weather means that heat waves will continue further.”

Beyond heat waves, AP Environmental Science teacher Nicole Loomis said climate change a ects precipitation patterns on the West Coast.

“Climate change will a ect not necessarily the amount of precipitation but the number of precipitation events and how much rain will be dumped in each event,” Loomis said.

Loomis also said the amount of precipitation that occurs each time it rains will likely increase, leading to potential ooding as the city saw in early January.

“( e increase in rainfall) could lead to increased levels of ooding, especially in low line areas which we do have some of in Palo Alto,” Loomis said.

Loomis said extreme weather conditions could be worsened by an increase in El Niño years, which increase precipitation and ooding, or La Niña years, which cause dry weather and drought.

Such extreme weather led students like Eng to take extra precautions, especially after school.

Eng said he tries to plan his after-school time e ectively when it’s raining so he can stay as dry as possible.

“Whether it be doing work in the library or grabbing a hot drink at Town and Country, I try to use the serenity of rainy weather to try and get some school nished somewhere inside,” Eng said. “I usually try to see if I can cover an extra shift at work just to be inside somewhere where I can be productive instead of running the risk of procrastinating at home.”

Despite the large amounts of precipitation this winter, Loomis said the overall snowpack in the mountains is projected to decrease.

e Bay Area relies on this snowpack for its water supply, meaning a decrease in the snowpack could lead to lifestyle changes related to water shortages.

ere’s a lot of things people can do to collect their own water for their own supply,” Loomis said. “ ey can collect rain barrels or create water cisterns to get the extra water that ends up in the ocean.”

Because of the changes in weather patterns, Loomis said that people’s traditions are beginning to shift too.

“For example, the ability to ski and snowboard will become more variable,” Loomis

said. “ e ability to swim at the coast may also become more variable whether the water is too cold or the surf is too rough.”

Minsko also said climate change can cause rising desert temperatures.

“People who live in or visit deserts will eventually have to avoid them as the temperature is beginning to rise to numbers that break records,” Minsko said. “Of course, most deserts in California that reach these temperatures are not inhabited, but populated deserts may put some people at risk.” And while Minsko said she has yet to experience much personal change related to climate change, she knows many people have lost a lot as a result.

“I have just noticed the more extreme heat over the summers,” Minsko said. “Due to the rain that we received this year, I did notice I went outside a lot less than normal, although this is nothing in comparison to individuals who have had much more extreme lifestyle changes due to extreme weather.”

For residents in the Bay Area, Loomis said that those who are living in low-lying areas or on the coast have experienced some detrimental e ects to their lifestyle.

“Certainly, there are landslides, things are damaged on Route 1, and there’s a lot of lowlying areas along the Caltrain in Belmont and San Carlos that got ooded,” Loomis said. “Some people lost their homes just from these oods in January.”

Loomis said in the end people should be cautious and forward-thinking about how climate change will a ect them.

Loomis said, “One way to adapt is to really think about where you want to live and make sure that you are a good distance above sea level.”

Shiki Toyama

Business Manager

ART BY CHERIANNE YOON

ART BY CHERIANNE YOON

Paly community celebrates Chinese New Year customs

Every Chinese New Year’s Eve, junior Cynthia Dong sits with her friends and family as they make dumplings together, symbolizing a good start to the new year. While many enjoy this holiday for di reasons, Dong said the best part of it is getting back in touch with friends.

Determined by the lunar calendar, the Chinese New Year occurs in January or February and lasts for around 15 days. With its numerous traditions, it is celebrated by many each year.

Mandarin teacher Joe Zhou said there is a legend about Nian, a monster that came to a village every year to eat people. To scare the monster away, the villagers put red-colored paper on their doors, hung red lanterns and set o recrackers. Today, all of these are Chinese New Year traditions and celebrate the victory of the villagers.

Zhou said, for him, the festival celebrates family values.

“Everybody has to go home for the festival no matter where you are,” Zhou said. “I have a family in China, and on New Year’s Eve — I cannot go back because I have to teach here — but when they serve the food, they leave an empty chair there with the food on the table.”

Junior Jonathan Liu said Chinese New Year is one of the best times to spend time with family.

“We always get everyone together,” Liu said. “We would always have three yue-bing (mooncakes), and we’d share those.”

Dong said it’s a Chinese tradition to put coins inside dumplings because it symbolizes money. However, her family does not think this is sanitary, so they use a substitute for the coins.

“What’s special about the dumplings during New Year’s is we will often put some sugar or candies inside one speci c dumpling, and the person who eats the speci c dumpling will be the luckiest among all of us,” Dong said.

“Sometimes, I eat almost all of them to

Freshman Yoray Chen said her family usually has hot pot and red bean cake the night before, and they also make dumplings from scratch.

“We’ll make over a hundred dumplings, and we eat them over Lunar New Year and the days following,” Chen said. Zhou said he and his family eat symbolic foods because of Chinese homophones, words that sound the same but have di erent meanings. For example, he said Yu means sh as well as surplus, so eating sh symbolizes fortune and surplus food to eat in the coming year.

“(With) nian gao, for example, nian means sticky, gao means cake,” Zhou said. “Sticky rice cake that everybody has to eat. Why? Because Nian (phonetically) also means “year” besides “sticky.” ... Gao means going up high. Nian gao means every year you go up, up, up. at means you’re successful as a family.”

Similarly, Zhou said Chinese people usually write a big character, fú, on red paper, but when they put the character on the wall, they do it upside down.

“Upside down means dau in Chinese. Fú means happiness,” Zhou said. “When you put it upside down, it sounds like fú dou le. Fú dou le means the happiness arrived. You can see it has a double meaning, Chinese people seem to like to play that kind of

Brianna Zhou Sports Editor

In Silicon Valley, one of the country’s leading technological innovation hubs, many students like senior Kyle Park said that they have felt pressure from a young age, both from the school district and their parents, to follow a STEM-focused pathway.

To Park, president of Paly’s Student Institute of the Arts, living in this area has limited his exposure to some creative elds.

“I realized that things existed out there using the application of art,” Park said. “I feel like the problem is that Palo Alto is so STEM focused, I didn’t really have an opportunity to see that there were more creative elds out there.”

Senior Alisha Bernatzki, who applied to music programs including e Chinese University of Hong Kong music program and the singer-songwriter program at New York University, said living in an environment where everyone’s main focus is STEM careers has caused her to want to move to a di erent area after high school.

“It does de nitely make me want to move and pursue my career outside of (Silicon Valley), but I would do that regardless unless I actually wanted to study something like computer science,” Bernatzki said.

In regards to the arts and humanities courses o ered at Paly, English teacher Lucy

Chinese people celebrate for fteen days after New Year’s Eve. At the end of the fteen days, there is the Yuan Xiao festival, which indicates the New Year’s celebration has come to an end.

“

e Yuan Xiao festival is also called the lantern festival,” Zhou said. “Everybody has to put their red lanterns out by the door on the street. e kids hold the red lanterns (and run) around. People eat Yuan Xiao, the sticky rice ball dumpling (where the) inside is sweet. It’s another fun festival with lots of reworks that night.”

Zhou said the Chinese New Year is a fun traditional Chinese festival with many activities.

e culture displayed in the festival is so rich, with di erent colors and di erent activities,” Zhou said. “People are very happy.”

Filppu said she thinks Paly o ers a good variety for all students.

“I think there is plenty of room at Paly for students to take humanities courses to their heart’s content if that’s what they choose to do,” Filppu said.

Park and Bernatzki also said they think Paly has done a decent job in attempting to bring more creative opportunities to students. However, Bernatzki said there are de nitely areas to improve and possible courses and programs that could be implemented for a richer education.

“ e American school system can provide more in general for students, but Paly has done a good job in supporting their students,” Bernatzki said. “It could be cool if we had a song-writing program or had a music theory program on top of the AP Music eory class.”

Park said implementing more lanes for Visual and Performing Arts courses would also allow students who are serious about pursuing arts and music to be surrounded by like-minded students with similar interests.

“Increasing the amount of lanes for creative courses would be better,” Park said. “I think some kids are just trying to ll their VAPA credits, and with more lanes, you won’t get stuck in a class with kids who are just going to screw around and are only taking the class to ful ll credits.”

When I open my fridge, a sea of expired food items greet me. A lone kosher pickle in a tall glass jar. A clear bag full of pine nuts on a red plastic tin of gochujang. A squirt bottle full of mayonnaise way past the “use by” date.

But I never bat an eye at the expiration dates printed on the sides of these containers. In fact, I rarely even check them. However, many fear the aftermath of consuming an expired food item, ed of the foodborne illness they might acquire, too lazy to care about the detrimental impact they are making on the environment.

According to Feeding America, the U.S. wastes some 119 billion pounds of food, which equates to $408 billion, annually. Residential food waste makes up 39% of all food waste, which means on average, American households throw out around 295 pounds of food each year. cant amount of food waste in households is caused by throwing away food that has passed its cial expiration date, but is still safe to eat.

Contrary to popular belief, expiration dates are not always an indicator of safety and should not determine the shelf life of many products. For example, if you see mold growing on cream, don’t use it. But if the cream’s expiration date has passed, and there is no visible spoilage, you’re most likely good to go.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, expiration dates only aim to help consumers and retailers decide when a food item is at its peak quality. At the surface, food waste is caused by the population’s lack of education surrounding expiration dates and the environment. However, food waste is an even larger problem at or before the Most expiration dates are set conservatively by manufacturers to account for transportation, storage and handling, which leads to even more food waste.

Furthermore, many grocery stores only sell produce that’s up to a certain aesthetic standard. Cosmetic imperfections — such as weird shapes, odd colors or blemishes on a peel you don’t even eat — deem certain produce inedible and ugly.

But this discarded produce is just as delicious as awless fruits and vegetables you might nd at the egregiously expensive Whole Foods.

While the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has launched multiple e orts to decrease food waste, many markets still reject ugly food items. Extreme anti-food waste activists, called “freegans,” reject consumerism and scavenge for perfectly edible food items in dumpsters behind these markets. ough this is an radical example, there are many other simple yet e ective practices you can take to reduce food waste in your home and community. To make a di erence at the retail level, purchase food from Mis ts Market or Imperfect Foods. ese companies form relationships with manufacturers and rescue aesthetically “ugly” produce and food approaching its “use by” dates.

Or, just use the old sni test, which according to the USDA should determine spoilage in a food item. I’m pretty darn sure those week-old leftovers sitting in the fridge are perfectly edible, so don’t worry about contracting a rare foodborne illness. You’re going to be OK.

But Park also said taking these creative classes at Paly has caused him to feel judged by his peers, as he said many students and adults in the community see arts classes as not as challenging or ambitious as many math or science classes.

“While there are quite a few art courses that are o ered at Paly, I think there’s a stigma around taking them, especially because Palo Alto as an academic environment is so STEM-focused,” Park said. “All the kids are gunning to take the highest level science or math AP courses, and if a kid decides to take a regular non-weighted art course because they’re interested in it, then it’s perceived as slacking o instead of pursuing their interests.”

Because of this stigma at Paly, Park said he was driven to search for creative oppor tunities on his own outside of school to escape these judgments.

“I pursued a lot of my creative endeavors outside of school, not because I didn’t have the option to, but because I didn’t want people judging me,” Park said. “It’s sort of like a subtle pressure.”

Consequently, Park said the pressure to pursue STEM pathways prevented his exposure to such creative elds earlier on in his academic career at Paly.

“I think I would’ve been able to pursue these interests earlier if I had the con dence to do it, and because of external pressures, I didn’t,” Park said. “Because (majoring in product design) was a super recent decision, I didn’t have the time or skills to create a good portfolio. Had I realized that I wanted to do this earlier, it would’ve been easier to set myself up for opportunities in the future.”

Annika Chu Sta Writer

Hannah Singer News/Opinion Editor

Paly, Gunn juggling clubs host Game Of rows festival

Juggling clubs from both Paly and Gunn hosted the Game Of rows Juggling and Flow Festival, a three-day event featuring professional performers and jugglers from Jan. 2022.

Gunn Juggling Club adviser Matt Hall said the fair was incredibly successful.

“It was excellent,” Hall said.

“Out of the four years we have done this, it’s looking like this is the largest one yet.”

Hall said the opening day was his favorite because of the environment and intense activities.

“We had some of the best jugglers in the world head-tohead,” Hall said. “It was fantastic. e hype was real.”

Junior Eileen Chao competed at Game of rows and said she liked watching the professionals dueling against each other.

“It was really fun to watch the battles,” Chao said. “I was

also a part of them, (and) it was really fun seeing the really good people juggle and (to) cheer them on.”

e festival also included a Gala Show on Saturday evening that showcased the talents of professionals, including Frank Olivier, a three-time world juggling champion. Chao said the theatrics of the show kept her engaged and entertained.

“I enjoyed the lighting and the performances,” Chao said. “It was fun to laugh along with the audience.”

Hall said a major part of the festival was teaching others how fun juggling can be.

Hall said, “ ey’ve learned that this wonderful art we call juggling, circus art or manipulation art is fantastic.”

As players run their last scrimmage of the night, shouts echo and sneakers squeak across the glossy hardwood court at girls basketball practice. With less than 10 seconds on the practice clock, the ball darts toward number 24, who catches it and shoots it in a clean arc through the hoop. Shooting guard and sophomore Vienn Sheng is one of the youngest yet most impressive players not only on her team but also in the state.

As a freshman, Sheng ranked in the top 30 shooting guards in California, and by her sophomore year, she led her team to multiple victories, scoring up to seven 3-pointers per game.

Sheng said she began playing basketball in third grade through her dad’s encouragement.

“My dad was a really good tennis player, and he played tennis at Stanford,” Sheng said. “So I started playing tennis, and I remember quitting tennis for basketball. And my dad told me, ‘Well, if you’re going to quit tennis, you’ve got to take basketball seriously.’”

Sheng said although she initially received a push from her parents to play basketball, she no longer needed it when she began to enjoy the activity.

“I immediately fell in love with the sport,” Sheng said. “I loved it so much, it wasn’t even my parents who wanted me to play.”

Lucas Guan Guest Writer

It seems like Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, haven’t been out of the news for the past few years. First there were all the allegations of racism, then the two stepping back as senior members of the Royal Family, then the Oprah interview and now Prince Harry’s tell-all memoir “Spare.”

And like almost everything related to the couple, the book immediately provoked a restorm of reactions, some less favorable than others. e book also contained an unprecedented number of allegations against members of the British Royal Family, which made Harry either a hero or public enemy number one, depending on whose side you’re on.

Putting the media circus aside, the book isn’t nearly as juicy as people seem to think. Sure, there are moments where I think I could’ve done without a slightly excessive amount of visual detail, but as a whole, the work is more of a re ection on his life and his family, described in unparalleled detail.

If you ever nd yourself wanting to know more about Harry’s life or what it’s really like to be a part of the Royal Family, the book is probably your best bet since members of the Royal Family generally don’t give interviews or talk about their personal lives. In fact, it’s probably the most comprehensive narrative written about a royal. roughout the book, Harry’s raw emotions are displayed, including his description of the despair of having no purpose –– I especially appreciate him openly writing about his mental health and his decision to see a therapist.

Most pointedly is the racism against his wife.

Harry describes the frustration the couple endured as his family repeatedly failed to protect his wife from biased media reports, like the infamous bridesmaid dress asco, which he says was motivated by racism.

Yet many people have heard about the book because of its explosive claims against members of his family, especially the accusation against Harry’s mother-in-law, Camilla. I’m sure all of you have heard about her infamous a air with Charles while he was still married to Princess Diana. As a result, Camilla was deeply unpopular with the British public after Diana’s death in 1997. So, Harry alleges, the Queen Consort struck a deal with the largest British tabloids where she would feed them false stories about William and Harry in exchange for positive press coverage. I nd this possible, though unlikely. I’m sure Charles did pull some backdoor shenanigans with the British press so they’d treat Camilla better; however, a full-blown conspiracy (especially with William and Harry thrown

But who knows? And that “who knows” is the most damaging part of this book for the British Royal Family, because even though they supposedly have God’s right to rule, they must actively campaign every day. ey’re not campaigning for votes, like politicians, but for public popularity. Because even though the monarchy claims God’s right to rule since they o cially head the Church of England, the legitimacy of the current monarch is based on nothing more than popularity. e monarch no longer wields political power, and the entire institution is essentially at the whim of popular support. So you can imagine why Harry’s startling allegations that paint the entire family as cruel, scheming and malicious can end up producing so much harm. We live in the 21st century,

sensitive about social issues. And though the Royal Family’s popularity in the United Kingdom hasn’t su ered as much as some have predicted and a majority of the UK remains supportive, the approval ratings of Charles, Camilla and William have dropped signicantly. So maybe the book is the beginning of the end for the Royal Family, or maybe it’ll be just another blip in the family history, just like the ascos surrounding Edward VIII or Princess Diana. But given the increased public awareness of issues like racism and mental health, and that the Royals have already been su ering from PR issues in these departments, it won’t be rainbows and unicorns for them anytime soon. Since its publication, “Spare” has become fodder for comedians, who see it as an immature child complaining. e Onion,” a satirical news source, ran the mocking headline, “One Time I Was In England And I Was A Prince And My Mom Was Diana And She Died And My Family Is Mean And My Wife Is Brown And I’m Sorry I Wore A Nazi Uniform” to summarize the plot. e last part is a reference to an infamous incident where Harry wore a Nazi uniform to a Halloween party). I nd these comments too harsh. e plot can get messy at times, but the narrative of “Spare” isn’t one deserving of complaints. Rather, it’s about the pains of being caught between a changing world and an antiquated system. So if you have time, give it a read. I promise you won’t regret it, because there might never be anything like it written again.

To this day, Sheng said her parents remain her biggest supporters.

“ ey really believe in me and in what I can do,” Sheng said. “Knowing that people see potential in me and understand my goals is really helpful. I don’t think I would be here today without them.”

Sheng trains intensively during the season and o -season to improve her skills. When training by herself, she said she’ll shoot up to 300 baskets in a single day.

“Because I’m a shooting guard, I work on a ton of shooting,” Sheng said. “My teammate Catherine and I did this thing for a week and a half where we came to the gym every day and we shot about 100 jumpers and 100 threes.”

Sheng said she is able to motivate herself to shoot hundreds of hoops a day because she sees it as a fun pastime.

“Even if it’s by myself, I’ll put my headphones on,” Sheng said. “I’ll be in the zone, and I’ll just let the ball y. It’s like therapy for me to be in the gym by myself. When I’m upset or stressed, I’m shooting.”

Sheng said her biggest motivation during the season was being surrounded by her teammates.

“One of the biggest reasons I love the sport is just being around teammates,” Sheng said. “From day one, I have made long lasting friendships with my teammates.”

Sheng has been playing with some of her teammates on the same team for over six years.

“(My teammates) are some of my closest friends, and we’ve been able to see each other grow, which is an awesome thing,” Sheng said. “I think that the connections that you make with each other in basketball are just so exciting.”

Scott Peters, the girls basketball coach, said the team had great chemistry that allowed them to play well together.

“We have a lot of great girls on the team,” Peters said. “ e girls have a lot of positivity they bring to practice everyday and in games.”

In the future, Sheng said she hopes to be recruited to play college basketball, and though she doesn’t have a dream team in mind yet, she said she is not worried about it.

“I kind of have the mentality that whatever happens, happens,” Sheng said. “I don’t want to set my heart on something.”

Sheng said although keeping a balance between basketball and her social life often requires sacri ces, it is worth the tradeo

“I’m OK spending three hours every day on basketball,” Sheng said. “I’m OK missing hangouts with my friends for basketball because I have a goal, and I really want to accomplish my goal.”

TYLER WONG/THE CAMPANILE

Sophomore Vienn Sheng walks down the court during a game against Los Altos. “I’ll be in the zone, and I’ll just let the ball y,” Sheng said. “It’s like therapy for me to be in the gym by myself. When I’m upset or stressed, I’m shooting.”

Lucy Li Sta Writer

Professional jugglers Frank Olivier and Amy Weiliczka perform their respective acts during the gala show. “We had some of the best jugglers in the world head-to-head,” Gunn Juggling Club adviser Matt Hall said. “It was fantastic. e hype was real.”

DHRUV SHETTY/THE CAMPANILE

DHRUV SHETTY/THE CAMPANILE

ART BY THEA PHILLIPS

Dhruv Shetty Sta Writer

Palo Alto ice hockey reaches league championship

Sophomore Jorell Clark drives past a defender in a win over Gunn on Jan. 27, where he scored 24 points. “To see him doing some of the things on the court, he’s one of the better sophomores in the entire area,” coach Je LaMere said.

After struggling to gain momentum through the rst three quarters of its Jan. 27 game against Gunn (3-8), boys basketball (83) rallied to outscore the Titans by 19 points in the fourth quarter, pulling o a 15-point, 51-47 comeback victory.

Senior and captain Jackson Martin said the team played out-of-character until the fourth quarter but was driven to victory by its determination.

“In the rst half, we weren’t playing the basketball that we knew we could play,” Martin said. “We just had the winning mindset — we never want to lose a game — so we just brought it all on the oor, and fortunately, we came out on top.

Coach Je LaMere said despite challenges, the team continuously looked for ways to win.

After progressing to the Sharks High School Hockey League championship, the ice hockey team su ered a 6-2 loss against Saint Francis on Feb. 6, concluding the season with a record of 8-3-5.

Junior Takumi Weimann said despite its e ort, the team lacked intensity until the later part of the game once it was too late to make a comeback.

“I think our o ense was great, but their goaltending was outstanding which made it di cult to score,” Weimann said. “In our defensive zone, we struggled because their top line moved the puck well and were fast on zone entries.”

Sophomore Will Hagan agreed that the team did not play to its full potential.

“I think we struggled with passing and holding onto possession,” Hagan said. “We also had a tough time defending some of their better players.”

In conjunction with the team’s quality of playing, sophomore Henry Harding said the lack of chemistry contributed to the loss.

“As we began facing adversity a lot of our players tried to do everything on their own and not work as a team,” Harding said.

Despite the loss, Hagan said the team had an impressive season overall and improved signi cantly since last season.

“Last year, coming out of COVID-19, our team was not as organized. We only had one practice a week that was optional, and we didn’t have a lot of players attending,” Hagan said. “But this year, everyone was more committed and attending practice, so we were a lot more organized as a group.”

Harding said the team was also more experienced this season.

“Our team is mainly comprised of sophomores and upperclassmen, which is a big di erentiator from last season,” Harding said. “A lot

of the other teams in our league have players who play on a bunch of di erent club teams, whereas on our team, a lot of us have played together before.”

Looking forward, Hagan said the players are evaluating how to better the team during the o season.

“I hope next season we can build o of how we did this year and have a strong regular season and win our league,” Hagan said. “Our team can create good scoring opportunities, but we struggle with scoring o those opportunities, which is something we want to work on.”

Harding said an area of improvement for the team is limiting turnovers.

“A lot of the goals we give up are on fast breaks” Harding said. “Working on that in the o season will de nitely be helpful.”

In addition to strengthening these skills within the team, Weimann said the team is planning to expand its roster.

“I think going into the o season our team is likely going to add some new players and more depth,” Weimann said. “And hopefully we can make it to states next year which is de nitely not out of our reach.”

While the team had a frustrating nish to the season, Weimann said he still has a positive view of the season and an optimistic outlook for the upcoming year.

“Even though we did not win the championship, I’m not disappointed in the year as a whole,” Weimann said. “Overall, we had a great season and made it pretty far.”

“I thought it was a testament to our team and their toughness to continue to battle when you’re down in the fourth quarter,” LaMere said. “Going into the fourth quarter, we were looking for a spark. We were looking for combinations of guys that could do something.”

LaMere said senior Ethan Wong was instrumental in orchestrating the comeback.

“In two of our big games, he came in and guarded their best player when we needed a stopper,” LaMere said. “And then in this game, he came in and just gave us some light. It was gratifying to see him hit a three-point shot that was big with momentum.”

In addition to Wong’s momentum, LaMere said that sophomore Jorell Clark was another key player, scoring 20 points in the second half to lead the team’s fourth quarter surge.

“To see him doing some of the things on the court, I think he’s one of the better sophomores in the entire area,” LaMere said. “We’re lucky to have him on our team. He’s a wonderful teammate and plays the game the right way.”

is unexpected and exciting comeback made this game a stand out in LaMere’s coaching career.

“(Tonight) was a special night,” LaMere said. “I’ve been in a lot of games, and I’ve been doing this for 30 years at all di erent levels. is has to be right up there with one of the better ones I’ve been a part of.”

A new pickleball full-day priority ordinance proposed to City Council for approval this month may provide more space for pickleball players at the expense of tennis players at Mitchell Park.

e park currently has eight courts set aside for pickleball players and two tennis courts that are striped for both pickleball and tennis games.

However, pickleball players have priority on these two courts from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. with tennis players having priority from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m.

If approved, the new policy would give pickleball priority over tennis on all the courts all the time.

P.E. teacher Peter Diepenbrock said the proposed ordinance is justi ed because pickleball is a more popular sport than tennis in the park.

“ e fact of the matter is, if you ever go there from 3 to 10, there are always way more pickleball players, so it kind of makes sense for the city to do that,” he said.

Diepenbrock joined the Palo Alto Pickleball Club in 2018 when it was rst gaining traction.

“We had maybe 300 or 400 members in the club back then,” Diepenbrock said. “And now there are 900.”

But tennis player Xiang Lu said many Palo Alto residents who play tennis at the Mitchell Park courts are frustrated with the council’s proposed policy. Before the rise of pickleball, Lu said many United States Tennis Association matches were been held at the courts.

“We used to have a USTA team here. But they took away two of our courts, and the other two remain for coaching,” Lu said. “So we can’t even host USTA matches anymore, and it’s just a huge pain.”

Lu also said the city is at fault for the conict because it could have just added more designated pickleball courts at the park. He also said Palo Alto could do more to support racket sports in general.

Despite the controversy, Diepenbrock said he thinks pickleball serves people of all backgrounds.

“People show up there seven days a week, all di erent times during the day, and it’s all ages from all di erent walks of life,” Diepenbrock said. “It just keeps getting more and more popular. It’s a lot of fun to play.”

While Lu said he has nothing against pickleball or the people who play it, he hopes the city ordinance does not pass.

“It seems like it’s convenient to take the tennis courts, but I’m not so sure that’s a really good idea,” Lu said. “In that regard, I would really be against that. Pickleball is advancing

and that’s good, but it cannot be at the expense of tennis.”

However, pickleball player Austen Tse, a new resident of the Mitchell Park area, said tennis coaches in the area should adapt with the market and do what is best nancially for them.

“(Tennis and pickleball are) pretty similar sports, and as with any business, you should adapt to the times,” Tse said. “So, if the

demand (for pickleball lessons) is much greater, it makes sense to serve the greater community if there are more people interested in it.”

Husein Khambata, an entry-level pickleball player, said whatever happens, the system should not be implemented at the Mitchell Park courts.

Khambata said, “Just because there’s more demand (for pickleball), you can’t kick out (tennis players) who were there before.”

Freshman Alex Muller controls the puck during a 4-4 tie against Los Gatos on Nov. 28. “I hope next season we can build o of how we did this year and have a strong regular season and win our league,” sophomore Will Hagan said.

CELESTE BATES/USED WITH PERMISSION

Luca Vostrejs Guest Writer

Shamsheer Singh Sta Writer

LUCA VOSTREJS/THE CAMPANILE

Ross Smith, Paly class of 1968, takes a pickleball lesson at the Mitchell Park courts. “It just keeps getting more and more popular,” said Peter Diepenbrock, a physical education teacher and member of the Palo Alto Pickleball Club. “It’s a lot of fun to play.”

TYLER WONG/THE CAMPANILE

Neel Sharma Sta Writer

Athletic trainer enhances performance

The crowd is on its feet as chants erupt from both sides of the stands. With the game hanging in the balance, 12 seconds remain as the Palo Alto basketball team sets up its nal o ensive e ort. As the clock ticks down, a layup is contested, and when the buzzer sounds, one player is left facedown on the court, clutching his ankle.

Immediately, athletic trainer Justine Iongi (known as Ms. E to students because her last name is pronounced E-on-gee) rushes onto the court, medical bag in hand, ready to tend to the injury.

Students and coaches say athletic trainers like Iongi play a crucial role in promoting the health and wellness of student athletes in a school setting. ey work to prevent, diagnose and treat injuries, as well as provide education resources to help athletes maintain their physical tness.

Iongi attended San Diego State University where she received her bachelor’s degree in science and athletic training. She later obtained her master’s degree at San Jose State University. And since Iongi came to Paly in 2015, she’s made connections with countless players and coaches.

Junior Richie Ogawa, defender on the varsity soccer team, said he often arrives at the training room before practices and games to ensure he remains healthy. He occasionally goes after practice to alleviate tension in muscles and tendons.

“If I hadn’t gone to Ms. E, I’d be sti as a stick,” Ogawa said.

Besides treatment, Iongi helps student athletes become more informed about injuries and how to prevent them.

“She’s de nitely helped me improve my knowledge by talking about what part of the body a treatment a ects and what stretches you can do,” Ogawa said.

Iongi said she also collaborates with coaches, physicians and other healthcare professionals to ensure the best possible care for student athletes.

Sophomore varsity basketball player Jorell Clark recently started going to the training room before games and practices for a reaggravated hip injury that cut his freshman season short.

“If I didn’t go to Mrs. E, I would say that (my injury) would be a lot worse than it is right now,” Clark said. “She’s really kind,

helpful, and she gives me the right options, and the treatment is great.”

After going to Iongi for treatment and asking for advice, Clark said he takes injuries more seriously.

“I’m more cautious with things,” Clark said. “But even after I’ve recovered, I still might do some of the treatment that she’s given to me (to) make sure I stay healthy.”

Senior Mert Yanar, a forward on the varsity basketball team who transferred from Pennsylvania to Paly at the end of his sophomore year, contributed to a league championship last season.

Lately, Yanar has been stopping by the training room before practices and games.

“With my back … the one day that I didn’t see Ms. E, I couldn’t practice for more than 15 minutes before it started bothering me,” Yanar said. “But once I started seeing Ms. E again, with her (nerve treatment) and her exercises, I feel like she allows me to get on the court as fast as possible, and I de nitely feel like she helps my recovery.”

Junior Torii Kaleba, a varsity track and eld athlete, said she often went to see Ms. E before practices and got taped up for shin splints, which is caused by repetitive stress on the shinbone and the connective tissues that attach muscles to the bone.

“She’s really helpful,” Kaleba said. “She talks me through what exercises I should do, as well

as informing me of how everything a ects one another.”

Iongi said she enjoys positively impacting the school by ensuring the health and wellbeing of student athletes, as well as promoting a culture of safety and excellence in the athletic programs.

Iongi said, “My favorite part is (seeing) all the student athletes, especially those who have come to me struggling with injuries, nally on the top of their game and succeeding in their sport.”

was tough, and even after, it’s de nitely a ected my game, how aggressive I am and how I play.”

Boys varsity soccer defeated Gunn on Jan. 25 and Jan. 30 with scores of 3-2 and 2-0 respectively.

After the rst match on Jan. 25, coach Rusty Millard said the win meant a lot to the team after the hard work they put in.

“( is win was) massive,” Millard said. “It’s three months of having these guys put in the time day in and day out. It’s doing tness when they don’t want to. It’s just coming together and challenging ourselves.”

Senior and co-captain Jonas Pao said that the team played well and that the win against Gunn was encouraging and uplifting following a loss to Santa Clara High School.

“I thought (tonight’s performance) was great, I thought the boys really came out,” Pao said. “We came back from a loss, and obviously at home, (defeating) a rival just couldn’t feel any better.”

Millad said scoring the rst goal in the game contributed to the team’s victory.

“I think ultimately in a rivalry game, it’s always the rst goal that sets the tone and so we felt like getting the rst goal was de nitely to our advantage,” Millard said.

Senior and captain Zach Cooper also said that it felt amazing to come out of the second half with the lead.

“(Taking the early lead) was incredible,” Cooper said. “At the end of the rst half, it’s great to go into the locker room with the lead.”

In the second game against Gunn on Jan. 30, Paly kept Gunn scoreless in a 2-0 victory. Senior Dinu Deshpande scored both goals.

Junior defender Richie Ogawa said the team changed tactics after the rst game to better counter Gunn’s strategies

“We learned from our last mistakes and made adjustments accordingly,” Ogawa said. “It was well planned out by our coaches. Everyone on the team knew that building from the back wasn’t going to work, so we switched our game plan to long balls.”

Liam Gi en crouches, ready to explode. e moment the ball is snapped, he barrels toward the quarterback. Avoiding a teammate, Gi en plants his leg, and an opponent slams into him, tearing his ACL. Gi en, a sophomore defensive lineman on the varsity football team, has a story that may sound familiar to many athletes. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over 250,000 athletes yearly su er an injury from an anterior cruciate ligament, better known as ACL. In addition to ACL tears,

And the impact on athletes’ mental health and academics from injuries is often overlooked, Gi en said.

“Mentally, having football being taken away, a big passion (of mine), took a bit of a toll on me,” Gi en said. “(I) lost a lot of motivation academically, which de nitely had an e ect.”

In addition, rehabilitation can take time out of student-athletes’ already hectic days. Sophomore Roman Jacobs said he would often miss class due to untimely physical therapy appointments.

Justine Iongi has been part of Paly’s Athletic Training program

for seven years. Since receiving her physical therapy certi cation 13 years ago, Iongi said she recognizes overuse injuries like shin splints as the most common chronic injuries students su er. To avoid injuries she suggests properly warming up and stretching before games, but also recommends avoiding “doing too much too fast,” especially when playing sports for the rst time.

Iongi said she has also developed a systematic approach to treating di erent injuries, allowing athletes to treat the underlying cause to their injuries.

“We evaluate the injury, and then we see what’s going on, and I create a rehab and treatment plan,” Iongi said. “So not only do we implement exercises for someone in progressive steps, but we also have a lot of cool things that we use to help with recovery.”

As part of her systematic treatment plans, Iongi said she employs technology like NormaTec and Game Ready to tailor treatments for speci c injuries, providing optimal recoveries.

“We progress you to where we make sure you have a full range of motion and no pain,” Iongi said. “Our goal (is) to get you back to sprinting, where you don’t even have to come back here to do exercises to get ready for your practice.”

In addition to Paly’s training program, athletes often seek outside help with rehabilitation. Movement Health Science, founded by Doug Hoogendyk, has worked with multiple Major League Soccer teams and Stanford Wrestling to prevent injuries. Hoogendyk said he specializes in working with athletes to reduce injury risk.

“Tom Brady coined the phrase, ‘staying exible and being strong in your musculature,’” Hoogendyk said. “Having dynamic strength is key to staying healthy and being t to avoid injury.”

Boys varsity soccer celebrates after defeating Gunn on Jan. 25. “It feels awesome beating our rival team twice,” junior Richie Ogawa said.

NAVEEN NARAYANASWAMI/THE CAMPANILE

Tyler Wong Sta Writer

Alec Bonnard & Julian Hong Sta Writers

TYLER WONG/THE CAMPANILE

Athletic trainer Justine Iongi (known as Ms. E) attends to senior Yasmin Friedrichowitz using a stim machine. “My favorite part is all the student athletes, especially those who have come to me struggling with injuries, nally on the top of their game and succeeding in their sport,” Iongi said.

Naveen Narayanaswami Guest Writer

Junior Alessandra Chandler prepares to pass the ball in practice. “We have opportunities to score and the potential to win a game,” Chandler said.

Despite eight players being suspended from the team for violating league rules by participating in a club soccer showcase, the girls soccer team remains resilient according to new head coach Jeremy Romero.

ough the team lost its Jan. 27 game against Mountain View, Romero said the team put forth a solid e ort. e team’s previous coach is no longer with the team as a result of the club showcase controversy.

“We lost 3-0, but I don’t think the score re ects how hard the girls worked and what we have been working towards: attitude and their work ethic,” Romero said.

According to team captain and junior Kiana Feldis, despite the team’s struggles, it has been making progress.

“ is season was kind of a rough start, but I feel we’re starting to work together really well,” Feldis said.

Now that the season has come to a halfway point, the team is playing against schools a second time, and junior Alessandra Chandler said they hope to turn it around in the last half of the season.

“We have opportunities to score and the potential to win a game,” Chandler said. “We just need to take more shots.”

According to Romero, it is di cult to maintain progress throughout the year due to the short nature of the athletic season.

“(Coaching) high school, you work with (the team) for only three months, and then you don’t see them for the rest of (the year),” Romero said. “So, you have to do your best in getting these girls that aren’t familiar with how everyone plays and getting the chemistry going.”

But Chandler said the team still nds ways to create strong bonds with each other, despite the limited time-frame, such as going out to dinner together.

“We have grown closer over those three months because we have practice every morning at 7 a.m. and a lot of games,” Chandler said.

Romero said a critical part in performing well is maintaining a positive mental space. After every game, Romero said he checks in with each player and congratulates them to ensure each athlete is appreciated.

“ ey are going to be their biggest critic, not the fans, not the teammates, themselves,” Romero said. “If you continue to focus on the negative things, negative things will happen. (If you) focus on the positive things, positive things will happen.”

High-tech shoes cause concerns

Eight runners line up at the Reichsbrücke Bridge in Vienna, Austria, under a maroon Ineos 1:59 banner. It’s October 2019 and each runner sports black jerseys and neon pink shoes, except for the man in the center, Eliud Kipchoge.

Crowds of people to the side jostle for a view. With bright white Nike shoes and a stoic expression, Kipchoge looks forward and sets out to do what others have deemed impossible.

One hour and fty-eight minutes later, Kipchoge dashes to the nish, pointing and waving at spectators. e clock reads, “Uno cial: 1:59:40,” marking the rst successful sub-two-hour marathon e ort, equivalent to an average pace of four minutes and thirty-four seconds per mile for 26 miles. Family members, spectators and reporters swarm over and lift Kipchoge up as a wave of ecstasy spreads across the city.

On Kipchoge’s feet are a set of prototype Nike Alpha ys — the latest version of Nike’s super shoes.

e release of the original Vapor y in 2016 saw scores of records broken for runners wearing the shoes, leading to controversy and the labeling of similar technologies as “technological doping.”

Nike’s shoes contrast with traditional racing ats designed for maximum weight reduction, featuring an energy-returning ZoomX foam. e featured carbon plate acts less like a spring and more as a stabilizer to reduce foot ex. According to results from experiments conducted by e New York Times, Nike and another research group that included a University of Colorado professor, these technologies contribute to roughly a 4% advantage in speed for Vapor y users.

For Hong Wan, an adult marathon runner who uses Vapor y shoes for racing, the shoes provide a discernible advantage.

“( e Vapor y) almost makes you feel like you are propelled forward because the sole is pretty thick,” Wan said. “My pace on that day, on my rst run, was 30 seconds faster than I had expected.”

Varsity runner sophomore Kinga Czajkowska said the shoes provide an unfair advantage for those who can a ord them, with

the Vapor y costing $250 and the Alpha y costing $275.

“A lot of them are pretty expensive,” Czajkowska said. “ at’s a problem. In cross country, of all sports, it’s nice because you don’t need very expensive equipment.”

Sophomore cross country and track runner Stefan Sochacki, who owns more budgetfriendly Adidas racing shoes, said a ordable alternatives exist. ough less famous than the Vapor y, the Adidas shoe features similar foam technologies for a lower price.

“For Nike, I’d say it just has a big name that makes it carry a heavy price,” Sochacki said. “It’s not really the technology

Gavin Lin Guest Writer

Following a win at home against Homestead on Jan. 19, the girls basketball team (10-2) hopes to continue to improve on its communication and chemistry, sophomore Katherine Garr said.

“We’re more willing to communicate with each other and talk with each other and help each other on the court,” Garr said. “We trust each other more. at helped us win.”

Senior and point guard Kaella Peters said bonding has allowed the team to be more successful.

“I think that all the team bonding stu that we did before the game really helped to make sure that we had a fun experience during games,” Peters said. “(Our progress) showed in our games and plays.”

Head coach Scott Peters said trust on the team will help immensely, especially after summer training.

“It takes a lot of sacri ce to be a team,” Scott said. “You have to put your individual goals aside. In the summer, we work on developing our individual skills, and then when we come into the season, we want to mold that into how the team works. So as far as that goal, it’s going to depend on the girls deciding if they want to be a team.”

Although the team has improved, Scott said the girls still need to work hard to compete for the league championship.

“(For) our other goals such as winning league and winning CCS, those have yet to be decided,” Scott said. “We’ve put ourselves in a position where we can compete for the league title, so these next couple of weeks are super important for us to see if our work is going to pay o .”

However, Scott said he is con dent in the team’s ability to

adjust to meet the standards of any game.

“Sometimes, it’s asking some players to do something other than what they’ve worked on,” Scott said. “ at’s what the team needs, and you can see how that worked on our game with Homestead. Whether it’s playing a di erent position or adjusting their game, that’s what it takes to form a team.”

itself (that drives the high prices) because I think there’s as good shoes (from other brands).”

Despite the controversy, the Vapor y complies with the current World Athletics stack height standards.

World Athletics banned the prototype Alpha y shoes in 2020 but the public Alpha y Next% is race legal.

Czajkowska and Sochacki, as well as cross country and track and eld coach Michael Davidson, said the use of the term “technological doping” unfairly compares highperformance running shoes to drug use.

“I wouldn’t put (highperformance shoes) on the same

e varsity wrestling team dominated Cupertino High School 66-10 for a victory in their last home game of the season on Jan. 27. Senior night celebrations were also in full swing as friends and family watched the seniors compete in the nal home match of their high school wrestling career.

Freshman Xander Deisseroth said he will miss the seniors, who have mentored him throughout the season.

“(Senior night) was a really cool moment because (the seniors have) been mentors to people like me, and I’ll be sad to see them go,” Deisseroth said.

Despite having been on the team for only one season, senior Joseph Rose — who defeated his opponent in under ten seconds — said he has already developed a passion for wrestling.

“It’s been a very unique situation to join the sport as a senior and then actually fall in love with the sport so late,” Rose said. “But I cannot ask for a better last home (game). e crowd de nitely brought the energy, which was a great advantage for us. It’s a bittersweet moment.”

Coach Jonathan Kessler said he hopes to help the seniors achieve their goals before they graduate.

“Some of these seniors have goals in mind, the ones that have been here for a few years, and we’re going to do our best to help them attain these goals,” Kessler said. “We look forward to putting them in positions to score points for us and get their hands raised.”

level,” Davidson said. “When you talk about drug enhancement, you’re changing the chemistry of the body to be able to train harder and to be able to do di erent things that your body can’t normally do. You’re not changing that with a pair of shoes.”

Davidson said athletic training, dedication and preparation are ultimately more important than the shoes runners wear, and high-tech shoes aren’t a replacement for hard work.

“When you get to the elite, (a runner wearing Vapor y shoes) will be like a professional baseball player using an aluminum bat as opposed to a wooden bat,” Davidson said. “It’s going to give you as much vibration, and it’s going to be a lot sti er when it hits, so obviously the ball is going to carry a lot further. ere’s an advantage, but at the same time, you still have to be able to hit the ball. (Ultimately,) it’s your choice to (use the shoes) or not to.”

Henry Liu Sta Writer

For some seniors, wrestling has been more than just a competition — it has become a place to learn and grow as people.

Senior Philip Santiago said wrestling has taught him many life lessons that he will carry with him beyond his wrestling career. “(My high school wrestling career) means a lot to me. I’ve made a lot of friends. We spend two or three hours every day in the (wrestling) room,” Santiago said. “And it’s taught me so much about myself and other people, and I love it.”

Rose said wrestling has become a safe space and a break from the outside world for him.

“Wrestling is a very underground community, a very tight-knit community. It’s given me almost a sanctuary, like walking into the room,” Rose said. “It’s one place where I can kind of go to not have to deal with anything outside.”

Senior Philip Santiago said he has mixed feelings about leaving wrestling.

“It’s kind of sad,” Santiago said. “But I think that it’s prepared me for life and taught me a lot about myself, and I’ve noticed I’m a lot better at a lot of things. I’m excited to stop, but I’m also kind of sad that it’s ending, since it’s been such a fun time.”

Kessler said he was thankful for the recognition the wrestlers received for their hard work.

“I appreciate all the support. is sport often gets overlooked, and a lot of people don’t know the hard work these wrestlers put in,” Kessler said. “ ese guys and girls are working their tails o , and we’re happy about it.”

OLIVIA ATKINSON/THE CAMPANILE

CLAIRE JITTIPUN/THE CAMPANILE

Senior and point guard Kaella Peters dribbles down the court o of a transition during a Jan. 19 home game against Homestead. “(Our progress) showed in our games and plays,” Peters said.

Claire Jittipun Guest Writer

Olivia Atkinson Sta Writer

Science Tech

Wrinkles in the multiverse

Afractured camera lens focuses in on Evelyn Wang, played by actor Michelle Yeoh, as she is simultaneously sucked into another universe. Unique worlds slide across the screen behind Wang, revealing her in nite alternate realities within the multiverse of the Oscar-nominated lm “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”

e lm is a new take on the multiverse, a concept that gained popularity in the past decade in pop culture and particularly in the lm industry.

According to Astrophysics teacher Michael Lupoli, the multiverse theory sprouted from mathematics and physics postulations. However, Lupoli said in reality, the multiverse theory is abstract and uncon rmed.

“( e multiverse theory states) that we exist in one of an in nite number of universes, (and) in our universe, physical constants are just right,” Lupoli said. “So we get stars, light and the ability to develop intelligent life that can study the

Albert Jung Sta Writer

In a 2019 deepfaking scandal, fraudsters stole over $240,000 from a British energy company using realistic voice-impersonating tools to pose as the company’s German boss.

Deepfakes, video and audio recordings with realistic human speech and facial expressions created using arti cial intelligence, have become more widespread in recent years. Microsoft recently announced the development of a new textto-speech model called VALL-E.

Computer Science teacher Matthew Rossillon said the algorithm uses tone recognition to convert short audio recordings into completely di erent sentences while preserving the speaker’s emotional tone.

Text-to-speech models like Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Echo are common. But Rossilion said Neural TTS, the technique VALL-E uses, imitates speech through a multi-step training process that di ers from traditional TTS methods.

“Neural TTS generates speech by training a model on a large dataset of speech samples and then ne-tuning the model on a smaller dataset of samples from the target speaker,” Rossillon said. “ is is di erent from traditional TTS methods that most generators use which apply a rule-based approach to convert text to speech.”

Using just a three-second audio sample, VALL-E accurately

universe. In all the other in nite universes, there are random physical constants.”

Lupoli also said proponents of the multiverse theory think our universe is only one of in nitely many that can support human life.

“Many say that because our universe has unique conditions possible to make life happen, our universe itself is an argument for the multiverse theory,” Lupoli said.

“If something is so improbable, the only way to get it to happen is to have an in nite number of universes wherein some

changes the sample’s tone by mimicking the background noises and audio quality of the original sample.

Rossillon said VALL-E raises questions about the potential bene ts and dangers of its ability to closely match natural speech.

“VALL-E can be used for a wide range of applications such as accessibility, entertainment, and personalization,” Rossillon said.

“However, it also raises ethical concerns, such as the potential for creating deepfake audio or impersonating someone without their consent.”

Junior Jackie

He, enrolled in AP Computer Science A, said he thinks VALL-E makes spreading misinformation even easier and audio recordings less trustworthy.

“(Before), if you (had) an audio recording of someone saying something, you (could) almost guarantee that they actually did say it because it’s so hard to fake its authenticity,” He said. “But with (this) software, you can’t be sure of that anymore.”

Senior Sean Sun said he hopes VALL-E and other TTS technologies will bring more satisfaction to people who regularly interact with voice messages and call bots.

“A lot of hospital clinics call people using automated messages, (but) if the emitted messages sound more human, it brings a better experience for the people receiving

of them, everything works out just right to create life.”

While a theoretical concept, the multiverse allows lms to form complex plots and story arcs. Film Composition teacher Alanna Williamson said multiverse lms, such as “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and “Avengers: Endgame” from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, use the multiverse to create emotional scenes but can often create confusion for viewers.

“ ere are two versions of time travel (in the MCU),” Williamson said. “You can go back in the past and have the ability to impact the future, or you’ve already traveled back to the past, but (the future) never changes.”

said. “Putting things in science ction gets at the human fantasy of changing our reality.”

However, Lupoli said the method of time travel in multiverse lms is impossible.

“While there are ideas that black holes and wormholes may be related to the multiverse theory, there’s absolutely no reason to think you could drive a spaceship through one of those and arrive intact,” Lupoli said. “You’d be turned into pure energy, and you’d be ripped apart, atom by atom.”

While the multiverse concept portrayed in lms is theoretical and unlikely, Lupoli said lm representations allow viewers to expand their imaginations. “People like this idea of magically snapping their ngers and making a problem go away, making yourself rich, making someone fall in love with you or whatever it may be,” Lupoli

the call,” Sun said. “A lot of people, when they receive an automated message that sounds clearly robotic, feel less inclined to reply compared to a direct message from a real person.”

He said VALL-E can help save time and money and Microsoft should continue to improve its textto-speech synthesizer.

“It helps with saving human labor, such as for cartoon voice actors, where they don’t have to be in the studio recording every single line, but they can just record a few words and let the software do everything else,” He said. “(Microsoft) should keep going because there’s a lot of potential in it, and the bene ts will outweigh the dangers.”

However, Sun said improved technology could also make scammers’ jobs easier.

“Having the ability to mimic human emotion and manipulate users into believing a person is talking can deceive many people,” Sun said. “A lot of call scam centers would abuse those automated calls, and they would make them seem more human and more believable.”

In the end, Rossillon said Microsoft must put protections in place to ensure VALL-E is used responsibly.

“It is important to consider the ethical implications of the technology and ensure that it is used for positive purposes and that appropriate safeguards are in place to prevent misuse,” Rossillon said. “It is also equally important to consider the impact on jobs and industries related to voice acting and dubbing.”

Lillian Clark Lifestyle, Sci/Tech Editor

After several weeks of heavy rainfall due to an atmospheric river tearing across the state, many assume the current California drought has come to an end. However, even though heavy rainfall is a supporting factor to ending the state-wide drought, AP Environmental Science teacher Nicole Loomis said the struggle is far from over.

Loomis said droughts are not new to California and the recent rain storms do not mean the current drought is over. one year of good rainfall levels,” Loomis said. “ are many aspects to our water supply in California (like) snowpack in the Sierras, reservoirs and groundwater.”

Loomis, reservoir and snowpack levels are up, but the concern for California is groundwater levels.

According to California Groundwater Live, groundwater accounts for 40% of California’s total annual water supply in normal years and almost 60% in drought years.

Because of the (large) proportion of groundwater, Loomis said especially if a drought has lasted for several years, it can take several years to reverse it.

“Groundwater levels will take years of average to above-average precipitation to recover,” Loomis said.

Vice-president of Paly Project Eco, which focuses on spreading awareness of environmental

conservation, senior Catie Nudelman said students need to seek out information about the environment to be properly educated on relevant climate issues.

“Students do not get su cient education on climate issues aside from what is in the media, or if you enroll in a speci c class on campus like AP Environmental Science,” Nudelman said. “I didn’t know much about climate issues until taking APES which makes me think a lot of students are in the dark about the environmental problems a ecting our world today.”

Loomis said there are small things students and their families can do to help with California’s

immediately,” Loomis said. “Install water-saving shower heads and faucet heads, (which) you can usually get these for free from your local water district.” Not only is it important to act immediately, but , founder of Project Eco, said being consistent can make lasting shorter showers, not and not leaving your faucet on when you’re brushing your teeth,” Minsko said.

Regardless of what people do, Nudelman said everyone should make lifestyle changes for the sake of California’s future.

“Although we have gotten a signi cant amount of rain, it is important to not cause another drought with excessive water consumption,” Nudelman said. “It is still important to be cautious with our water usage since it is such a vital resource for all of us.”

ARTBYRACHEL LEE