FEATURES: Pizza, glassblowing and airplanes? Students and teachers tell their unique employment stories
FLIPSIDE: Bruce Cheung
THE PROSPECTOR CUPERTINO HIGH SCHOOL’S
VOLUME 53 NO. 5
10100 FINCH AVENUE, CUPERTINO CA
ONLINE AT WWW.CHSPROSPECTOR.ORG
MARCH 2, 2012
Female students seek leadership power The Lady Female involvement in student government increases and surpasses male participation school leadership. History teacher and author of “Cupertino High School: A History” Wes Morse described how the culture of this school once emphasized certain gender roles that kept women from leadership positions. “In the 1960s and 70s, girls weren’t allowed to do anything in a leadership capacity,” Morse said. “It wasn’t their place; it wasn’t their role. We had guidance counselors in this school who would counsel girls on getting married, or going to maybe a junior college but not really considering a four years school.” There were no female ASB or class presidents before Title IX was passed in 1972. This law made it illegal for schools to exclude students from participat-
SINDHU GNANASAMBANDAN opinions editor
201 2C l as sP res id e
The United States faces a dearth of females in the high-level management positions of almost every industry. This same trend, however, does not appear in our school which, in the last couple decades, has seen a sharp rise in the number of females in leadership positions. There was not a single female ASB or class president for the first 14 years of the school’s history. Since then, the numbers have drastically risen. In the last three decades, 23 of the 30 senior class presidents have been female. This year, almost 50 percent of club presidents are female and the school’s current ASB class has a two to one female to male ratio. Said ASB adviser Jeff Rosado, “We get about 90 applint cants who apply for ASB. Two-thirds, if not more, of the applicants are female. Even five years ago, it was closer in percentage but now it is clear, not just with the raw numbers of how many apply but with the talent that comes in. There are higher percentages of talented girls applying.” “Females are definitely more vocal in ASB. Guys do project their voices at times but many of the girls are very outgoing,” sophomore class president Christina Huang said. Another side to this trend is that males are rapidly receding from the realm they used to dominate. Said Rosado, “It is not that there are not talented guys [at school], just that, for whatever reason, they are not applying to be in ASB anymore.” Teachers and students have varying hypotheses regarding how and why females have gone from being virtually unrepresented in to taking control of
Senior
Rebecca Tsai:
I don’t think a lot of guys see me as a girl. I don’t think I have ever been stereotypically feminine in the first place and maybe that’s why people started listening to me more
Pioneers
The first female students to have leadership roles in school government
TONI CISNEROS First female senior class president
- Senior Shona Hemmady
ing in activities based on gender and had the largest impact on the sports department. The 1960 Nugget has 38 pages dedicated to boys’ sports and just one page to girls’ sports. Boys participated in five football teams, five track teams and four basketball teams while girls simply played sports after school for fun. Title IX, however, required one girl team for every boy team in sports. Morse believes that leveling the playing field in sports may have catalyzed a similar shift in leadership. According to him, females always had the potential to become strong leaders but their emergence in leadership was delayed due to previous social expectations regarding gender roles. Senior Lawrence Luk believes that this phenomenon might be linked to Rosado’s see FEMALE STUDENTS BREAK THROUGH THE GLASS CEILING pg.2
JASON CHEN
PHOTOS COURTESY OF WES MORSE
MARIA NABRIDES First female ASB president
COMPILED BY SINDHU GNANASAMBANDAN
Female ASB Presidents 1959
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Female senior class presidents = Female senior class presidents 1959
COMPILED BY SINDHU GNANASAMBANDAN
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Assassins game triggers Code Red JESSE ZHOU features editor LAURA KAO opinions assistant
On Monday, Feb. 6, custodian Luis Fraga spotted a student crouching behind a car in the band parking lot while holding an object that resembled a firearm. Fraga immediately notified the administration of the potential danger, and Principal Kami Tomberlain promptly issued a Code Red on the intercom. “This is not a drill,” Tomberlain said. After the arrival of 42 police officers and a tense confrontation, the student was found to be holding nothing more than a Nerf-brand toy gun. However, further analysis revealed that the student was part of a Nerf “Assassins” game, which the student
had joined via Facebook. The goal of the game was to “kill” other students by hitting them with a Nerf dart; the last person standing was to be the winner. Many other students involved in this particular game were called in after the Code Red and some were found to have Nerf guns in their possession as well. Those found with guns faced repercussions on which the administration declined to elaborate, and all students were warned not to play the game on school grounds. The warnings and punishments given by the administrators incited angry responses from various students. Senior Tobias Shin, who was part of the game, expressed disdain for the administration’s actions. “[The administrators’] reaction to the emergency was understandable and appropriate, but what of their behavior after they realized it wasn’t an emergency?” Shin said. “The students
were obedient, respectful and consented to having their property searched and confiscated. It’s [the student’s] fault that he got caught, sure, but it’s not his fault that the administrators clearly overreacted.” However, Tomberlain feels that the administration’s actions were justified. “The images [of Columbine] were immediately in my head. You just hope you never have to respond to a situation like that,” Tomberlain said. “We don’t need those guns on campus, regardless of how toy-like they are.” The administration did not take this incident lightly. Many of the administrators expressed clear dissatisfaction with the students involved, but also felt relief when they realized that the school was not in danger. see CODE RED, pg.2