The student-run publication of Stuart Hall High School | 1715 Octavia Street, San Francisco, CA 94109
Volume 14, Issue 3 | Friday, October 11, 2019
Program connects school network Global Exchange participants study abroad
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Will Burns
Reporter
he Sacred Heart network’s Global Exchange Program is looking to send students to sister schools around the world for a two to six week immersion experience with a host family. Associate Director of Admissions Greg Lobe coordinates the program that requires an online application. “Students probably aren’t aware that we had kids that we’re exchanging halfway around the world, to Europe, to South America, to Asia, to Australia,” Lobe said. The International Network of Sacred Heart Schools has over 150 schools in 44 countries, giving students a diverse array of experiences. Three current exchange options are Buenos Aires, Argentina; Barcelona, Spain and San Luis Potosi, Mexico. “Last year, in September, I went to France and stayed in a city called Nantes with my host Jules,” junior Vincent Behnke said. “It was a really incredible experience.” Students on exchange go to classes at other schools, but do
homework from back home. Participants say this approach provides students with a new viewpoint on how other cultures learn. “Jules came here in January and we had a really great time with him,” Behnke said. “He had his own schedule and went to his own classes. He went to [school trainer] Barclay [Spring] every day on his own too.” Lobe says the goal of the exchange program is to improve language skills and acclimate students to a different culture and way of life. “This world is getting smaller by the day,” Lobe said. “ It’s more important now than ever to be able to understand people who are different from you, whether that’s a different religion, a different ethnicity or from a different country.” Behnke says Jules was able to fully integrate into the Stuart Hall community and make himself at home in San Francisco. “To anyone who’s thinking of doing it, I’d say just do it,” Behnke said. “It helped my French so much, and I got by on French II. Just do it because it’s such a great opportunity.”
Vincent Behnke | With Permission
EXCHANGE BUDDIES Junior Vincent Behnke stands with exchange student Jules His while visiting a lake in Sucé-sur-Erdre near Nantes, France. Behnke went to Lycée Sacré Coeur la Perverie in September 2018, and His visited Stuart Hall in January 2019.
Major club institutes reform Students in Action seeks commited members to organize events Sartaj Rajpal & Henry Murray
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Ray O’Connor | With Permission
SERVICE UP Freshman Vlad Korostoshevskiy helps prepare bag lunches for the homeless on Sept. 15. Although Students in Action organized the first One Less Hungry event of the year, most participants were not members of the club.
Reporters
popular school service organization is undergoing restructuring after it grew exponentially last year. “Last year, we had [a lot of] students showing up weekly, but I would say of those students, a fraction of them were actually engaged in service,” Ray O’Connor, Students in Action faculty moderator, said. “The problem became how to make this team become more effective and support the goals of Students in Action while helping it to grow more purposefully and intentionally.” Rather than having students in SIA participate in the majority of service events the program organized, the leadership team has been working on getting the entirety of Convent & Stuart Hall involved in service. “The club has started to focus more on getting service events out to the community and actively participating in them,” student leader Henry Sears said. “I am looking forward to being able to accomplish more service
this year because we have better organization.” Although SIA has increased organization and productivity with a smaller group of students, approximately 50 members of the club were removed in May, leaving some students upset and confused. “It felt like I was being kicked out of a service organization that was open to the entire school,” former SIA member Jackson Cady said. “I was reluctant to join the leadership team because the group felt predetermined and somewhat exclusive.” Members of SIA leadership say they hope to re-expand to accommodate more members who are actually involved in service. “What we hope to do is to bring more people onboard through monthly general meetings that actually invite people who are helping with service, who are actually involved in service through SIA on their own,” O’Connor said. “They truly are ’Students in Action,’ so they come to the meeting being able to say, ’This is what I do and this is how I do it.’”
The Roundtable | October 11, 2019
Juniors begin college process Counselors offer guidance in school search “I think that it will become more and more overwhelming as the work piles up in spring and then fall next year, but for now I feel at least peaceful about the whole thing,” junior Vincent Behnke said about the college admissions process. Behnke is currently in the International Baccalaureate Programme and participates in extracurricular activities such as Model UN, for which he is the co-captain, and volunteering weekly at the California Pacific Medical Center hospital. Behnke toured East Coast schools such as Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown, Columbia, New York University and the
Owen Akel
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Reporter
uniors say they are optimistic after attending a college application introductory workshop and meeting the counseling team Sept. 19. “Transcripts are the most important part of an application,” college counselor Thomas Esponnette said. “In addition, colleges want to know how you are civically engaged within the San Francisco community.” Sacred Heart Goal 3 educates to “a social awareness that impels to action,” and 4 promotes “the building of community as a Christian value.” Both encourage civic involvement.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology during his sophomore year. “I haven’t done too much besides attending school information events thus far,” junior Bryan Maruyama said, “however, I have done my best to stay engaged in the community and my school work and am generally optimistic about the whole process.” Juniors who are looking to start learning about college admissions may schedule visits by attending college information sessions on available on both campuses and talking to school representatives, according to Esponnette.
“These visits can help students get an idea of the types of schools they can be looking at in the coming years,” Esponnette said. “Starting in the spring we will have individual student meetings with the counselors.” Juniors will also be working on rough drafts of their personal statements during the spring semester to better prepare them for senior year. “I’ve never actually been all that stressed about the admissions process,” Benkhe said. “At the end of the day, if a school doesn’t take me, that means they didn’t want me and I wouldn’t have been happy there anyways.”
College Counseling Timeline Oct. 1
FAFSA App. Opened Due with First School App. Grade 12
Starting January A
One-on-One Meetings Grade 11
May 1
After February Break
National Deposit Deadline Grade 12
Family Meetings Grade 11
Nov. 30
No
.2
UC Deadline Cal State Deadline Grade 12
Oct. 16
PSAT Grades 9-11 Supplement Workshop Grade 12
Nov. 4
Final College List Due to Counseling Office Grade 12
Semester Two
College Counseling Begins Grade 11
Cesar Guerrero
Rebecca Munda
Kelly Tom Whalen Esponnette SAT Test Dates
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FAF S
Meet the counselors
Feb. 6
College Admissions Panel Grades 9-11
Late April/ Early May
Common App Essay Draft Due Grade 11
Oct. 5 Nov. 2 Dec. 7 March 14 May 2 June 6
ACT Test Dates Oct. 26 Dec. 14 Feb. 8 April 4 June 13 July 18*
*ACT not available in California or New York on this date
Nik Chupkin | Design Editor
Owen’s Opinion
Protect free speech — even when you don’t agree By Owen Murray
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reedom of speech is a right that we enjoy without appreciating it. As Americans, we express our opinions every day without punishment and have very few laws that limit what we can publish or access in print and online. That being said, there is a current trend of some individuals in the American press advocating for limits on speech despite making a living by exercising their First Amendment rights. Journalist Kara Swisher wrote in an opinion piece in the “New York Times” last week that President Donald Trump should be banned from Twitter because he makes “incendiary tweets and rage-filled tweets and appalling tweets and reckless tweets and misleading tweets.” In the United States, the concept of freedom of speech isn’t exclusive to language that someone deems “appalling.” Swisher
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enjoys her right to free speech every day, and is paid to do so. Suggesting that Trump shouldn’t enjoy his right to free speech as well is hypocritical. Swisher asserts that President Trump’s tweets are too dangerous for the public, citing a tweet Trump reposted that read, “If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation.” Swisher claims that by reposting a comparison between the Civil War and impeachment politics, Trump is encouraging a violent reaction from his supporters. Swisher then writes that Twitter should ban Trump for “inciting violence,” which is prohibited in the platform’s Terms of Service. Swisher’s claim that Trump is implying anything related to violence is not backed up by evidence. Trump’s retweet did not
make a reference to violence, nor did it allude to it. The tweet only says that America would experience a “Civil War like fracture” in politics, not that the country would experience an actual war. Twitter’s Terms of Service state that individuals are not allowed to “promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.” No explicit evidence in Trump’s tweet comes close to suggesting that he promotes violence, and Swisher acknowledges that when she writes in her article “the tweet’s message was implicit rather than explicit.” Swisher wrote this piece was so that she could say in a verbose and indirect way that she does not like Trump’s content, and for that reason he should be banned from social media. If everyone
had the ability to ban someone they didn’t like from speaking their mind, diverse voices would be silenced. Minority ideas would not be voiced, and groupthink would not only be pervasive, but it would go unchallenged. The voice with the loudest megaphone would win. Banning speech on the premise that they individuals don’t like its message like it is not only antithetical to the First Amendment, but it also is counterproductive. Censoring speech erases the possibility for intelligent and respectful dialogue from people with different perspectives, and opens the door for both groupthink and censorship by those in power. As Americans, we need to challenge ideas of censorship put forward by writers like Swisher, but also appreciate the fact that she expresses her mind freely.
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Staff Owen Murray | Editor-in-Chief Sartaj Rajpal | Senior Reporter Nik Chupkin | Design Editor Owen Akel | Reporter Will Burns | Reporter Henry Murray | Reporter Tracy Anne Sena, CJE | Adviser Reviews and personal columns are the opinions of the individual author and are not necessarily those of Stuart Hall High School or Schools of the Sacred Heart San Francisco. Corrections and letters may be addressed to the editors at roundtable@sacredsf.org