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@hhsepitaph The Epitaph The Epitaph Vol.57 Issue 3 Homestead High School 21370 Homestead Rd, Cupertino, CA 95014
https://hhsepitaph.com/
Wednesday, December 11, 2019
@epitaphHHS
By Karen Li, Shruti Magesh, Katelynn Ngo, Kacey Rebstock and Saanvi Thakur
W
hen junior Sara Smith* attended a HHS house party, she never expected to end the night watching one of her classmates getting carted away by EMTs. The injured party-goer, Smith said, had allegedly been going in and out of consciousness after consuming alcohol, smoking marijuana and taking Xanax. He passed out just as he was reassuring everyone he was fine. “My friend, who was sober, walked up to the EMT dude trying to explain what happened, and they didn’t even care,” Smith said. “I don’t really know what happened [after that]. I don’t even know if the dude’s okay.” Accidents like the one Smith witnessed are fairly common at parties. Junior Lucas Persyn said he has also been a witness to the consequences of mixing peer pressure with substance abuse at a high school party. “[I saw] one person literally jumping off from a roof onto a table and breaking their wrist on that,” Persyn said. “That was all peer pressure. He said he didn’t even want to do it. He ended up breaking himself and the table ... and it wasn’t even his house.” According to a survey of 125 HHS students, 47.6 percent reported that they attend parties, and 45.2 percent said they consume alcohol and engage in other illegal activities at these parties. Senior John Anderson* said he attends parties around once a week. These parties range from kickbacks — which are exclusive small scale parties with around 20 people — to large scale-parties anyone can attend. Typically, HHS parties tend to be kickbacks, which are invite-only parties, Anderson said. “[Going to parties is] part of the mob mentality,” Anderson said. “People will do it, not because people are pressuring them to, but because they feel an internal pressure to be a part of something bigger than themselves in the sense of a party.” Ten miles away, at Los Altos High School and just around the corner at FHS, Ander-
son said, parties can grow to around 100 people and may take one to two weeks to plan. HHS parties, by contrast, are usually planned spontaneously and are more laidback, he said. “[The type of parties you go to] depends on where you exist in the social atmosphere at HHS … depending on what kind of person you are and who you’re friends with,” Anderson said. While parties primarily include socializing with friends, there are also often students engaging in illegal activities, including using drugs and alcohol. Anderson said it’s relatively common to find people smoking marijuana or drinking one of the many alcoholic substances present at parties such as beer, inexpensive vodka or other hard liquors. Teens who abuse substances at parties may do so because of the instant reward, HHS school psychologist Ellen Lain said. “There’s an immediate effect. You do something [and] immediately you get some kind of response,” Lain said. “Versus [in] classrooms, you sit there and then you’re learning these equations. What is the immediate [response]? Nothing really comes back from that as quickly.” According to the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, people ages 12 through 20 drink 11 percent of all alcohol consumed in the United States. In addition, young people consume more than 90 percent of their alcohol by binge drinking. Smith said that with the abundance of alcohol and drugs at every party, it’s hard not to use them, especially when it seems as if all the participants are having fun. Drug usage at parties is typically limited to marijuana, Anderson said, but other, harder drugs are sometimes present, too. About half of high school students reported using marijuana in a 2013 study. This use of marijuana can negatively affect brain development, cause risky behaviors and develop into serious health problems, ac-
cording to the CDC. Some other ramifications of drug and alcohol use at high school house parties include alcohol poisoning and other trips to the hospital, similar to those described by Smith and Persyn. “I’ve had a few friends get alcohol poisoning,” Anderson said. “I’ve had a few friends not necessarily overdose, but smoke too much weed. I’ve had a few friends go to the hospital.” In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 2013, there were 119,000 emergency rooms visits by people ages 12 to 21 for injuries and other conditions linked to alcohol. In addition, by senior year, twothirds of students have tried alcohol, according to the CDC. Sophomore Adithi Sumitran said she thinks teens engage in these behaviors to fit an image rather than for genuine enjoyment. “I don’t think people personally enjoy going out of their comfort zone and doing drugs or smoking,” she said. “I feel like a lot of it has to do with trying to fit in with that media-constructed image of teens.” Similarly, media is often dominated by depictions of high school parties as places where a lot of hooking up and sex occurs, but this doesn’t really happen at HHS, Baker said. “You see high school movies and there’s always people hooking up in the mom’s bedroom. There’s none of that,” Baker said. “Usually, all the doors are closed off and the only people hooking up are people who are already dating.” Back at Homestead, while the administration typically does not get involved in the party scene, since these events take place off campus, usually on nights and weekends, there have been times when adults have had to step in, principal Greg Giglio said. “If someone’s partying on a Tuesday night and they show up Wednesday and they’re still under the influence or unable to function, that becomes our issue because we have to check into
their safety and their well being,” Giglio said. “If they are advertising [parties] here at school, telling everyone here in school [and] we become aware of it … [or if] a fight breaks out or a student gets assaulted or abused [at a party], that’s going to affect their ability to be safe on campus, and that is something that could become our jurisdiction.” The same is true for law enforcement. Even with a clear amount of illegal activity occurring at parties, the main reason parties are shut down by the police is because of noise complaints, Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety officer Elisa Barrios said. “[We may break up a party] if a neighbor calls in a noise complaint during certain hours of the day, [since] we have municipal codes where you can’t be making a certain level of noise,” Barrios said. From there, officers follow specific municipal codes in regard to alcohol and the number partygoers present. “You can’t have more than 10 juveniles in the house [if alcohol is present], so if that’s the case, then we could potentially cite if they’re in violation of that,” Barrios said. When the police do show up, there are usually no consequences for partygoers or the host, Lee said. “If they recognize that it’s like a larger party, they’ll just tell everyone that they have to leave,” Lee said. “Normally, [no one] gets in trouble.” While there are certain dangers and negative consequences that can emerge from a Homestead party, ultimately, Anderson said, parties simply serve as a way for students to unwind and focus on something other than school. “There’s a release. In a party, there’s no boundaries on the ways you can act,” Anderson said. “You can be around all these people without being in the context of school. You can be more yourself. You can be loud or say what’s on your mind. You can be funny. There’s an ease to social interaction there.”
*Names have been changed to protect students’ anonymity.
PAGE DESIGN BY ELAINE HUANG, LEILA SALAM, AND SAANVI THAKUR