The Lowell Newsmagazine: May 2024

AI: GENERATING OUR FUTURE

ONLINE EXCLUSIVES

LESSENING THE HOMEWORK LOAD BY

ELIZA HOWARD

JROTC PLACES SECOND IN ANNUAL SPRING COMPETITION BY

SASHA HUNG

ALEX MANGOT

LOWELL CHOIR ENDS YEAR WITH ANNUAL SPRING CONCERT BY RAMONA JACOBSON

ACCOLADES: NSPA Pacemaker Top 100, 2018 NSPA Print Pacemaker Finalist, 2011 & 2014 NSPA Online Pacemaker, 2012 NSPA Print Pacemaker, 2007 & 2011 NSPA All-American, 2009 NSPA First Class Honors, 2007 NSPA Web Pacemaker, 2007 CSPA Gold Crown

GARVIN KWONG

IMAAN ANSARI

EDITORIAL

EXPAND THE SHIELD, UPDATE THE SCROLL

COVER

NEWS FEATURE

FEARFUL ANTICIPATION FOR STUDENT AID

MULTIMEDIA

RETRO REVERIE

COLUMN

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST

MEDIA REVIEWS

THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT EMERGENCY INTERCOM AI GENERATING OUR FUTURE

Editors-in-Chief

Kylie Chau • Roman Fong • Sierra Sun

News Editors

Isadore Diamond • Sierra Sun

Opinions Editor

Tatum Himelstein

Columns Editors

Ramona Jacobson • Brooke Laur

Sports Editor

Roman Fong

Multimedia Editors

Kylie Chau • Lauren Kim • Ava Rosoff

Art Manager

Danica Yee

Reporters

Cecilia Choi • Amálie Cimala • Eliah Choi • Dakota

Colussi • Diego Gutierrez • Thomas Harrison • Casey

Holman • Eliza Howard • Sasha Hung • Max Lewellen • Kai Lyddan • Ben McDonell • Alina Mei • Hayden Miller • Serena Miller • Noah Muchowski • Sia Terplan • Zane

Wilcox • Nellie Zakharov

Photographers

Imaan Ansari • Danah Aroonchaipirom • Katharine

Kasperski • Garvin Kwong • Lucas Larson • Sydney Lee • Alex Mangot • Dahlia Myers • Ryan Njuguna

Illustrators

Mika Catangay • Joey He • Charon Kong • Alisa

Kozmin • Yue Yi Peng • Emily Yee

Business Managers

Isabella Chan • Primo Pelczynski

Web Manager

Katharine Kasperski

Social Media Managers

Maya Murakami • Miyabi Yoshida

Researchers

Maren Brooks • Anita Luo

Advisor

Eric Gustafson

EXPAND THE SHIELD, UPDATE THE SCROLL

Red and white mushroom hat-wearing students puttering about the hallways are a common sight at Lowell. As iconic as these Shield and Scroll members appear to be at school, this service and honor society has accumulated a prestigious appeal through unreasonable barriers to entry. The admissions process consists of having members rate applicants and limits the number of students who can join, creating an unfair horse race marked by unnecessary qualifications, favoritism, and an elitist culture. Shield and Scroll must adopt a fairer admissions process that does not restrict the number of qualified student applicants accepted.

The qualifications to be a mushroom hat wearer often seem disproportionate to the manual labor performed. Shield and Scroll members undeniably provide valuable volunteer services to Lowell students and faculty; these students take time out of their busy schedules to tour incoming freshmen, move tables around classrooms, and organize school-wide events — all of which are tasks that help “Lowell run as effectively and efficiently as possible,” according to the Student Body Council. However, students with 4.0 GPAs and extracurricular involvements are often rejected despite their evident display of commitment. Its current system strips qualified student applicants of any chance to participate in this service society, leaving many to question why a service organization is so competitive.

Shield and Scroll’s use of an anonymous and holistic student-teacher voting process appears fair in theory; in reality, it is laced with nepotism. When prospective members apply, current members rate each applicant based on their GPA and school involvement. While applicants are reviewed without their identity, members can easily pick students apart from their own network by checking which extracurriculars the applicant participates in. For instance, a student in the Lowell Student Association (LSA) has a comparative advantage over another student with many extracurriculars and a 4.0 GPA in the admissions process. Behind closed doors, favoritism towards specific extracurricular involvements leaves applicants

to be judged based on preconceived biases. As a result, applicants are unfairly evaluated and rejected or accepted according to their social connections.

In addition, the cap on how many students are accepted perpetuates a toxic culture that has detrimental effects on students’ well-being. Each school year, only 40 students applying make the cut, promoting the idea that only a minority of students are worthy of the Shield and Scroll title. For so many juniors, being accepted into Shield and Scroll means being one step closer to attending the prestigious college of their dreams. This is simply not the case; it may seem like a huge deal to Lowell students, but Shield and Scroll is just one accolade among many on a student’s college application. Factors such as GPA and commitment to specialized extracurriculars are far more impactful. By continuing the existing competitive nature at Lowell, Shield and Scroll’s selectivity adheres to the very misconstrued ideals that Lowell students embodied in the TryHarder film, a mindset that’s warned against. It seems that as “Lowell’s second oldest organization,” Shield and Scroll attempts to cling to its elitist traditions. However, Lowell is not the same as it was decades ago — given the undulating admissions policies from lottery to merit in recent years — and Shield and Scroll must catch up to the present and reduce tension-filled cleavages among the student body rather than trying to hold onto the past.

By implementing a less restrictive admissions process for Shield and Scroll members, Lowell could foster equity and accountability. The mushroom hat, instead of symbolizing prestige, should represent school service and a genuine commitment to volunteering. While the admissions policy for Lowell itself remains contentious, there is no question that Shield and Scroll, a cornerstone of Lowell’s culture, must acknowledge the need to level the playing field through fairer selection procedures. To ensure that each student has equal footing, Shield and Scroll must make efforts to remain impartial during the voting stage and accept each student who is qualified to be a committed volunteer — not confined to a 40-slot cap.

The Lowell is published by the journalism classes of Lowell High School. All contents copyright Lowell High School journalism classes. All rights reserved. The Lowell strives to inform the public and to use its opinion sections as open forums for debate. All unsigned editorials are opinions of the staff. The Lowell welcomes comments on school-related issues from students, faculty and community members. Send letters to the editors to thelowellnews@gmail.com. Names will be withheld upon request. We reserve the right to edit letters before publication.

The Lowell is a student-run publication distributed to thousands of readers including students, parents, teachers, and alumni. All advertisement profits fund our newsmagazine issues. To advertise online or in print, email thelowellmanagement@gmail.com. Contact us: Lowell High School 1101 Eucalyptus Drive San Francisco, CA 94132, 415-759-2730, or at thelowellnews@gmail.com.

COOKING UP THE MUSHROOMS

From the editor

Dear readers of The Lowell,

As we draft this final letter from S107, a wave of nostalgia and pride washes over us. This school year, we started off being elected into our roles as Editors-in-Chief, admittedly more than a little clueless. From confronting deadlines, navigating leadership pressures, and orchestrating frantic Zoom calls, our beginning attempts at taking initiative were anything but seamless. Yet, as we’ve eased into our roles, it’s difficult to fathom how our time steering The Lowell is nearing its end.

We’re happy to have successfully published five magazines and a consistent stream of online content. By exercising creative autonomy through the introduction of the satire section and this magazine’s mad-lib, TheLowell has and will continue to be at the heart of student journalism. In our coverage of events affecting Lowell’s student body, we’re proud to resonate with our readers, from student profiles regarding the Israel-Hamas War to this magazine’s feature story regarding students’ financial uncertainty caused by the FAFSA changes.

Most importantly, our heartfelt appreciation goes out to this year’s incredible staff: editors, reporters, illustrators, photographers, researchers, and business managers. Friendships were forged over locking ourselves out of the science building after latenight magazine in-dates, laughing at the wrath of disapproving alumni emails, and burning our toasts during moments when we lost track of time in deep conversation. Integrating new staff and underclassmen into our journalism community — from awkward ice-breakers to their first bylines — has been particularly rewarding.

There is no question that The Lowell’s future is in caring and capable hands. We trust the incoming editors to not just maintain but elevate this publication’s tradition of excellence. We’re ecstatic to see your future staff release their unfettered voices and creativity in the coming year. Thank you for reading, critiquing, and supporting us this year. The Lowell ad(Journ)ed.

With

love, Editors-in-Chief, Kylie Chau, Roman Fong, Sierra Sun

JOEY HE

Generating our future

By Casey Holman

Over the past two years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become an increasingly prominent part of students’ lives. From cheating with ChatGPT to chatting with Character.ai, Lowellites — and young people globally — have been incorporating AI into their routines. Yet, the future of AI is hotly contested. Some are enthusiastic about new technological breakthroughs, while others are concerned about AI’s imperfections and lightning-fast development. Instead of focusing on

student voices to provide their perspectives on the present and future of AI.

Senior Logan Ragland, a prospective film student, is feeling the pressure of AI encroaching upon artists’ territory. Film incorporates various artistic disciplines, like photography, music, digital art, and theater. For Ragland, the real meaning of film, and art as a whole, is the creative intent of those who made it. AI-generated media, he argues, eliminates this intent entirely and thus removes the value of art.

Ragland has a strict definition of art, and it doesn’t include AI. “I don’t personally believe that AI can make art,” Ragland said. Art is a form of self-expression, according to him. Because AI creates media based not on self-expression but on averaging data points, AI-generated media doesn’t hold the same weight. “It doesn’t matter if it looks like art,” he said. “It necessar-

ily lacks that certain emotion to it.” As AI-generated media becomes in creasingly indistinguishable from human-created pieces, Ragland worries about the integrity of our appreciation for art. His concern isn’t unfounded: in the 2022 Col orado State Fair art contest, an AI-generated piece won first place in digital art, which sparked frustration and criticism among competitors. Ragland hopes to continue appreciating real art, but as the line between AI creations and human creations becomes blurrier, that distinction grows increasingly diffi cult to make.

In addi tion to artistic integrity, Ragland expects that as AI improves, the film industry will begin cutting corners — and subsequently cutting jobs. “The film industry is already very much corrupted by money and interest,” Ragland said. He worries that AI will only worsen this corruption. Even without AI-generated video, many jobs in the film industry could potentially be replaced with AI: minor actors, sound designers, foreign language translators, and graphic designers are all at risk. This concern isn’t futuristic; two

months ago, the horror film “Late Night With the Devil” received backlash

grow bleaker. “People [in the film industry] want to support what makes them money rather than what has artistic merit,” he said. “AI in film would just further suppress artistic expression.”

“People [in the film industry] want to support what makes them money rather than what has artistic merit. AI in film would just further suppress artistic expression.”

Freshman Rex Hall isn’t just excited to use AI — he’s even begun coding his own. Hall, a coder, knows he should be apprehensive about AI taking his future job opportunities but instead finds himself excited about solving problems with it. He uses AI almost daily for programming and bug-fixing. Hall believes that AI is particularly good at writing and reading code. He often uses AI as his co-pilot when coding games, websites, and hob-

Logan Ragland

Rex Hall

by projects. AI helps Hall approach coding projects that he wouldn’t be able to complete ordinarily. “I used AI to help me create [my website] by having it write code that I didn’t know how to write and also to do some calculus,” Hall said.

Although Hall uses AI frequently, he isn’t blind to its flaws. When AI checks his code for bugs, Hall notices that sometimes, AI worsens the problem rather than fixing it, and he has to do even more work to fix the broken code. Even when AI debugs his program, there are downsides. “[AI] will fix stuff, and it won’t tell you how,” Hall said. “You won’t know how to fix it in the future.” Still, he finds that using AI to help him code is worthwhile because it helps him approach difficult programming tasks and complete more of his passion projects.

“Humans will always be needed, at least a little bit. So I hope I’m one of those humans.”

tions of AI, he knows that AI still has a long way to go. “I don’t think it’ll ever get to a point where it’s flawless,” he said. “Humans will always need to be there to monitor it.” Since AI knowledge is based on human knowledge, Hall expects humans to play a significant role in its development and implementation. By embracing AI in coding, Hall is trying to secure his place in AI’s future. “Humans will always be needed, at least a little bit,” he said. “So I hope I’m one of those humans.”

Freshman

of my feelings,” Schulte said. “That’s not something AI has.”

As a freshman, Schulte is especially concerned with the rapidly dwindling job market for writers. She worries that AI development will develop dramatically before she can write. “By the time I’m old enough to pursue screenwriting or novel writing, AI will be ad-

Hall knows that AI can program, but he doesn’t expect

Sage Schulte wants to write her heart out but fears AI will take her heart out of writing before she gets the opportunity. Schulte enjoys journaling about her own experiences to process her thoughts and hopes to make a career out of creative writing in the future. For her, writing is a cathartic way to share her own

“To me, writing is an outlet for all of my feelings. That’s not something AI has.”

vanced enough that those careers will be way harder to get into,” Schulte said. She believes that although all arts jobs will be at risk because of AI-generated

ences. Schulte believes that generative AI threatens her sion and her job

cause it can write without that same kind of expression. “To me, writing is an outlet for all

art, writers will be hit the hardest. The speed and convenience of generative AI writing make it extremely effec tive, especially compared to hu man writers. But Schulte, despite her doubts, isn’t planning to give up on her writing dreams.

“Even if AI makes [being a writer] harder, I would still do it, and I would still try to make a career do ing it,” she said. “I just don’t know if I could be as suc cessful.”

and bad writing, but it’s not like math,” she said. While AI can help explain the

Despite her criticism and concern over AI writing, Schulte still acknowledges the helpfulness of AI in her daily life. She often uses AI to help explain math problems step-by-step and feels optimistic about scientific advancements made by AI. However, she draws the line at AI doing anything creative. “There is definitely good writing

Junior Indigo Morgenstern is on board with the future of AI and is ready for humanity to perform alongside it. She wants to go into science and is particularly excited about AI’s impact on research and development. While she has occasionally used generative AI like ChatGPT, she’s more excited about AI’s ability to break new ground in scientific fields. “AI has a great capacity to

Morgenstern is optimistic about AI making new developments in medical diagnoses and treatments. Her hope isn’t unfounded: AI has already begun predicting protein folding from amino acids, a problem human scientists have been stuck on for fifty years.

Morgenstern hopes to work with AI in the future, so she isn’t concerned about her own career prospects. However, she isn’t concerned about AI taking over other jobs, either. In fact, Morgenstern believes that the more work AI can take on, the better. “I think we should restructure our entire economy around technology rather than suppressing it,” she said. Morgenstern believes that as AI gets more efficient, society will need to change to accommodate it. She argues that instead of demanding more jobs, people should demand universal basic income and comprehensive unemployment support. “The problem is not the technology,” she said. “The problem is that the government isn’t providing for people who are unemployed.”

Despite her lofty hopes for the future, Morgenstern still doesn’t fully trust AI at present. Since AI platforms like ChatGPT rarely show their sources to users, Morgenstern doesn’t trust their results. She is hesitant to use AI as a search engine until she can ensure

Indigo Morgenstern

Leo Needleman

“The problem is not the technology. The problem is that the government isn’t providing for people who are unemployed.”

subject that I have a basic knowledge of, and then I can verify it,” she said. While Morgenstern is excited to learn more about AI, she still has doubts about its current iteration, particularly its logical process. “We know how humans work,” she said. “AI is unpredictable by comparison.”

Senior Leo Needleman presents a contradiction: he is both excited and apprehensive about the future of AI. While he intends to pursue engineering, he also writes as a hobby. For

him, AI is a double-edged sword. While it has huge potential to help engineers become more efficient, it also holds a knife to the throat of writers and artists. As someone who will have to face both sides, Needleman struggles to balance his feelings about AI’s rapid development.

Needleman’s hobbies include creative writing and playing music. Though both of these are at risk of being taken over by AI, he isn’t particularly concerned about the impact of AI on his own artistic experiences. “I don’t think I’d switch over to using AI for writing or music,” he said. “I get enjoyment from the act of doing it.” For Needleman, the joy of writing stories or performing music is the process, not the finished product. While AI can replicate art or music, it can’t replicate the creative process. Needleman doesn’t

completely dismiss AI from creativity, though; he sometimes uses generative AI writing to help prompt his imagination. “AI gives me ideas, and I take those ideas and build off of them,” Needleman said. Instead of using AI-generated text as is, he often uses AI to help brainstorm ideas, and does the actual writing himself. This way, he gets maximum enjoyment from writing, and doesn’t allow AI to take away his creative outlet.

The key to maintaining a positive relationship with AI, Needleman says, is to ensure that AI is a tool for

“AI gives me ideas, and I take those ideas and build off of them.”

humans, not a replacement for them. Although AI could make some engineering jobs obsolete, Needleman remains excited about AI testing of engineering projects. Because AI can run through thousands of scenarios in an instant, it can test how devices respond to complex environments with minimal resources. AI testing could help his future work become safer and more efficient, allowing him to spend more time actually designing. Needleman isn’t sure whether he’s optimistic or pessimistic about the future of AI, but he believes that either way, AI development is inevitable. As such, he feels that the best approach is to confront AI development head-on and learn about it as much as possible. “I don’t want to say ‘curb the development of AI,’ because it has legitimate benefits that could be realized,” Needleman said. “We need to learn to work with AI instead of being replaced by it.”

FEARFUL ANTICIPATION

NTICIPATION FOR STUDENT AID

By Hayden Miller & Sierra

Sun

FEARFUL ANTICIPATION FOR STUDENT AID

By Sierra Sun and Hayden Miller

Senior Ruth Godizano stares at their laptop screen in disbelief. e last time they checked their nancial aid portal was early January; now, it’s late April, and they nally received a noti cation — a correction must be made to their form in order to be processed. Frustrated, Godizano shuts their laptop screen. As a prospective rst-generation college student with three siblings, receiving nancial aid is crucial to their college decision process. With only a week remaining until Godizano’s dream college commitment deadline is up, they are at a crossroads: do they blindly commit, without knowing the potential loans to pay o , or anxiously wait it out, hoping to receive a satisfactory nancial aid package until the last second?

For many high school seniors, this year’s nancial aid process has been a major headache. e Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is an annual application that high school seniors complete to be eligible for government loans, grants, and school-based aid. With the redesigned 2024-25 FAFSA reducing the number of questions, the expectation was that the new form would be easier to complete. However, the new and simpli ed application faced countless missed

deadlines and lengthy processing times, causing many students not to receive their award letters until late April — just days before many decisions are due. As a result, many Lowell seniors, such as Godizano, have been harmed rather than helped by the new FAFSA application. In addition, rising seniors have grown worried a er witnessing the ine ciencies of the current FAFSA form. Although Lowell College Counselor Maria Aguirre describes navigating this year’s FAFSA as a “hot mess,” she holds out hope that the form will be xed in time for upcoming high school seniors.

In 2020, Congress passed the FAFSA Simpli cation Act to ease the process for all undergraduate students seeking nancial aid. is would be achieved by paring down the number of questions

from 108 to 36 and increasing the amount of income shielded from a formula used to determine aid eligibility — ensuring more students would receive the Pell Grant, a form of aid for undergraduates with exceptional nancial need. Reform to its four-decade-old system was also necessary, as the infrastructure underpinning the FAFSA had been deemed among the ten federal systems in most critical need of modernization by the Government Accountability O ce in 2019. e turbulent rollout of the FAFSA form began with miscommunications between Congress and the Department of Education, the agency in charge of carrying out the new form changes. Congress insisted that the new FAFSA form must be available by the 2023-2024 application cycle, but neglected to provide money to make it happen. According to Danielle Gabriel-Douglas, a national higher education news reporter from e Washington Post, the Department of Education promised a new operation to make it easier for everyone. However, the updated application process has been anything but easy. “Contractors have missed deadlines, and people who are in power aren’t always communicat-

ing with each other about problems that are arising,” she said. ese issues have prompted the delays in the FAFSA aid rollout. In a typical year, the FAFSA form would open in October and be completed by January; however, this year’s application didn’t open until late December, and the Department of Education planned to send data to colleges starting late January. at deadline wasn’t met either, according to Gabriel-Douglas.

us, only 30 percent of the high school class of 2024 has completed the FAFSA form, a 36 percent drop from the last academic year. At Lowell the completion rate was higher, with school counselor Daniela Alvarado estimating that less than 100 of Lowell’s approximately 660 seniors have yet to complete a nancial aid application as of May 2024.

ese delays directly impacted colleges’ ability to send nancial aid packages to admitted students on time. According to a May 2024 survey conducted by e Lowell of 155 upperclassmen, 70 percent of respondents reported that nancial aid is a major factor in their college decision. Additionally, 62 percent of the seniors in the survey reported that FAFSA delays had a moderate to signi cant impact on their college decisions. Lowell’s College Counselor Maria Aguirre, who has helped many students to submit their FAFSA, believes that the FAFSA delay has made the di cult college applications process even more challenging. “[ is year’s form] has caused a lot of stress and uncertainty, since students don’t know how much nancial aid they’re receiving from certain schools,” Aguirre said. For Godizano, not receiving

“I wouldn’t want to commit to a school without knowing how much aid I’ll receive,”

enough nancial aid would force them to reconsider attending their top choice school. “I wouldn’t want to commit to a school without knowing how much aid I’ll receive,” they said. “If I’m set on one school and can’t a ord to go, I would probably go to a backup school like City College.” Although the school they would like to attend extended their priority deadlines, Godizano still found it challenging to make a decision. “ ere’s not really a proper grace period when submitting your FAFSA versus when coming into your school,” they said.

Technical problems on the form compounded the already frustrating situation. Students with unique family structures and circumstances, like senior Fin Hunter-Kenney, received misleading information on how his unmarried parents could complete the form, leading to his delayed retrieval of student aid awards. “ e form said we were missing a signature, but the box to submit a signature was grayed out, so we couldn’t,” Hunter-Kenney said. Hunter-Kenney did not receive the aid packages until late April, and had been growing worried. “Since it took so long to complete, it pushed me right up against the deadline for accepting, which was stressful,” he said. e FAFSA website currently has 19 technical issues le unresolved out of 37 overall documented problems. According to Gabriel-Douglas, errors in student submissions caused by glitches meant many forms weren’t successfully completed until April. “ ere was a huge gap between the number of submissions and completions, larger than we’ve seen in past cycles,” she said. “In a normal cycle, students are able to make a correction [to these glitches] within one to three days. is time around, you couldn’t make corrections until midApril.”

Another drawback of the new FAFSA was its diminished consideration for students with siblings also attending college. “For people who have two or more students in college, there used to be a bit of a discount. at’s gone away,” Gabriel-Douglas said. Entering the college application process, Godizano was concerned about burdening their

The Lowell May 2024

parents with excessive nancial expenses when their younger siblings attend college. Now that the FAFSA has been redesigned to provide signi cantly less aid to students who will be in Godizano’s position, they are worried for the future.

“It’s really important that I’m able to get FAFSA because my parents are trying to allocate money evenly through everyone’s education,” they said.

“Without FAFSA, it’ll be hard for me to not only provide an example for them but also to just get through college without being in a lot of debt.”

As many Lowell seniors complete the FAFSA independently, they face additional pressure on top of the form’s ine ciencies. e Lowell’s survey found that 46 percent of seniors navigated the nancial aid process on their own, with many completing the portions usually in- tended

for parents to ll out. Aguirre’s observations con rm this occurrence. “Parents may be busy or not be tech-savvy, so students may pretend to be them and submit their FAFSA,” Aguirre said. Godizano, who is handling the process alone, believes the lack of customer service or support from FAFSA exacerbated the problems they encountered. Godizano found the process of making a correction especially stressful given the deadlines to commit to schools. “It’s really hard to know how FAFSA will

respond to a certain correction or mistake or even a circumstance, and the helpline takes super long, making it really stressful,” they said.

A er observing the difculties seniors face during this nancial aid cycle, underclassman students like sophomore Reggie Fong feel anxious about beginning their college application process. “Not only do I have to worry about getting into colleges, I have to also worry about the nancial part now, and if I can even go to these colleges,” Fong said. Fong has learned to understand the gravity of nancial aid by seeing his older siblings and parents struggle to navigate the new FAFSA form. Similar to Godizano, he fears the nancial burden on his parents when he and his siblings attend college simultaneously. “I think it’s just a stressful time in general, so the nancial part adds to the already complicated process

“Not only do I have to worry about getting into colleges, I have to also worry about the financial part now, and if I can even go to these colleges,”

of getting into college,” he said. In the case of problems arising in the next cycle, Gabriel-Douglas advises that rising seniors be patient and mindful when submitting the form. “Any error that you come across, be quick to report it,” she said.

For some seniors, the new FAFSA wasn’t all that challenging. In contrast to other seniors, senior Audrey Chiang is not heavily reliant on nancial aid in her college-decision process. Chiang, who was assisted by her dad, lled out the application in less than a day. Having seen her older brother navigate the previous form, she views the simpli ed version as an improvement. “ is year was a lot easier since it was shorter than it was last year,” she said, recalling the frustration her dad faced when assisting her brother with the previous form. To her bene t, the new form allowed for a quick turnaround of college award letters. “I didn’t really experience delays, everything was pretty smooth. My nancial aid package actually came back all in the span of like a month,” Chiang said.

Still, Hunter-Kenney and Godizano hope that improvements to the new system are enacted to reduce the stress for future applicants. Godizano believes that providing more support is essential to set future applicants up for success. “I know that I’m not the only one that has questions, there’s thousands of students,” Godizano said.

“Being able to talk to an actual person from FAFSA, rather than a robot that kinda prevents you from getting helpful advice, [would improve the] experience.”

Hunter-Kenney hopes that technical issues will be addressed so others don’t experience the errors he faced. “ ey

need to make the form a bit easier for di erent family statuses, and x bugs so we’re able to sign where we need to,” he said.

Despite this year’s challenges, Aguirre and Gabriel-Douglas remain optimistic about the new FAFSA form in the long run. According to Aguirre, the new form will ensure that students receive all the aid they qualify for. “[ e new system] doesn’t leave a lot of room for error, so the student’s nancial aid would be [completed] correctly,” Aguirre said.

“I’m hopeful. I see the idea behind it, the purpose of making the change, and I’m hopeful that next year will be better.”

By the time the next FAFSA cycle opens up on October 1, 2024, Gabriel-Douglas believes more attention will be given to the form to prevent the same problems from occurring once again. “I think the Department [of Education] has learned a lot,” she said. “One of the silver linings of this is that Congress is paying more attention to how this is unfolding, and I hope that means that they’ll be quick to act when the Department of Education brings changes to them.”

is year’s new FAFSA has proved stressful, complicated, and frus-

trating due to endless delays and dozens of technical problems. Fortunately, a er a long game of waiting, most seniors have been able to receive their colleges’ nancial aid letters. ose who endured a morass of issues due to the form, like Godizano, believe that rising seniors will be well-informed to steer a smoother nancial aid retrieval process, but they suggest approaching it proactively. “De nitely start as early as you can, go to the college center with any questions, and re-read each instruction,” they said. “Now that there is more information about [FAFSA], by the time the new seniors start the process, a lot of people should understand the form better.”

Retro Reverie

As the school year nally comes to a close, students are looking forward to the next year but also wondering.....where did all the time go? In an exploration of the past, we asked our photographers to capture what nostalgia looks like to them.

PHOTOS

BY

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST

BY THOMAS HARRISON

Walking out of the theater after e End of Evangelion, my friends and I break into feverish discussion. A er spending months encouraging me to watch it, they can’t wait to hear my thoughts on the lm they say changed their lives. ey walk me through its themes about existentialism and vulnerability, talking freely about the ways they’ve applied them to their own experiences, and I see a side of them I’ve never seen before. Because of their willingness to be earnest, they had developed a deeper understanding of both the art they consumed and themselves as people. A er holding back so much in my own discussions about art, watching them be so open on the impact this lm has had on them is inspiring to me. If it was this effortless for us to talk about art like this now, why couldn’t it be this e ortless for me all the time?

ere have been so many times where an artwork of any medium invoked such strong emotion in me that all I wanted to do was share the way it made me feel with the world, but I couldn’t. Communicating that impact meant being vulnerable, and the thought of people judging me for putting that part of myself on display made me uncomfortable. Because I saw others smother their discussions of art in internet humor and irony, I had conditioned myself into doing the same. Instead of allowing myself to discuss how meaningful an artwork was to me, I would make a dumb joke about it instead, reducing that meaning to a throwaway quip. It was easier for me to treat an artwork as a joke than to go through the discomfort of engaging with it earnestly, even if that le me feeling unful lled.

I began to treat art this way during the pandemic, when internet inuence dominated my speech patterns. e cultural holds of apps like TikTok were at their most rampant, and most of the time I saw my peers talk about art, their language was dominated by internet buzzwords and generalized views that social media had pushed onto them. Arbitrary and nonsensical terms like “male manipulator music,” and “weirdcore,” were used to catego-

rize art for niche and o en imaginary demographics. Many of these were meant as jokes, of course, but soon they were used so much that it felt like works of art weren’t allowed to stand on their own anymore. Everything had to be attached to an ironic internet category. I saw friends embarrassed to share the things they found meaningful, because they feared that it would make others sort them into a demographic they didn’t want to be in. A sheepish “It’s bad, but I like it,” became a staple in my discussions about art. When I shared my views on an artwork, I talked about it as a piece of internet culture rst, and a work of art second.

Because I saw art as being so interlinked with this culture of irony, it became hard to speak about it earnestly. It was much easier to make a joke about an artwork than to make myself vulnerable

“When I shared my views on an artwork, I talked about it as a piece of internet culture first, and a work of art second.”

by sharing what it meant to me. When everyone else was seemingly nonchalant about their connections with art, sharing my own serious analysis made me feel like I was drawing unwanted attention to myself. I worried that I’d be seen as corny, or overly emotional, for reading too deeply into something I didn’t need to. Eventually, this worry began to spread into other aspects of my life. ere were times where I desperately wanted to talk about things that were important to me, whether art related or not, but I was too scared of being judged to say anything. Soon, I felt the need to feign indi erence in everything I said, and cover even serious topics with humor for my words to be palatable.

I didn’t begin to see an issue with this nonchalant attitude towards art until I heard artists speaking about the impact it had on them. Up to this point, I had seen these internet-in u-

enced behaviors as people having fun and engaging with art in their own way. However, many artists saw them as a refusal to engage with their art in the rst place. I read big artists post their frustrations over taking the risk of sharing their art, and being vulnerable in front of a crowd of people, only to get internet jokes thrown back at them. I began to realize that by drenching all my discussions of art in layers of irony and internet humor, I had been treating art less as an extension of the artist, and more as a commodity to be consumed.

Seeing e End of Evangelion was the turning point for me. Because of the vulnerability my friends had expressed, I felt driven to tell them how I was impacted by the movie we had just seen. I told them how much I related to the protagonist’s struggles with individuality, and how I saw my own ideologies re ected in the realizations he made. For the rst time in a while, I could just say out loud, “this is my interpretation of what we just watched. is is what this movie means to me.” Speaking about this was e ortless; It didn’t feel like I was pushing past some conversational barrier I had set for myself, it just felt like I was talking about a movie with my friends. When I stopped hiding my words behind irony, and spoke openly about the impact this work had on me, I was able to form a stronger connection not just with the artwork, but with myself and the friends I discussed it with as well. In allowing myself to be earnest, I could nally engage fully with the art I enjoyed, and I wondered how many similar experiences I had robbed myself because of my avoidance of that earnestness.

It will always be a risk to be vulnerable about something that means something to me. It’s always going to be uncomfortable to share a piece of myself with someone else, even if that piece revolves around another person’s art. However, that openness is essential if I want to fully engage with the art I’m consuming. I know now that I can’t keep hiding my words behind irony in an attempt to avoid judgment. Instead, I need to be open, whether it’s towards art or towards other aspects of my life.

EMERGENCY INTERCOM

BY BROOKE LAUR

There is no emergency, but “micro-influencers” Enya Umanzor and Drew Phillips instantly demand your attention with their comedy podcast (also available to watch in video format on Youtube) called Emergency Intercom. Both Drew and Enya are considered influencers, but not necessarily the kind you’d roll your eyes at (Josh Richards/Alix Earle). In my opinion, Drew and Enya are actually cool (they have patchwork tattoos, thrift, and have good music taste).

On each weekly episode of Emergency Intercom, they have an hour-long discussion featuring current pop culture, their personal lives and friends, and most importantly, all the inside jokes and absurd slang they can gather. To me, Emergency Intercom is a form of media like an oasis in a desert full of stale jokes and entertainment. I find Drew Phillips and Enya Umanzor to have the same kind of humor as my own, something I seldom see in the media I consume, which draws me in and cultivates a unique appreciation for the podcast. Oftentimes, when the jokes I

Emergency Intercom is a form of media like an oasis in a desert full of stale jokes and entertainment.

same humor as mine allows for a bit of a refuge. When watching Emergency Intercom, I often think about how I’d fit right in and be able to banter back and forth with Drew and Enya perfectly. We would come up with the funniest inside jokes and make the most entertaining content. We would joke around and I would make my usual bizarre comments, yet somehow I know Drew and Enya would understand me. I think that’s where the appeal of Emergency Intercom lies: it’s a safe haven for people with an unusual sense of humor.

Not only this, but Enya and Drew have maintained a genuine friendship of more than ten years that only adds to the podcast’s entertaining nature. Their connection and chemistry definitely gets its chance to shine each episode with its glimmer of genuinity and creates smoother, natural, and less afraid topics of discussion for viewers to listen to. It is clear their chemistry is completely unmatched and their rapport and witticisms only build off one another, making for an even more entertaining podcast experience. Although Emergency Ins humor doesn’t always land with general audiences, it’s what keeps me hanging onto every word.

Jokingly, Enya and Drew once told their seat partner on an airplane that their podcast focuses on “vibe terrorism.” Strangely, they were not wrong. Drew and Enya’s conversations often consist of two “micro-celebrities” going back and forth in conversation filled with irony and brain rot. It’s almost like an art form. Instead of hearing Enya’s scratchy voice or the fact that Drew hasn’t read a book since elementary school, I see two geniuses sitting side by side, going back and forth in the art of “bitology.” These “bits” (i.e fake scenarios/exclamations one makes up for comedic purposes) range from frequently prank calling the same store in LA to warn them about mustard gas to Drew and Enya trying to troll the audience into believing they are both cousins and dating. Although their humor seems strange, and perhaps even annoying, to the right viewers each hour-long episode is like an ice-cold cup of glacier water during the middle of a thirsty night.

As a result, Emergency Intercom has gained somewhat of a cult following, of which I am a proud member. We are unusually dedicated. We sport merchandise, loyally watch videos, and make Drew and Enya’s conversations more a part of our personality than necessary. Ultimately, the sense of comfort and reassurance that Emergency Intercom provides me is what keeps me tuning in every Friday. When I watch the show, I watch myself. I watch my friends. I watch us interact. I see myself on screen through their humor, and it provides me with both a sense of delight and a true sense of being seen in media.

THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT

BY TATUM HIMELSTEIN

Lately, Taylor Swift’s career has been defined by one overarching theme: abundance. From her constant stream of album releases — five new records and four rerecorded ones since 2019 — to her 152-show, threeand-a-half hour long Eras Tour, Swift is turning out more content than ever. Yet, despite my love for much of her work, I’ve begun to wonder, When does abundance veer into excess? With her most

recent album release, or, more accurately, double album release, The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology, that question permeates. The 31-song marathon explores Swift’s past relationships while weaving themes of depression, addiction, and parenthood throughout. However, although the first 16 songs, released simply as The Tortured Poets Department, shed light on Swift’s personal life, they fall short of delivering the sonic diversity or lyrical depth found in her previous works.

In contrast to albums like folklore and evermore, much of the writing on The Tortured Poets Department feels unnecessarily verbose, without adding much substance. Swift flaunts her vast vocabulary, but it often clouds the true

meaning of her words: “sanctimoniously performing soliloquies I’ll never see,” she sings on “But Daddy I Love Him.” At other points, her lyrics are either imprecise (“At dinner you take my ring off my middle finger and put it on the one people put wedding rings on”) or incoherent (“I was a functioning alcoholic till nobody noticed my new aesthetic”). With these lines, Swift forgoes the nuance I so heavily associate with her songwriting. My favorite lyrics are the simplest: “And I’m just getting color back into my face / I’m just mad as hell cause I loved this place,” she sings on “So Long, London.” The instrumental on the track builds until the sadness in her voice shifts to anger, allowing the listener to become fully absorbed in her emotions. While her lyricism flourishes in these raw and vulnerable lyrics, the album is more often encapsulated in the overwrought lyricism that refuses to let the listener into Swift’s world. As the album goes on, Swift’s syntax sounds unrefined, too. Her repetition feels pulled straight from a thesaurus in lines like “Camera flashes, welcome bashes / get the matches, toss the ashes,” throwing off her natural cadence. Her metaphors feel belabored as well, specifically her comparisons of love to violence and drugs.

and blue and fights and tunnels / Handcuffed to the spell I was under,” Swift sings on “Fresh Out the Slammer,” only to follow up with “You can beat the heat / If you beat the charges too” in the very next song. Her repetition contributes to a sense of stagnation within the album, creating little differentiation between each song.

The Tortured Poets Department suffers from a uniformity in its production as well. The two producers on the album, Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner, take their respective songs in entirely different directions. I like Dessner’s production; he softens Swift, leaving her voice tender and organic. In contrast, the songs Antonoff produced are shrouded in drums and synths. While this style enhances Swift’s voice on tracks like “Guilty as Sin?,” it also creates a sort of sonic similarity across the album, preventing any one track from standing out on its own.

There is no need for 31 songs when Swift can convey so much in one well-written track, or simply one well-written lyric.

“Gray

Ironically, this album’s greatest shortcoming seems to be its length. Between the original record and The Anthology, there are a number of great songs (“Fortnight,” “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus,” “The Prophecy”), but they get lost among the other tracks. There is no need for 31 songs when Swift can convey so much in one well-written track, or simply one well-written lyric. The best moments on The Tortured Poets Department would have been even more rewarding if Swift had cut the excess, honing in on the elegant and poignant writing she has proven herself capable of.

THE LOL-LIB

BY ALISA KOZMIN

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

BY ISADORE DIAMOND

Dear The Lowell,

It’s been a while since you’ve heard from me. Today marks the two-year anniversary of my “departure” from The Lowell. I still can’t believe I was kicked out of the publication for working too hard as a reporter! I used to work every day just to produce the highest-quality writing human eyes have ever seen. Naturally, in my absence, the last two years of articles and magazines have been worse than ever before.

What makes a good publication? Some would say the writing, others would say sourcing, investigation, or even the newspaper’s images and style. Your publication has none of these qualities.

Your writing is abhorrent. Every sentence I read makes me gag in repulsion. Every other paragraph has a glaringly obvious typo left unedited by your lazy editors. Who writes these things? All the “facts” you present seem to be copied straight from ChatGPT or plagiarized from superior publications like the Lincoln Log. Suspiciously, your sources are all from upperclassmen who happen to be friends with the writers or “a student under a pseudonym.” At least get real sources if you’re trying to make a credible publication. Your articles are also very clearly Taylor Swift-biased and written by snowflake liberals, yet you still pumped out the most ignorant opinion piece about pronouns. What you need are some skilled journalists with a good work ethic running things — like me!

As a former The Lowell writer, I have had the pleasure of returning to the writer’s room to visit. And let me just say, calling the staff members lazy would be an understatement. During my last visit, only a few months ago, I walked in to find not a soul typing away at a computer but instead a group of teens listening to a guy with long hair talking about trains. At the back of the classroom, I stumbled upon six photographers playing games on their phones. Why do you need six photographers? Who’s in charge of these buffoons on the staff? Somehow, though, you still manage to get some sort of writing out for your audience of dozens.

Now, onto your magazines — I thought the writing was bad, but talk about low quality, am I right? They’re made of toilet paper and compost! In fact, I use the magazines as toilet paper just after reading them. Every magazine page is see-through, exposing even more of the horrible writing on every page. The only real good part of the magazine is the poorly designed crossword that you can do in your classes instead of learning. Luckily, your magazines only have the displeasure of reaching audiences every other month.

It’s not just the writing that makes The Lowell so bad. For a publication with a website, 99 percent of your articles end up as a 300-word Instagram post that gets a few hundred likes out of your thousands of followers. And on your poorly designed website, even if you’re lucky enough to get to an illustration through the mountains of text, every illustration or graphic is clearly AI-generated. The accompanying photography looks like it was taken by an 80-year-old man with Parkinsons taking pictures on an iPhone 4. I do not recommend reading anything from The Lowell if you are prone to eye damage.

You do have one last chance of redeeming yourself, though. If you hire me back as the new Editor-in-Chief, I will make The Lowell great again.

Written with love, A Student Under a Pseudonym

Crossword

Use TheLowell.org and @TheLowell on Instagram for help with the answers! The

Down

2. Such as pages 20-21

3. A collection of the work by 5-down

4. Laughable writing

5. Do you get the picture? These people do

6. One of three 12-Down

7. We don’t charge our reporters to write, but with these types of articles, they give us their two cents

9. The Lowell’s mascot 12. The Head Honchos 14. Revisors

Across

1. One of three 12-Down (this one has a special distinction)

3. Like @TheLowell, type of writing

6. This type of story is balling out

8. This word is written across the cover of our last magazine

10. Type of story about For All the Dogs, The Marvels, Oppenheimer, etc.

11. Section of The Lowell’s website for the youngest of us all 13. Everything but the text 15. On the flip side

16. One of three 12-Down 17. We draw on their talents every mag

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