At last month’s Bay Area Mathematics Olympiad, Harker won second place team awards at the BAMO-8 and BAMO-12 levels for middle and high school students, respectively. Team awards are determined by comparing the sums of the top three scores from each team. Harker also took second place in the BAMO-12 participation awards, which are awarded to schools with the most students who scored at least seven points.
Harker students performed very well individually. In BAMO-8, eighth grader Lily Shi scored 30 out of a possible 35 points and eighth graders Caden Ruan, Kallie Wang and seventh grader Axel Szolusha each received an honorable mention for scoring between 27 to 29 points. At the BAMO-12 level, ninth grader Aarush Vailaya scored a perfect 35 points, while junior Sally Zhu scored 32. Catherine Li, Ethan Liu and Rohan Ramkumar received honorable mentions for scoring 25 to 31 points.
Each BAMO consists of five essay questions that must be solved within a four-hour time limit.
This story was submitted by Harker speech and debate chair Jenny Achten.
Last weekend, senior Anshul Reddy won the prestigious National Debate Coaches Association Championship, one of the big three speech and debate championships attended by teams from across the United States. Reddy had a perfect record in preliminary rounds and lost just one ballot in elimination rounds. The national topic was “Resolved: The appropriation of outer space by private entities is unjust.” Senior Deven Shah, junior Muzzi Khan and sophomore Kabir Buch also qualified for Lincoln-Douglas elimination rounds. Junior Carol Wininger and sophomores Max Xing, Sasha Masson and Adrian Liu represented Harker in public forum debate elimination rounds, debating the desirability of organic agriculture.
Late last month, this year’s Near-Mitra scholars held virtual salons, which consisted of a presentation summarizing each scholar’s research followed by a Q&A session. Each of the student scholars was mentored by faculty members who received grants from the Chen Lin Family Endowment. The salons were well-attended, averaging 35 people for each talk and 250 overall.
Salons were held on three separate days, starting on March 22 with Caden Lin’s presentation on the International Monetary Fund’s role in destabilizing Sierra Leone’s economy, which eventually led to civil war. Lin, mentored by speech and debate chair Jenny Achten and upper school librarian Meredith Cranston, began with Sierra Leone’s independence from Britain in 1961. When the country’s initial economic strength had begun to wane, the IMF offered aid, initially with promising results. However, Lin pointed out, IMF also devalued Sierra Leone’s currency and made its exports cheaper, leading to economic disaster over the next two decades.
Three more salons were held on March 24, the first of which featured Michelle Liu, who analyzed American painter Mary Cassatt’s use of techniques inspired by Japanese woodblock prints, a style known as ukiyo-e. Liu, whose mentors were Cranston and upper school history teacher Donna Gilbert, noted Cassatt’s affinity for mother-and-child themes, pointing out the similarities of her renderings of children and those of Japanese woodblock artist Kitagawa Utamaro. Liu also highlighted Cassatt’s use of domestic scenes, which reflected prevailing viewpoints on gender in the late 19th century.
Senior Dawson Chen, mentored by Cranston and upper school history teacher Katy Rees, analyzed the films of documentarian Pare Lorentz and their impact on documentary filmmaking. Famously known as “FDR’s filmmaker,” Lorentz made several films to promote then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Chen demonstrated how in works such as “The Plow that Broke the Plains,” Lorentz documented the over-farming that eventually led to the Dust Bowl, powerfully advocating for the restoration of the land.
Under the mentorship of upper school history teacher Chris Gatto and library director Lauri Vaughan, Riyaa Randhawa’s presentation covered the role teachers played in establishing the public health system during the American occupation of the Philippines. Filipino students, Randhawa explained, had a unique relationship to the teachers in the American schools they were required to attend, which led to greater knowledge of public health measures. Nevertheless, schools often enforced racial hierarchies by teaching students that their culture and customs were inferior, and education was designed to only qualify them for low-level jobs.
The final group of salons took place on March 28, beginning with Nicole Tian’s presentation on the Brandeis Brief’s influence on law practice and lawmaking in the progressive era, and how it furthered the idea that legal decisions should consider their societal impact. Tian also connected the brief to widely held beliefs about women at the time, particularly that women were the virtuous and moral center of the American family, while men provided economic stability. Lawyer Louis Brandeis successfully argued in Muller v. Oregon that 10-hour workdays for laundry women threatened the nation’s moral character. Tian conducted her research with the mentorship of upper school history teacher Carol Green and upper school librarian Amy Pelman.
Alina Yuan, mentored by Vaughan and upper school English teacher Beth Wahl, covered the work of Japanese author Osamu Dazai, whose work was a cornerstone of the buraiha (“decadent school”) literary movement that became popular in post-World War II Japan. Following the shock and horror of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the subsequent societal transformation that took place due to heavy American influence, Dazai depicted the struggle of adjusting to post-war Japanese society Dazai also became admired for his decadent lifestyle, another sign of shifting cultural attitudes.
Finally, William Zhao, whose mentors were Pelman and upper school history teacher Byron Stevens, compared and contrasted the development of liberal democracies in Spain and Portugal in the 20th century. The fall of Spain’s authoritarian Francoist regime and the subsequent transition to democracy, Zhao said, was the result of a top-down process by which opposition and reformist forces in the government dismantled the Francoist political infrastructure. Portugal, by contrast, experienced a coup d’etat by a military fed up with prime minister Antonio Salazar’s insistence on maintaining colonial operations in several African nations.
Junior Sally Zhu was recently published in the Concord Review, an academic journal featuring the historical research of high school students. Zhu’s paper surveys China’s hukou system, a household registration system set up in 1958, and the effects it has had on the country’s economy and citizens in the more than 60 years since it was founded. “I learned about the hukou system from my parents, who grew up in China,” Zhu said. “My mother came from an urban part of China, while my father came from a rural hukou, and they lived drastically differently, when it came to food, income, education and more.”
Zhu spent last summer and the fall working on the paper and conducted research using resources she had access to in her history classes and while doing previous research projects with Harker librarians. “I want to thank my history teachers and librarians for all I’ve learned from them when it comes to historical research and writing, [which] led me to submit my essay!” she said.
Last week, 21 students were recognized in the National Center for Women & Information Technology’s (NCWIT) 2022 Award for Aspirations in Computing. This award recognizes “women, genderqueer or non-binary students for their computing-related achievements and interests, and encourages them to pursue their passions,” according to the NCWIT website. Students (all of them in grades 9-12) enter by submitting an application containing essay and multiple-choice questions.
Senior Alice Feng and juniors Ashley Hu, Ella Lan, Nidhya Shivakumar, Deeya Viradia, Sabrina Zhu and Sally Zhu all won National Honorable Mentions – the second-highest tier of award – and were all regional Affiliate Winners. Senior Alina Yuan was named an Affiliate Winner. Amiya Chokhawala, Amrita Pasupathy and Ariya Reddy, all grade 11; Ella Yee, grade 10; and ninth graders Melody Yin and Sophia Zhu each won an Affiliate Honorable Mention. Junior Michelle Jin, sophomores Harshini Chaturvedula, Claire Luo and Saloni Shah, and ninth graders Ainslie Chen, Chiling Han and Kashish Priyam were named Affiliate Rising Stars.
Harker students participated in two math competitions last month, with commendable results in both. On Feb. 19, at the Harvard-MIT Math Tournament, the Harker team of senior Alex Hu, junior Sally Zhu, 10th graders Olivia Xu and William Zhang, and ninth grader Jonny Xue, placed 29th out of 91 teams, their best performance in the competition since Harker began participating in 2016. In the Carnegie-Mellon Informatics and Mathematics Competition, held virtually on Feb. 27, the team of Hu, Zhu and juniors Stephen Xia and Anthony Tong placed seventh in the Theoretical Computer Science portion.
Last week, junior Aneesha Asthana was on a panel of speakers as part of a parallel event to the United Nations’ 66th Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). The virtual event was hosted by Rose Academies, an organization that provides health care education to people in rural Uganda. Asthana, who is the global youth ambassador for Rose Academies, spoke on the experience of being a trans non-binary person and how it shaped her view of the importance of access to health care.
“My experience … was not only about the more well-known processes of coming out but it also sparked a years-long search for vital information about my health and my identity,” Asthana said. Her findings indicated that misconceptions of the LGBTQ+ community were still widespread, even in the supposedly forward-thinking Silicon Valley. She added that living in a wealthier part of the world granted her enormous privilege, noting that she has much greater access to important information about her own health than rural Ugandans. Asthana also delved into the importance of health education for Ugandan women, which makes up a large part of Rose Academies’ work.
Harker student publications have won four Crown Awards from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association for their work during the 2020-21 school year. Harker received two Gold Crowns – one each for the student news website Harker Aquila and the Talon yearbook – and a Silver Crown each for the Winged Post newspaper and the student literary magazine HELM. The CSPA Crown Awards are given to digital and print publications that demonstrate overall excellence, based on evaluations of their design, photography, coverage and writing. In all, 817 publications were evaluated.
Last month, Harker won the overall sweepstakes award at a speech and debate tournament held at the University of California, Berkeley. The team is particularly proud of this award, as it reflects the combined record of all of the over 100 upper and middle School students who participated. Every good ranking or win added to the total, which reflected the students’ effort toward achieving the same goal. This tournament is the largest invitational in the country, and winning the sweepstakes is a major goal for the team. Teams at both campuses enjoyed ice cream socials to celebrate. “The coaches are very proud of how resilient the students have been during online events,” said Jenny Achten, speech and debate department chair. “We look forward to getting back to traveling in person to tournaments soon.”
The 2021-22 Harker DECA officer team was awarded first place in DECA’s Lead4Change Challenge. Lead4Change is an organization that promotes student leadership and teaches important skills such as communication, problem-solving, collaboration and critical thinking through lessons and challenges. Specifically, the Lead4Change Challenge asked participants to enter a submission where each team solved a problem or promoted a cause. These included a detailed action plan, an elevator pitch, reflections, graphical representations of the project process and much more. The $2,000 grant received from this award will be donated to a chosen charity. The team is made up of co-CEOs Gigi Chan and Clarice Wang, both grade 12; VP of operations Arin Jain, grade 11; VP of finance Trisha Variyar, grade 11; VP of public relations Catherine He, grade 12; VP of competitions Anika Muddu, grade 11; director of membership Chloe Lee, grade 10; director of community engagement Indigo Lee, grade 11; director of technology: Shreeya Merchia, grade 10; director of communications: Claire Luo, grade 10; director of roleplays Cynthia Wang, grade 10; and director of written events Kaitlyn Wang, grade 10
Chapter advisor Juston Glass said, “I’m super proud of this year’s officer team for their continual efforts to lead and inspire others for both change and making the world a better place. We are especially excited for the Lead4Change program and all that it does to teach and guide our students in improving their communities one day at a time.”