The Harker journalism department received a special visit in early December from Nick Ferentinos, former journalism advisor at Homestead High School, whose student newspaper, “The Epitaph,” was among the first school newspapers to be censored under the Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier Supreme Court ruling of 1988. The ruling limited the speech of student newspapers that were not designated as forums for student expression.
Ferentinos recounted that mere hours after the ruling was handed down, the principal at Homestead demanded the withholding of an “Epitaph” story about a student at the school who had been diagnosed HIV-positive. Because the paper was school-sponsored, the staff at first felt compelled to comply with the principal’s request. However, California Education Code 48907 acted as a counter to the Hazelwood ruling, protecting student speech and allowing the story to run.
“What was really heartwarming about Ferentinos’ narrative was that he really emphasized how the publication staff stuck together to get through the ordeal, and the entire case was an issue of the publication’s integrity and not just that of the student’s,” said “Winged Post” staffer Juhi Gupta, grade 11.
“They stood by the accuracy and importance of their story and the integrity of the author. I think our whole class really appreciated the reminder that we have rights, as Mr. Ferentinos said, but also a responsibility to ‘be stubborn,’ said junior Apoorva Rangan, who also works on the “Winged Post.”
For Gupta, Ferentino’s story provided a valuable lesson about complacency and vigilance among young journalists: “I learned from his experience that student journalists should never get too comfortable and assume that backlash from administration will never happen, because as shown by the Homestead case, it could be provoked by anything.”
“I think bringing in these individuals who have had these life experiences that we may not have had reminds us that journalism isn’t really taught by books as much as it’s taught by people,” Rangan added.
In late November, Kevin Zhang, grade 11, was notified by ACT Inc. that he had achieved the highest possible composite score of 36 on the ACT college admission and placement exam. According to ACT, this score is reached by less than a tenth of a percent of the students who take the test each year. Of the 1.8 million students who took the test last year, only 1,162 scored 36. Congratulations to Zhang on this accomplishment!
The Siemens Foundation announced earlier today that grade 11 students Andrew Jin and Steven Wang have won a $40,000 team scholarship in this year’s Siemens Competition, making them the first Harker students to win a scholarship at the national finals since Harker students began entering the competition during the 2005-06 school year. The prize will be split evenly between the two students.
Another student from California, Eric Chen of San Diego, was this year’s individual grand prize winner of a $100,000 scholarship.
Congratulations to all!
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Andrew Jin and Steven Wang, both grade 11, won the team portion of the regional finals of this year’s Siemens Competition, held at the California Institute of Technology last weekend, netting them a shared scholarship of $6,000. They are now headed to the national finals, held Dec. 6-10 in Washington, D.C., where they will compete for as much as $100,000 in scholarships.
This marks Harker’s first appearance in the national finals since Harker students began entering the competition in 2005. Jin and Wang were thankful to their teachers – Anita Chetty, Gary Blickenstaff, Michael Pistacchi, Mala Raghavan and Chris Spenner – for their guidance and feedback on their project, which explored the use of computer modeling and biological experiments to more quickly find anti-cancer drug treatments.
“During the days before the competition, we made a ton of changes based on your feedback, and we were able to improve the presentation significantly,” Jin said in an email. “We couldn’t have made it this far without all your help!”
In November, Harker students participated and ranked in numerous math competitions, both individually and as teams.
On Nov. 7, Harker tied for second place nationwide with a score of 78 in the National Assessment Team Scramble, a 100-problem, 30-minute team contest. Students collaborated after school on the questions, which covered a broad range of math topics.
In addition, Harker continued to do well in Interstellar, an online math contest endorsed by the Math Association of America and run by American Math Competitions. The contest, implemented this year, differs from traditional math tests in its online, round-robin format.
“Interstellar isn’t all that different from other contests, but I’ve made typos when putting in my answer, so you do have to be more careful,” said Patrick Lin, grade 11. “We’ve consistently been getting top finishes each week, so we should hopefully go pretty far in the contest.”
Harker defeated Morgantown High School, Grand Blanc High School and BASIS Tucson North to reach the octofinals in their division. The team is currently ranked second nationwide.
In addition, the first round of the Mandelbrot competition, a five-round individual contest, was held Nov. 4. Students chose between the regional test and the more difficult national test.
In national rankings, Richard Yi, grade 10, and seniors Vikram Sundar and Varun Mohan tied for first place with perfect scores of 14. Junior Ashwath Thirumalai was close behind with a score of 12. In regional rankings, Nitya Mani, grade 11, earned a perfect score, and sophomore Jessica Zhu scored 11. Harker is ranked seventh nationwide based on the scores from the first round.
Meanwhile, 10 students participated in the Santa Clara University High School Mathematics Competition on Nov. 16. The results of the contest have not yet been released.
Spring break will be extra special for the students of the Harker upper school orchestra, who will be traveling to Chicago to perform at the Chicago International Music Festival. The festival will take place April 8 at the Chicago Symphony Center. “We auditioned for this festival last spring and were thrilled to be accepted,” said Chris Florio, upper school music teacher.
In addition to being invited to perform, the orchestra also was honored with the opportunity to premiere a composition commissioned for the festival. The orchestra is working with composer Jeremy Van Buskirk of the Boston Composers’ Coalition on the piece, which will be heard by an international audience for the first time at the festival, as performed by Harker students. Florio spoke to Van Buskirk to exchange information about the piece. “My interaction with Jeremy was a lot of fun. He was very curious about Harker and wanted to learn a lot about the school in general, in addition to our orchestra,” Florio said. “He opened our meeting by telling me how impressed he was with our orchestra and excited to work with them. He had done quite a bit of investigating on YouTube to view our past performances. On describing his upcoming work for us, he said ‘it would not be (Pierre) Boulez, but it would not be (Aaron) Copland either; it will most likely be somewhere in between.’ What a wonderful experience for our orchestra to be involved in the creative process of a large new work from beginning to premiere!”
Expect more news on this tremendous opportunity in the coming months!
After a great season and two tough playoff rounds, the girls varsity volleyball team is done for the season. Please congratulate the team and coaches on an outstanding season! The team almost pushed third-ranked Menlo to a fifth game in a 21-25, 25-23, 14-25, 22-25 loss in the CCS semifinals in late November at Notre Dame-Belmont. “A special note of appreciation goes to our seniors Divya Kalidindi, Mercedes Chien, Renu Singh and Christina Wong for their outstanding play and dedication,” said Dan Molin, athletic director.
“I was most proud of the competitive fire that our girls showed to make it a match!” said Theresa “Smitty” Smith, head coach. “It’s always hard to see the season end, and it’s even harder to watch our seniors play their last high school match. However, on the positive side, we reload for next year as the majority of our team will return for yet another run at a CCS championship!”
In a CCS quarterfinal match, the Harker varsity girls volleyball team defeated Castilleja in four sets, catapulting the Eagles into the semifinals! In front of a raucous home crowd at Blackford, the Eagles rallied after dropping a tense first set to win the next three in a row. After the game, coach Theresa Smith commended her team, attributing the win to “the serve of [sophomore] Shannon Richardson, the defense of [senior] Mercedes Chien, the smart setting of [sophomore] Selin Ozcelik, and the timely hitting of [unior] Shreya Dixit, [senior] Divya Kalidindi and [sophomore] Jackie Chen.”
Kalidindi led the team with 18 kills in the game, followed by Dixit, whose 12 kills gave her more than 500 in her career, a fantastic accomplishment. Ozcelik led the team in assists with 45, and Chien led the team in digs with 25. Harker will face off against Menlo on Wed., Nov. 20 at 7:30 p.m. at Notre Dame Belmont, 1540 Ralston Ave. in Belmont. The winner of that game will play either Soquel or Notre Dame Salinas for the championship.
Harker’s Public Forum (PF) team kicked off November by winning the overall team sweepstakes award and taking home the tournament championship at the Minneapple Debate Tournament, held Nov. 1-2 at Apple Valley High School in Minnesota.
Having been successful competitors in this tournament during their years at Harker, Akshay Jagadeesh ’12 and Pranav Sharma ’13 accompanied the Harker students to the tournament.
Debating the merits of the NSA domestic surveillance program, four Harker PF teams made it to the elimination rounds of this prestigious tournament, comprising more than 100 teams from numerous states.
In the first elimination round, the bracket set juniors Andrew Jin and David Lin up to meet fellow juniors Nikhil Kishore and Vamsi Gadiraju. This automatically advanced Jin-Lin and earned both teams bids to the Tournament of Champions. Aadyot Bhatnagar and Avik Wadhwa, both grade 11, and Sorjo Banerjee and Mohnish Shah, both grade 10, also won their first rounds to earn spots in the Sweet 16 and qualifying legs to the TOC.
All three remaining Harker teams won their octofinal rounds and advanced to the Elite 8, where the bracket again pitted Harker against Harker. Bhatnagar-Wadhwa advanced over Banerjee-Shah, while Jin-Lin beat The Blake School (Minnesota), leaving two Harker teams in the top four at the tournament.
Jin-Lin faced a tough battle against last year’s national semifinalist from Hawken School (Ohio) and was ultimately defeated, while Bhatnagar-Wadhwa prevailed against a team from Trinity Prep (Florida) to advance to finals.
In a final round in front of the tournament, Bhatnagar-Wadhwa defeated Hawken on a 4-1 decision to earn the tournament title and clinch the school sweepstakes award for Harker.
At the conclusion of preliminary rounds, Bhatnagar also earned recognition as the third best individual speaker out of more than 200 competitors, while Lin was recognized as fourth overall.
In this weekends’s Bay Area Quiz Kids contest, Harker’s team of Stephanie Chen, Nikhil Dilip and Brian Tuan, all grade 12, came out victorious, with dominant performances over Hillsdale (810 – 70) and Sacred Heart (620 – 265). “Since point totals are used in determining whether a team moves on to the next round, we did need to take that into consideration in our games,” said advisor Bradley Stoll. “We weren’t trying to run up the score. Plus, if we wouldn’t have answered the questions against Hillsdale, KRON would not be able to broadcast the game, as the questions would’ve gone unanswered.” The next round and broadcast of this round have not been scheduled, but watch for announcements!
Harker runner Corey Gonzales, grade 11, won the Division 4 CCS Championships on Saturday, blazing through 2.95 miles in 15 minutes and 34 seconds to fend off 87 other runners. Gonzales and four others ran a speedy 5:00 first mile. The field narrowed to three during the second mile when Gonzales pushed ahead with a series of short bursts. Going into the third mile, Gonzales ratcheted up the pace, sprinted up “Cardiac Hill,” opened up a 30-meter lead and pulled away, winning by four seconds. One veteran coached called his performance “one of the best competitive races I have ever seen run at Crystal Springs.”
Freshman Niki Iyer also qualified for the state meet, finishing third with a time of 18:01. One of Niki’s idols, Anna Maxwell of San Lorenzo Valley, sprung out to an early lead, en route to a 16:53 mark, the fifth-fastest time in the course’s history. Iyer wisely let Maxwell go and ran a swift first mile to take second place early on. Immediately before the 2-mile mark, Valerie Morrison of Scotts Valley caught up with Iyer, making this the first race of the year where a runner caught Iyer from behind. Iyer drew even with Morrison, and the two remained neck and neck until the final 600 meters, when Morrison pulled ahead. Iyer still beat a number of other top 10 state-ranked runners, and her first mile time, 5:34, would have won the league track 1600m race. Senior Claudia Tischler also competed in the race, finishing in 20th place with a 20:01.
Iyer and Gonzales will compete in the California Cross Country State Championships on Saturday, Nov. 30 at Woodward Park in Fresno.