Last week, the Student Diversity Coalition and the Jewish Family and Children’s Services Holocaust Center hosted a special appearance by Leon, a Holocaust survivor who related his incredible story to the Harker community. Included in his presentation were drawings he had made from his the vivid memories of his experience.
Born in the then-Romanian city of Czernowitz in 1931, Leon was interested in soccer as a child, recalling that he had played the sport since he was first able to walk. In the 1930s, Romania had a policy of tolerance toward Jewish people, which changed when Hitler rose to power. Michael I, Romania’s last king, followed his mother in opposing the Hitler-allied Romanian prime minister’s persecution of Romanian Jews, for which Leon said the king’s entire family was threatened.
Leon was eight years old when Hitler began expanding his control across Europe. He remembered refugees crossing into Romania, for whom his mother made “big, big pots of soup.” In December 1941, all Romanian Jews were ordered to be transported to ghettos. “There was no community outcry like today,” he said. “There was no community protest like today. We left in silence.”
He was separated from his parents and placed into a train car with the other children for a long trek to where they would be held. The very limited water supply had to be rationed and watched closely. “People were ready to give up on life,” Leon recalled. “We lost all shame and self-esteem.”
Upon departing the train, Leon’s family and the other Romanian families were marched to concentration camps. Leon’s mother bribed one of the guards watching over the procession, who looked the other way while the family escaped. They spent three weeks begging for food at a nearby farmers market, and eventually were sent to a ghetto to work and live in a one-room hut. Food was scarce and water was collected by melting snow in a small pot.
At one point, both Leon and his mother contracted typhus, and the staff at the nearby hospital believed he had only hours left to live. He was placed in a crib in the hospital’s morgue, where he lay unconscious for five days. When he woke up, he spotted his father on the way to visit his mother and called out to him. He carried Leon home and nursed him back to health, and his mother eventually came home as well.
“In my 90 years, the five days I spent in the morgue was the only time I lost control of my life,” he said.
The ghetto was eventually liberated, and Leon and his family returned to Czernowitz. Upon returning, Leon went over to a garbage can where he had stashed some family photos as they were being moved into the ghettos. All the photos remained intact.
Later in life, Leon immigrated to the United States and joined the U.S. Army, serving in the Korean War. He also met his wife, Eva, to whom he has been married for 60 years.
He advised the students in the assembly to treasure their education (“I was robbed of my education, and life was very hard”) and to reject hate (“It just begets more hate, nothing else”).
On Sunday, representatives from the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe visited the upper school campus for the unveiling of a monument recognizing the land Harker’s campuses rest on as the ancestral home of Thámien Ohlone-speaking people, who are the Muwekma Ohlone’s direct ancestors.
The Harker Student Diversity Coalition (SDC) and members of Harker’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee were in attendance to mark the occasion and show their support for building a partnership with the Tribe. The idea to create a plaque for the land acknowledgment was inspired in part by what students learned while attending diversity conferences where land recognition statements were regularly made. “In these statements, they emphasized the importance of recognizing the ancestral heritage of the land and sharing appreciation for the land we reside on,” said senior Natasha Yen, an SDC officer. The monument was one of many initiatives the SDC proposed to administrators last spring. “After we established the Student Diversity Coalition, we decided to make our proposal a reality and began working with the administration to create the plaque,” said Yen.
SDC members researched the history of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe in the Bay Area and reached out to representatives and “shared our idea of the land recognition plaque and our hope to begin building a relationship between the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe and the Harker School. The leaders of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe made suggestions to and approved the plaque message and we invited them to the unveiling of the plaque,” said Yen.
The plaque contains Harker’s stated commitment to “uplifting the voices, experiences, histories and heritage of the Indigenous people of this land and beyond.” To this end, Yen said, a curriculum review will be conducted to ensure the accurate teaching of Indigenous people’s histories. The tribal guests, Yen said, were appreciative of the recognition of the Bay Area’s Indigenous people and are looking forward to working with Harker to teach Indigenous history. SDC students were presented with a tribal flag as a show of the Muwekma Ohlone’s appreciation. Additional monuments will be placed at Harker’s other campuses in the fall.
The cast and crew of the 2021 upper school spring musical, “Les Misérables,” went above and beyond to create a full-length film of their on-stage production, which is now available to view at Harker’s Vimeo page. For this through-sung production, cast members sang their lines individually at home and were later filmed acting their parts at the Patil Theater, which contained an elaborate set. For an in-depth look at the work that went into this incredible production, see Harker Aquila’s feature story on the musical.
Last week, senior Utkarsh Priyam was named one of 625 semifinalists in the 2021 Presidential Scholars competition. These semifinalists were selected from 6,500 candidates in the competition, who were selected from 3.6 million graduating seniors. Priyam is one of 12 seniors who were selected as candidates in this year’s competition, which each year identifies students who have excelled in academics, the arts, and career and technical education. As part of their application, candidates submit materials including essays, transcripts and self-assessments. The Presidential Scholars program was created by the U.S. Department of Education in 1964 and is recognized as one of the highest honors U.S. high school students can receive.
Harker upper and middle school VEX robotics teams had a very successful year, with seven teams qualifying for the world championship in May and four winning awards at the recent California State Championship. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most VEX events were held remotely. Live Remote Skills (LRS) events challenged a single robot to score as many points as it could, whereas Live Remote Tournament (LRT) events pitted a pair of robots against each other to score as many points as possible. Throughout the season, the teams participated in various LRS and LRT events, improved their robots and persevered through the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sophomores Amrita Pasupathy and Nidhya Shivakumar were tournament finalists in the California High School State LRT Championship and are currently ranked 12th in high school World Robot Skills Rankings. At the California High School State LRS Championship, ninth graders Jordan Labio, Sriram Bhimaraju and Zachary Blue were the Robot Skills Champions and earned the Excellence Award given to the top all-around team, based on robot performance and judging. Ninth graders Ella Yee and Julie Shi qualified for the state championships by being a Robot Skills Runner Up at an earlier LRS event.
In the California Middle School State LRS Championship, the one-person team of eighth grader Kaitlyn Su was named the Robot Skills Champion and earned the Amaze Award for having the top performing robot. She is also ranked first in middle school World Robot Skills Rankings. In the same event, seventh graders Janam Chahal, Kimi Yashar, MacEnzie Blue and Minal Jalil, earned the Design Award given to the team with the most effective robot design process. Sixth graders Rohan Goyal, Krishna Muddu, Risa Chokhawala, Orion Ghai and Ayden Grover qualified for the state championships. They earned a spot in the World Championship by claiming Robot Skills Runner-Up at an earlier LRS event. Spark Robotics — made up of eighth graders Vedant Balachandran, Rushil Jaiswal, Rishi Lalwani and Shivraj Panja, who also presented at the 2021 Harker Research Symposium — also qualified for worlds.
This story was submitted by speech and debate department chair Jenny Achten.
Senior Andrew Sun was named the congressional debate national champion at the online Tournament of Champions, hosted by the University of Kentucky. This tournament is difficult for students to even qualify to attend, let alone win first place! Students must place highly at regular season tournaments to be invited to attend the event.
Joining Sun in winning awards were seniors Akshay Manglik and Andy Lee, as well as juniors Anshul Reddy and Deven Shah, in Lincoln-Douglas debate. Junior William Chien and sophomore Michelle Jin placed in extemporaneous speaking. Junior Vedant Kenkare won a speaker award in public forum debate. Finally, junior Andrea Thia and sophomore Dyllan Han were in elimination rounds in original oratory. The coaches were also very proud of the other students who qualified to compete at the event, including senior Nathan Ohana, juniors Caden Lin, Arnav Jain and Rohan Rashingkar, sophomores Sara Wan, Carol Wininger, Austina Xu and Rahul Mulpuri, and freshmen Ansh Sheth, Max Xing and Iris Fu. Sun summarized his feelings about the weekend by saying, “Thanks to my amazing parents, coaches and friends (both in and out of congress) — it’s your support that makes this possible! Go Eagles!”
Upper school students had two big recent successes in economics competitions. Karan Bhasin, grade 12, recently won in the grades 11-12 category in the Council for Economic Education’s 2021 Student Video Contest, in which students were asked to make a one-minute video containing economic advice they would give to President Joe Biden. Bhasin’s ideas included targeted economic relief for those impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, providing resources to local governments and bringing solar power to low-income neighborhoods.
On April 18, juniors Shrey Khater, Melody Luo, Ayan Nath and Yejin Song won the Brattle Economic Case Presentation portion of the UChicago DSP Pre-Collegiate Business and Economics Competition. This event gave each team eight to 10 minutes to present a solution to an assigned case study, after which the students were asked follow-up questions about their presentations by the judges.
Late last week, senior Anna Vazhaeparambil was named a runner-up in the JEA Journalist of the Year contest. JEA recognized Vazhaeparambil for her dedication to improving coverage of junior varsity and girls sports. “While we would cover every single football game, for example, there would only be one or two articles written about softball or girls water polo,” she told JEA. Her mission to increase diversity in reporting informed her later work covering political events such as elections and protests. Jurors praised Vazhaeparambil for her perseverance and ability to cover a wide range of topics as well as her leadership qualities.
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March 5, 2021:
Senior Anna Vazhaeparambil, who serves as editor-in-chief of the student news website Harker Aquila, was selected as California Journalist of the Year by the Journalism Education Association. As the California representative in JEA’s Journalist of the Year competition, her portfolio will be evaluated during the spring JEA/NSPA National High School Journalism Convention. The top winner will receive a $3,000 scholarship and up to three runners up each will receive an $850 scholarship. Vazhaeparambil also was awarded the top $500 prize in the Arnetta Garcin Memorial Scholarship, which she was eligible for because Harker journalism advisor Ellen Austin is a JEA of Northern California member.
This story was submitted by speech and debate department chair Jenny Achten.
Harker closed out the national championship final round in Lincoln-Douglas debate. Seniors Andy Lee and Akshay Manglik met in the final round and were declared co-champions, along with junior Deven Shah, who was walked over in semifinals by Lee.
After six tough preliminary rounds, the tournament created a single elimination bracket of the top 32 debaters, meaning that the students had to win debate after debate to close out finals. Lee, Manglik and Shah were also joined by junior Anshul Reddy and sophomore Rahul Mulpuri in winning top 20 speaker awards. Reddy and Mulpuri, along with sophomore Deeya Viradia and freshman Ansh Sheth, were also in elimination rounds, giving Harker the best overall representation in elimination rounds.
The online tournament was hosted by the National Debate Coaches Association. In all, 104 schools, representing 28 states, competed at the tournament. Coach Greg Achten was named one of three finalists for Educator of the Year by the organization. Lee summed up the weekend well, saying, “It was a team effort. We could not have done it without our amazing coaches and teammates who continued helping, even when they were no longer in the tournament.”
In late March, upper school English teacher Jennifer Siraganian was named the next Poet Laureate of Los Gatos. Over her three-year term, her duties will include planning an annual poetry program at the local library, engaging with a local school to promote poetry education and surveying poetry for a collection that will be submitted to the local library archives at the end of her term.
“I am thrilled, flattered and honored to be selected,” Siraganian said. “I’ve been an educator, poet and literary organizer for almost two decades, so when I saw the opening for Los Gatos Poet Laureate, I knew it was made for me.”
The application process included submitting a selection of her work and a letter of interest as well as reference letters. Upon being named a finalist, she interviewed with the mayor of Los Gatos and members of the city’s Library Board and Arts and Culture Commission. She was voted unanimously to be the city’s Poet Laureate. She was formally inaugurated on April 6 during the Los Gatos Town Council meeting.