Last week, the Student Diversity Coalition was formally established by seniors Brian Pinkston, Dylan Williams and Natasha Yen and junior Uma Iyer. The goal of the organization is to help create a more inclusive community at Harker and provide a forum for students to discuss issues related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), as well as encourage students to work toward justice for marginalized people.
After attending the Student Diversity Leadership Conference in Seattle in December 2019, Iyer and Yen were inspired to draft a series of proposals for Harker administrators. They linked up with Pinkston and in July presented the proposals, one of which was the creation of the SDC.
Yen identified a course on race and society she took through the Global Online Academy (a selection of online classes offered at Harker) as key to her realization that Harker needed a way to facilitate similar conversations. “The GOA course not only consisted of students from other Bay Area schools, but also included students from across the country and world,” she said. “After having meaningful and personal conversations on the topics of race and identity with my classmates, I realized that Harker lacked a place to have these important conversations in our own community.”
Iyer, who started at Harker in grade 9, quickly realized that something was missing at her new school. “Unlike communities I was used to being a part of, Harker did not pay as much attention to DEI issues,” she said. “At first, I did not put much thought into this feeling, but when I came back from the Student Diversity Leadership Conference, I realized that Harker did not even have one student organization that focused on diversity, equity and inclusion.”
In addition to its own events, SDC will also support the work of the Gender Sexuality Alliance as well as the establishment of Harker’s Black Student Union and LatinX Affinity Group. SDC is already planning and organizing several community-wide events and activities, including a recent webinar with Christina Guzman, director of Santa Clara University’s Office for Multicultural Learning, and the placing of a land acknowledgement plaque in recognition of Indigenous American Heritage Month in November. SDC also plans to partner with Harker’s Black Student Union in February for Black History Month and put together activities in May for Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage month.
“Besides our cultural heritage month events, the SDC will hold open meetings that allow any member of the student body to join,” said Yen. These events will include roundtable discussions on relevant topics, such as the recent wave of racial justice protests. “As the SDC establishes a presence in the community, I hope to see that it becomes woven into the fabric of what it means to be a part of the Harker community!”
Iyer noted the sense of excitement felt that the SDC had been formally established, and expressed more excitement at the prospect of working with affinity groups. “I am very excited that the SDC will be working with the affinity groups because I feel that the affinity groups were a long time coming,” she said. “Not only do they give students a safe space to confide in other students who identify with them, but it also gives students the opportunity to explore their own identity.”
This story was submitted by Jenny Achten, grades 6-12 speech and debate chair.
The upper and middle speech and debate teams did not miss a beat as they switched to the new world of online tournaments. Although they look forward to being able to compete in person again, the students have done a wonderful job of adapting and their competitive success highlights their hard work.
In September, the team competed at tournaments hosted by CSU Long Beach, the Greenhill School of Texas, Valley High School in Iowa and Milpitas High School. In October, they were at tournaments held by Yale University, Presentation High School and Damien High School. Award winners are listed by competition event below. Events are in the varsity division, unless otherwise noted.
Original oratory: Andrea Thia, William Chien, grade 11; Sara Wan, grade 10
Congressional debate: Nathan Ohana, grade 12; April Sun, Aaditya Gulati, grade 11
Lincoln-Douglas debate: Akshay Manglik, Andy Lee, grade 12; Rohan Thakur, Anshul Reddy, Deven Shah, grade 11; Rahul Mulpuri, Deeya Viradia, grade 10; Ansh Sheth, grade 9
Impromptu speaking: William Chien, Andrea Thia, grade 11; Dyllan Han, grade 10
Dramatic interpretation: Dyllan Han, grade 10
Extemporaneous speaking: Michelle Jin, grade 10; Ella Lan, grade 9
Public forum debate: Melody Luo, Vienna Parnell, Vedant Kenkare, Caden Lin, Rohan Rashingkar, Arnav Jain, grade 11; Carol Wininger, grade 10; Max Xing, grade 9
Junior varsity Lincoln-Douglas debate: Stefan Maxim, grade 8
Junior varsity public forum debate: Ruhan Sahasi, Veer Sahasi, grade 8
Novice Lincoln-Douglas debate: Aarush Vailaya, grade 8; Ananya Pradhan, Sofia Shah, grade 7
Anna Weirich, grade 12, traveled to San Tan Valley, Ariz., last week to compete in the 14th annual Desert Twilight meet. Weirich was not representing Harker, but rather raced as an “unattached” competitor to stay compliant with CCS rules in representing one’s school out of season. More than 100 schools from across the nation competed in the two-day event, which saw temperatures hit triple digits for the 5K race. Weirich took 12th out of 110 runners in the Unattached-Club Girls Sweepstakes.
Weirich is the reigning CCS D4 champ and is looking for another great season once the COVID-19 delayed year gets going in December.
Alexa Lowe, grade 11, was recently interviewed by the Presque Isle High School newspaper in Maine about the uncertainty of the 2020-21 athletic season due to COVID 19. Lowe shared how she has coped without sports, but also shared her optimism that student athletes will get a chance to compete this year.
Lowe was introduced to Presque Isle High journalism student Cameron Levasseur by her friend Nilisha Baid, grade 12, who met him at a journalism conference.
As of the latest CIF press release on Sept. 17, California sports will begin in mid-December.
The American Junior Golf Association and the USGA recently announced the nine finalists for the 2020 USGA-AJGA Presidents’ Leadership Award, with three being Harker Eagles! This national award recognizes elite junior golfers for their aspirations and work to give back to their communities. Gabriel Yang, grade 12, and Esther Wu and Sophie Zhang-Murphy, both grade 11, each play at top levels, but also pour hours into organizations and issues that mean a lot to them. Check out the full list of finalists and where Yang, Wu and Zhang-Murphy give their time: https://www.ajga.org/2020-usga-ajga-presidents-leadership-award-finalists-and-honorable-mentions
Earlier this year, upper school English teacher Charles Shuttleworth, a noted expert on the life and works of Beat generation author Jack Kerouac, was selected as the keynote speaker at this year’s Lowell Celebrates Kerouac Festival, which takes place Oct. 8-12. Shuttleworth’s lecture, titled “Kerouac: The Buddhist Years,” will be viewable throughout the festival, and he also will be holding a special Q&A session via Zoom at 11 a.m. PST on Oct. 10. Those who would like to participate in the Q&A are being asked to RSVP.
The Lowell Celebrates Kerouac Festival is held annually by the nonprofit organization Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! Inc., which was founded in 1985 and is based in Kerouac’s birthplace of Lowell, Mass., where he is also buried. The festival typically includes walking tours of places Kerouac mentioned and alluded to in his works, but is being held virtually this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Over the summer, Shuttleworth had an essay published in Beat Scene, and independent magazine dedicated to covering authors of the Beat Generation, such as Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Charles Bukowski.
Senior Shray Alag had his research published yesterday by PLOS One, an international peer-reviewed scientific journal from the Public Library of Science, an open-access science publisher. Alag’s research, titled “Analysis of COVID-19 clinical trials: A data-driven, ontology-based, and natural language processing approach,” explored how application programming interfaces (APIs) could be used to make data from COVID-19 clinical trials – which have exploded since the start of the pandemic – much more accessible, thereby aiding medical professionals, researchers and the general public.
On Sept. 25, CareerConnect held a Harker alumni panel via Zoom. Three alumni – Haley Tran ’17, Lucas Wang ’17 and Vignesh Panchanatham ’18 – talked about things that students should know before graduating high school. They discussed founding and joining clubs, finding summer opportunities, their college experiences and more. In addition, they answered many questions from students, giving insights into what to know before graduating high school and ways to learn more about topics professionally.
In all, the event was a success and gave students a chance to learn more about how to take advantage of all the opportunities Harker has to offer. “This event helped me learn more about the little niches in school and outside of school to do before graduating high school,” said Jessica Zhou, grade 10. “Fostering a connection with teachers in the subjects you are interested in can help you down the road when doing events or projects related to it and making sure to do what you enjoy is extremely important.”
Last week, the National Scholarship Corporation named 42 Harker seniors as semifinalists in the 2021 National Merit Scholarship Program, representing 22 percent of the senior class. Of the more than 1.5 million high school juniors who entered the program last year by taking the PSAT/NMSQT, only 1 percent were named semifinalists. Finalists are determined through an application process in which the semifinalist and an official from the semifinalist’s school submit an application detailing criteria such as the semifinalist’s academic record, community participation and awards received.
This year’s semifinalists are:
Nilisha Baid, Karanvir Bhasin, Manasa Bhimaraju, Elvin Chen, Matthew Chung, Emma Dionne, Preston Ellis, William Fan, Maya Franz, Alissa Gao, Annesh Dastidar, Pascal Han, Fonda Hu, Vivian Jin, Allison John, Katie Li, Jason Lin, Andrew Lu, Claire Luo, Arya Maheshwari, Akshay Manglik, Krishay Mukhija, Vaishnavi Murari, James Pflaging, Utkarsh Priyam, Michelle Si, Aditya Singhvi, Srinath Somasundaram, Andrew Sun, Aditya Tadimeti, Betsy Tian, Annamma Vazhaeparambil, Daniel Wang, N Wang, Sidra Xu, Russell Yang, Sara Yen, Nichoals Yi, Avery Young, Alex Zhai, Weixuan Zhang and Helen Zhu.
In July, junior Vayun Tiwari was declared the youth winner in the 2020 Audubon Photography Awards. The photo, a striking image of a northern jacana at the New River in Belize, was taken in 2018 during a boat ride. Tiwari spotted a group of the birds and asked the boat captain to stop. “I couldn’t believe my luck when one walked closer and closer to us,” he told the National Audubon Society. Tiwari snapped the photo when one of the birds paused to look at a nearby water lily. The National Audubon Society also posted a short video in which Tiwari details how he discovered and developed his passion for bird photography. This year’s award winners were narrowed to 10 from more than 6,000 submissions.