Felix Chen, grade 9, was named a semifinalist in the 2022 Profile in Courage Essay Contest for his profile of William Byron Rumford, the first Black American to be elected to public office in Northern California. Each year, the contest invites high school students to write a profile on an elected official who demonstrated courage in the face of opposition from society, interest groups and political parties, echoing John F. Kennedy’s work in his book, “Profiles in Courage.” Nearly 2,500 essays were submitted for this year’s contest, with 25 recognized as winners, finalists, semifinalists or honorable mentions.
Harker upper and middle school VEX Robotics teams earned many awards competing in VEX Robotics Competition (also known as VEX VRC) events, beginning in October. VEX VRC is the largest and fastest growing robotics program in the world where teams compete in three areas: tournament-style, robot skills competition and judged awards.
The nine-month long season culminated with three important events: the Signature NorCal in February, the California State Championships in March and the VEX Robotics World Championship in May.
Juniors Amrita Pasupathy and Nidhya Shivakumar, sophomore Claire Su, and Kaitlyn Su, grade 9, were Division Champions at the VEX Robotics World Championships and finished 14th among 818 teams in the Robot Skills Competition. Over the course of the season, they were three-time tournament champions, two-time tournament finalists, won two Excellence Awards (the highest award given to the top all-around team) and won two other awards (Design, Judges) at local events.
Sophomores Sriram Bhimaraju, Zachary Blue and Jordan Labio won the Excellence Award at the California State Championships. They also won the Think Award at the World Championships and finished 21st in the Robot Skills Competition (among 818 teams). They also placed second in Robot Skills and won the Think Award at the NorCal Signature event. At other local events, they were named the Robot Skills Champion four times, tournament finalists twice and won a Design Award (awarded to the team with the best engineering design process).
Robert Costin and Ramit Goyal, both grade 10, qualified for the World Championships with their strong showing in the Robot Skills Competition at the California State Championships. They were the Tournament Champions at the RoboLabs December event in Dublin.
Risa Chokhawala, Orion Ghai, Rohan Goyal, Ayden Grover and Krishna Muddu, all grade 7 were division finalists at the middle school VEX Robotics World Championships. They won the Think Award at the middle school California State Championships in Sacramento and were also finalists at the NorCal Signature event. Their season concluded with a tournament championship, and an Innovate Award at local events.
Another team of seventh graders — Brandon Labio, Aaron Luo, Trisha Shivakumar and Nathan Yee — won the Design Award at the World Championships and finished 10th among 508 teams in Robot Skills. They were also Robot Skills champions and won the Think Award at the middle school California State Championships. Over the course of the season, they also won one tournament championship, one Robot Skills championship and an Excellence Award at local events.
The upper school and middle school speech and debate teams have had great second-semester results at major end-of-year championships.
At the elite Upper School Tournament of Champions, Harker experienced success in a number of events. Students have to place highly at regular season tournaments to even qualify to compete. Recent graduate Anshul Reddy was a finalist in Lincoln-Douglas debate, making him second overall in the nation! Carol Wininger, grade 11, and Max Xing, grade 10, were in the finals of the public forum debate silver division. Michelle Jin, grade 11, was second in extemporaneous speaking. Rahul Mulpuri, grade 11, finished in the semis of Lincoln-Douglas, as did Class of 2022 member William Chien in extemporaneous and Dyllan Han, grade 11, in original oratory. Arissa Huda, grade 11, and Ariav Misra, grade 10, advanced in congressional debate.
The middle school team also shined at their division of the Tournament of Champions. Joy Hu, grade 8, was the national champion in extemporaneous speaking and Sofia Shah, grade 8, was the Lincoln-Douglas debate champion! Pavitra Kasthuri, grade 8, was in the finals of both extemporaneous speaking and impromptu. Hu was also in the finals of impromptu. Shloka Chawla, grade 8, and seventh graders Ameera Ramzan, Phoebe Lee and Tarush Gupta were also in impromptu elimination rounds. Evan Yuan, grade 7, was in congressional debate elimination rounds. Danielle Steinbach, grade 8, and Sanjith Senthil, grade 7, advanced in Lincoln-Douglas, as did the eighth grade public forum duo of Kairui Sun and Roshan Amurthur.
The upper school also had good results at the California State Speech tournament. As with all speech and debate tournaments, State is not divided by school classification, so it is one large pool for all those who participate. Sara Wan, grade 11, was second in impromptu speaking, Zubin Khera, grade 11, was fifth in original oratory and William Chien ’22 was in finals of extemporaneous speaking. Austina Xu, grade 11, was in the semifinals of oratorical interpretation and Dyllan Han was also in semifinals of original oratory.
There is one last event for the upper school speech and congressional debaters, as well as the middle school team, this June at the National Speech & Debate Association Championships. The only result that has been released ahead of time is that William Chien was named the California Coast District Student of the Year for his excellent performances and positive impact on the larger speech and debate community. The coaches are very proud of the hard work put in by all of the students.
Earlier this month, sixth grader Rory Hu visited the White House for a segment that will air tomorrow on Nickelodeon’s “Nick News” at 7 p.m. She attended a press briefing hosted by Jen Psaki, White House press secretary, who she also interviewed during her visit. Hu also had the chance to sit down with CBS senior White House correspondent Ed O’Keefe and received a tour of the White House.
Recently, Adi Parige ’11, now working as a filmmaker in New Zealand, was interviewed for a documentary on the diversity of the city of Wellington’s film industry. Parige was a cast member of the 2011 upper school spring musical, “Pippin,” whose cast and crew performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe that year. In the interview, he discusses his current projects, growing up in the Bay Area and his connection to diasporic Indian communities.
Harker had 56 medalists, including two perfect scores — by eight graders Joy Hu and Ananya Pradhan — in the 2022 National French Contest. More than 100 Harker middle and upper school students took part in the contest, which is held each year by the American Association of Teachers of French (AATF). The contest consists of a written exam taken at various levels. Students and teachers held a special awards ceremony to mark the occasion.
Members of the Class of 2022 took their final steps as Harker seniors at last night’s graduation ceremony, held at the Mountain Winery. Accompanied by The Harker Chamber Orchestra, this year’s graduating seniors made their way to their seats as the ceremony began. The 2022 Graduation Chorus, directed by Jennifer Sandusky, then performed music teacher Susan Nace’s arrangement of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Upper school head Butch Keller introduced 2022 valedictorian Rohan Thakur, who spoke on the resilience displayed by his fellow graduates in the face of the massive changes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This resilience, he said, will be important to face the rapidly changing world he and his classmates will be entering after high school. “It is imperative that we use the resilience we have acquired to defend what we know is right in our hearts,” he said. “It is imperative that we take the ethics we have learned during our time at Harker and apply them in the real world.”
Thakur stressed that in addition to meeting oncoming challenges, resilience will be necessary to pursue goals important to them: “It takes courage to not only find what we love, but pursue it wholeheartedly even when other paths seem simpler.”
Last night’s graduation keynote address was delivered by Andy Fang ’10, co-founder and CTO of DoorDash, the popular food delivery platform that he co-founded in 2013 while attending Stanford University. Fang offered the students some insights from his own experience building a company. One lesson was to learn how to identify growth potential, something he learned early on at Stanford. “Our first year at DoorDash, we hired someone from a military background with no prior tech industry experience,” he said. “Today, he runs a multi-billion dollar business at DoorDash.” He also spoke on the importance of being self-aware and self-motivated. “If you can set your mind on something with self-awareness and drive, there’s not much that can get in your way,” he said.
Fang’s final lesson was “believing in yourself,” again using his own experience as an example. Early in DoorDash’s life, there was not much enthusiasm about the company from investors and peers. “In those early months, we knew that there were people who loved our products, customers who appreciated the restaurant selection and convenience, merchants who appreciated increased sales and dashers who appreciated flexible income,” he said. This knowledge helped company leadership through these and more obstacles, and by 2019 DoorDash had become “the largest delivery player in America. Don’t let your confidence be diminished by the opinions of others.”
Following the Graduation Chorus’ performance of “The Harker School Song,” Head of School Brian Yager delivered this year’s farewell speech. He began with the account of the 27-man expedition of the Endurance, a ship that was trapped in an ice pack in 1915 and eventually sank. All of her crew survived and were eventually rescued after a daring series of attempts. Reading this story, Yager said, brought to mind the various ways the Harker community endured over the last two years. This in turn led him to contemplate the effects human achievements have over longer periods of time, quoting Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias,” an allegory written “with the goal of capturing the impermanence of empires,” he said, a theme in a poem he quoted by Harker rising sophomore Iris Cai.
“These poems paint a doleful picture, I realize, and suggest that those things which we create, those things which we do cannot reasonably endure, and that to believe otherwise is folly,” he said. “Yet behind the somber sentiment, there is a seed of hope implied, which is that while neither we nor our deeds can with the inevitable shifting sand of time, they can change the way those sands will shift.”
Following his address, each of the graduates walked to the stage to receive their diplomas, with the names being announced by the 2022 class dean, upper school English teacher Chris Hurshman. Per tradition, the graduates then shifted the tassels on their caps and tossed them in the air. A flock of doves was then released into the air to put the finishing touch on the occasion. Congratulations to the Class of 2022!
The Class of 2022 gathered at Davis Field yesterday for this year’s baccalaureate ceremony, during which it offered a heartfelt farewell to Harker and welcomed the junior class into its new role as next year’s campus leader.
The ceremony kicked off with a performance by a special trio made up of seniors Yejin Song and Lucas Chen on piano and cello, respectively, and junior Cassie May on violin, who performed the first movement of Paul Schoenfeld’s “Café Music.”
Following some welcoming words from Jennifer Gargano, assistant head of school for academic affairs, Cantilena marched onto the stage to perform its rendition of Queen’s “You’re My Best Friend.” Junior Gwen Yang then took the stage with fellow upper school Honor Council member Alexa Lowe, grade 12, to accept the responsibility for continuing the school’s honor code on behalf of the junior class.
Upper school head Butch Keller, who will retire at the end of the school year, introduced this year’s baccalaureate faculty speaker, English teacher Christopher Hurshman, whom he called “the world’s most interesting man,” owing to his wide range of interests and international upbringing. Hurshman spoke on the sense of loss that accompanies major life changes such as the ones the Class of 2022 is experiencing. “Over every new beginning there hovers a shadow of melancholy and loss and grief,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong. It’s right to be excited about the future that’s opening up ahead of you, but you’re also about to experience a great loss, and perhaps you’ve been anticipating it.”
Using examples from his own life experience, Hurshman pointed out how both they and the world they have become familiar with will change drastically as they move into the wider world beyond high school. He also advised students to recognize and treasure the “ordinary moments” that will shape who they are, despite the feelings of immense pressure young people often feel to have an impact on the world. “It’s possible to come to the realization that the nitty-gritty particulars of your life, the specific circumstances and relationships and responsibilities in it, are precisely where you will build meaning, and you’ll build that meaning by making conscious choices about what’s important to you.”
Keller then reappeared to welcome this year’s student speaker, senior Ayan Nath, who he introduced by playing a sound clip of Nath’s cover of Bruno Mars’ “Uptown Funk” at the 2019 Hoscars. “We all knew from that moment on he was someone that was going to make an impact on our lives,” Keller said, saying later in his introduction that as much as he could entertain his classmates, “you picked him as your student speaker tonight because you respect him for being such a wonderful person.”
Nath commended the seniors on reaching this key moment in their lives. “We made it through four years … of getting cut off every morning at the Saratoga [Ave.] intersection by yet another red Tesla. Four years of using Schoology grade display — developed by our own [fellow graduating senior] Arjun Dixit — a couple hundred times a day. Four years of the highs and lows that are high school,” he said, summarizing the difficulties faced by the students during the COVID-19 pandemic, which included challenges posed by remote learning and the cancellation of many yearly events.
While graduating high school is often seen as the first step into students’ adult lives, followed by the addition of new responsibilities, “I believe that becoming an adult does not necessarily mean we have to give up on youthful or fun hobbies or activities,” he said. “Even if you love painting, playing Foursquare or have a strong affinity for creating nonprofit organizations, I encourage you to keep doing these things, even though they might not necessarily fall under your realm of responsibilities. Stay true to who you are and remember not to grow up too fast.”
To the juniors, Nath stated that he was proud to call many of them friends. “It is with this mindset that I urge you to be nice to the Class of 2024 and to love them as much as we have loved you,” he said. “Also, congratulations on beating us in Spirit Week.” He also advised them to treat their upcoming senior year “as an opportunity to mend broken relationships or get to know someone new. Go to prom. Go to homecoming. Watch or perform at Quadchella or Hoscars.” Academically, he urged the juniors to treasure the unique opportunity to be a Harker student for one final year. “Your teachers love you, and interacting with teachers and classmates in small environments is something that’s not guaranteed at the university that you end up attending,” he said. Concluding, Nath restated his hope that his classmates won’t lose all of their youthfulness with the onset of adulthood: “I hope that we will continue to bring our youth with us wherever we go and never lose touch with who we are.”
Senior Rishab Parthasarathy was recently invited to participate in the 2022 International Linguistics Olympiad, set to take place July 25-29 on the Isle of Man, an island nation in the Irish Sea. Having placed fourth overall in the North American Computational Linguistics Open Competition, Parthasarathy will be a member of Team USA Red. The IOL is held in a different country each year and consists of both team and individual competitions, in which participants solve problems in various linguistic fields. Earlier this year, Parthasarathy was named a finalist in the 2022 Regeneron Science Talent Search.
At Friday night’s Senior Showcase, 17 seniors became graduates of the Harker Conservatory’s certificate program, each having spent four years studying one of the conservatory’s six disciplines: vocal music, instrumental music, dance, theater, musical theater and technical theater. The evening also included performances from the graduates and the presentation of the Life in the Arts award to Steve Boyle ’06.
The slide show included in this story features each of this year’s Conservatory graduates, in the order they are listed below: