On Wednesday, junior Trisha Iyer was named a finalist in The New York Times Student Review Contest, receiving an honorable mention for her review of an exhibit at the Legion of Honor museum in San Francisco. In this annual competition, teenagers review creative works in any discipline covered by The Times.
Iyer’s piece analyzed the exhibit featuring the works of Chinese Fashion designer Guo Pei. “When I was deciding how to fill my days last summer, visiting the exhibit honoring Guo Pei at the Legion of Honor museum was a no-brainer,” she said. “Of course, I’ve watched runway shows on YouTube and admired the couture whipped up every season from afar, but this exhibit was my first time up close and personal with anything high fashion.”
The sight of Guo’s work juxtaposed with the other works featured at the museum was a major source of inspiration, and she felt compelled to write about her experience. “Seeing Guo Pei’s designs in real life, placed next to the museum’s oldest paintings, prompted a shift in my thinking: outfits like these weren’t just clothes, but fully-realized, embroidered, wearable works of art,” she recalled. “I was so in awe that I had to write down my impressions about the exhibit once I got home.”
Iyer later heard about The Times contest and “chose to dust off this piece and submit it because I felt proud and confident about my ability to share my enthusiasm for this exhibit with readers. It’s a lovely surprise to know that others enjoy reading this review as much as I enjoyed writing it.”
On Feb. 4, Harker’s Student Diversity Coalition organized the Student Diversity Leadership Gathering, facilitated by Rodney Glasgow and Priyanka Rupani. Students from more than 30 Bay Area schools attended the gathering, which included group discussions, activities and keynote speeches on topics relating to diversity and inclusion at independent schools. Head to Harker Aquila to see Harker student journalists’ full coverage of the event.
Last week, author Kyle Lukoff spoke to middle school students via Zoom about his 2021 novel, “Too Bright to See.” Using the book as a reference point, Lukoff discussed some of the many important aspects of novel writing, such as world building.
“You have to make a lot of decisions about the world your characters live in and the kinds of rules … that your characters have to follow,” he said. As an exercise, he asked to students to think about the kinds of rules for a story that takes place underwater, such as how to move about the world and how to breathe.
“Too Bright to See,” which is a ghost story, also has rules that its ghost must follow. The main character and the reader, Lukoff explained, are left to interpret what the novel’s ghost is trying to communicate by interacting with objects, since it cannot speak. If the ghost was able to explain itself clearly, “the story would be one chapter long and I wouldn’t have won any of these cool awards.”
Lukoff also stressed the importance of research, referencing his own experience writing “Too Bright to See,” which takes place in rural Vermont, a place he had never lived. “I was very worried about getting details wrong,” he said. “So far that hasn’t happened.”
Toward the end of the talk, Lukoff briefly talked about his next novel, which he said will be another middle-grade work that is “a little bit more advanced.” Like “Too Bright to See,” the main character will again be a transgender boy, drawing on Lukoff’s own existence as a transgender man. He also plans to include his experience as a Jewish person, incorporating Jewish folklore and history.
Last week, a special middle school assembly featured author and historian Jan Batiste Adkins, who shared the history of African Americans in the Bay Area and Santa Clara County area. “I think that understanding each other’s history … is crucial,” said Adkins, who has taught community college for 15 years. “We have to learn from each other. We have to live and experience each other’s experiences and that’s what history does for us.”
Adkins’ most recent book covers African American history in San Jose and Santa Clara County. Her talk began with the record of the first Africans making their way to what was once called New Spain in the 1500s. After the establishment of Puebla de San Jose de Guadalupe in 1777, people of African descent, Adkins explained, mingled and intermarried with Mexican, Spanish and indigenous people of the area.
Mexico later achieved independence from Spain and until 1850 controlled the territory known as Alta California, the last governor of which was Pío Pico, a politician and entrepreneur of mixed African and Native American-Spanish ancestry. Numerous locations in California are named for him, including Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles and the city of Pico Rivera in Los Angeles County.
Following California’s statehood in 1850, plantation owners took their enslaved workers west to seek gold and encountered resistance from the local population, who contended that the enslaved laborers unpaid work amounted to unfair competition. As a result, the sale or purchase of enslaved labor became prohibited in the state. California’s abolitionist movement also helped many of these workers free themselves of slavery by providing them funds to hire lawyers. One such landmark case was that of Sampson Gleaves, who was released from bondage in 1854. Gleaves’ manumission papers are still preserved and maintained by History San Jose.
Another enslaved man named James Williams was taken to California in the 1840s to help search for gold. He was allowed to work at night for other miners and eventually purchased his freedom. The descendants of Williams’ former owner still live in San Jose, Adkins said, and in order to retrieve Williams’ photo for her book, she had to first contact this family, who requested anonymity.
In 1861, Rev. Peter Cassey established the first Black secondary school in San Jose, which was also the first in the state. It also admitted Asian American and indigenous students. The First AME Zion Church was founded just a few years later in 1864, and still exists today on 20th Street in San Jose, where it has resided since 1972.
Black-owned businesses also became increasingly common, Adkins explained, including San Jose’s first Black barber shop, which was established in the 1860s by the White brothers, who also founded the Afro League to address the ongoing problems of racial inequality.
One artist who rose to prominence around this time was Edmonia Lewis, a sculptor who arrived in California in 1873 and the first Black American sculptor to achieve widespread renown. Her work is still viewable today at the Martin Luther King Jr. Public Library in San Jose. Lewis came to California at the invitation of Sarah Knox, whose husband owned the Knox-Goodrich building in San Jose.
During the latter half of the 20th century, San Jose State College (now known as San Jose State University) became known for its athletic dominance, and two of its track and field athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, became famous for raising their fists in a Black Power salute during the medals ceremony at the 1968 Summer Olympic games in Mexico City, where Smith won gold and Carlos won silver. At the time, Adkins explained, San Jose State did now allow Black students to stay in the campus dorms, forcing them to find housing options off-campus.
Toward the end, Adkins briefly discussed recent figures such as Maynard Holliday, the robotics engineer who attended graduate school at Stanford University and later worked at Livermore National Laboratory and the Pentagon, designing robotic and positioning systems. While working as an engineer in Santa Clara County in the 1970s, Jerry Lawson led the team that developed the video game cartridge, which became the most widely used format for the video game industry for decades, popularized by platforms such as the Atari 2600. Francine Bellson, educated at MIT, also worked at Fairchild and later in research and development at IBM.
The 2022-23 season of the Harker Concert Series closed with one of the most unique performances in its history on Friday night, as the Twin Cities, Minn.-based Cantus delivered a diverse and creatively arranged collection of songs based on the theme of “Alone Together Again.” The evening’s collection of songs reflected the thoughts and feelings the group had gathered during their time performing to empty theaters (with online audiences) during the COVID-19 pandemic, often projecting airs of both loneliness and togetherness.
Concert opener “Deep Blue,” by Canadian indie rockers Arcade Fire, was a suitably dour arrangement, its dark harmonies carrying lyrics that matched many a mood in the spring of 2020: “We watched the end of the century / Compressed on a tiny screen / A dead star collapsing and we could see / That something was ending.”
“Deep Blue” closed with words imploring listeners to “put the cellphone down for a while,” which provided the perfect segue into Ingrid Michaelson’s “Twitter Song,” a light-hearted lampoon of the social media platform’s excruciatingly fast-paced and nuance-free user experience, the singers transfixed by their smartphones.
Things got much brighter later in the set, notably after the intermission, when the group launched into Ysaye Barnwell’s “Tango with God,” throwing in some very light percussion to further sell the mood. Their heartfelt rendition of Jean Sibelius’ famous tone poem “Finlandia,” with lyrics by Lloyd Stone, also fit neatly into the evening’s more hopeful fare, it being the performance that earned them viral fame in the summer of 2020.
Spirits were further lifted toward the end of the show as the singers performed the Limeliters’ folk jaunt “There’s a Meeting Here Tonight,” no doubt referencing the country’s slow but sure reintegration to in-person life. With the sunlight streaming in during “Yonder Come Day,” their show closer, it at least felt as though the world they envisioned could be realized. All the more reason to make John Lennon’s “Imagine” their encore.
The App Dev League, a nonprofit founded by Harker senior Krish Maniar in 2019, recently held a series of workshops on application development in partnership with the Oakland Housing Authority and the ICA Cristo Rey Academy in San Francisco. The organization aims to equip young people in underserved communities with the tools to help their communities through app development. App Dev League holds an annual Appathon in addition to providing website development services.
Maniar, junior Kabir Ramzan and sophomore Aarav Borthakur, working with Saratoga High seniors Shafin Haque and Ishir Lakhani, offered instruction on web development through games and presentations, in addition to offering attendees shirts, gift cards and even Google Chromebooks.
Since its founding, App Dev League has reached more than 7,500 students and grown its team internationally to include 75 high school students in 15 chapters.
This annual contest, run by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, tasks teams of high school students with developing a financial plan and investment portfolio. Semifinalists will submit a video presentation based on the information in their reports.
Varsity girls basketball is hoping to bounce back this week after consecutive losses to Priory and Crystal Springs last week in one of Northern California’s most competitive basketball leagues. They play Menlo tomorrow and Pinewood at home on Friday.
After last week’s loss to Sacred Heart Prep, girls soccer defeated Westmont 2-1 on Friday to improve to 9-3-1. They have two home games this week against Notre Dame San Jose tomorrow and Menlo on Thursday, which is also their Senior Day.
Boys soccer went 1-1 last week, losing to Sacred Heart on Monday and defeating Eastside College Prep on Wednesday. They will play at home twice this week, hosting Menlo on Wednesday and Crystal Springs on Friday.
Boys basketball is 3-2 in league play and 15-4 overall after last week, during which they took a loss to Sacred Heart and defeated Eastside College Prep. They will face Priory at home tomorrow and visit Crystal Springs on Friday.
This past weekend, speech and debate coach Greg Achten was inducted into the Emory University Barkley Forum’s Gold Key Society, which was founded in 1964 to honor successful high school debate coaches. Existing members of the society select coaches to be inducted, which takes place at a ceremony during the Barkley Forum for High Schools Tournament. To date, 204 coaches have been inducted, including Harker coach Jenny Achten, a 2007 inductee.
Yesterday, Harker seniors Annmaria Antony, Rupert Chen, Nina Franz, Jack Hsieh, Jeremy Ko, Nicholas Wei, Vincent Zhang, Sabrina Zhu and Sally Zhu were named candidates for the U.S. Presidential Scholars Program. Each year, this program recognizes students for achievements in academics, the arts, and career and technical education. Candidates apply by submitting essays, school transcripts and self-assessments. Approximately 5,000 candidates were chosen from nearly 3.6 million students. Up to 161 will be chosen as Presidential Scholars.