More than 3,500 Harker community members headed to the upper school campus this past Saturday for the second annual Harker Day. Families spent the day enjoying food, games, sports and live entertainment by Harker students.
The many games on offer included Skee-Ball, air hockey, foosball and electronic basketball. Elsewhere, younger students enjoyed pumpkin painting and an inflatable slide. Food trucks and Ms. Carly’s Café served patrons a wide variety of foods throughout the day, and animal rescue organizations brought in puppies, kittens and guinea pigs that were very popular with visitors of all ages. Meanwhile, Harker performing arts groups from the lower, middle and upper schools entertained large crowds at the Patil Theater.
Students also sold food and drinks at concession areas throughout the day to raise money for their classes. Senior Arissa Huda was one such student. “I love selling stuff,” she said. “I’ve actually made quite a bit of money for the senior class and for WiSTEM.”
Ally Lee, grade 12, a representative of Harker’s Art Club, helped organize and run the pumpkin decorating table and said she enjoyed “seeing a bunch of the alumni and teachers I’ve had.”
Loren Due ’85, one of many Harker graduates lounging at the special alumni area, said he enjoyed Harker Day because of how it “brings all the campuses together, especially with the sports and having the opportunity for the middle and upper school to participate on the same campus on the same day.”
Laena St. Jules ’04 remarked at how much the campus had changed since she graduated. “I really just am enjoying seeing how much everything has transformed, everything is building and growing in a very positive direction and offering students new things,” she said.
Several Harker sports teams were in competition during the day, and Eagle fans showed up to cheer on the boys and girls volleyball and water polo teams, as well as the grade 8 flag football team. Other sports activities included a morning tennis clinic and a water polo clinic in the afternoon.
Just before the start of Homecoming festivities, the 2022 Athletic Hall of Fame induction ceremony welcomed three alumni – Alex Abarca ’09, Daniza Rodriguez ’13 and Amanda (Polzin) Sullivan ’06 – and the entire 2007-08 girls varsity volleyball team into the Harker Athletic Hall of Fame.
As the varsity football Homecoming game against the Delta Charter Dragons approached, attendees moved to the bleachers at Davis Field to view the third-place tug-of-war contest between the juniors and seniors, which ended in a victory for the Class of 2024. The crowd also enjoyed pre-game appearances by Junior Cheerleaders and the Eaglets, as well as the Harker Choir’s rendition of The Harker School Song and the National Anthem.
The Eagles took control of the game early, surging to a 35-12 lead by halftime. This year’s halftime entertainment was provided by the Harker Cheer Quad and the Harker Dance Company, and the crowd was also treated to the finals of the tug-of-war contest, which saw the sophomores declared champions. Halftime festivities concluded with the crowning of seniors Atri Banerjee and Sawyer Lai as the 2022 Homecoming Royals. In the second half, the Eagles cruised to a 48-20 victory to improve their record to 5-1.
The first concert of the 2022-23 season of the Harker Concert Series featured the San Jose Chamber Orchestra, a local institution for more than 30 years. Founder and conductor Barbara Day Turner made special mention of her previous collaboration with Jaco Wong, the upper school instrumental music director, who composed for SJCO while studying at San Jose State University.
SJCO’s repertoire for the evening included faithful performances of well-known favorites including Mozart’s “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” and the middle movement of Elgar’s “Serenade for Strings.” Showcasing its mastery over a diverse repertoire, the orchestra also performed composer Leroy Anderson’s light-hearted “Plink, Plank, Plunk!” and, as a special surprise, Jaco Wong’s own “Whampoa Overture,” a colorful composition inspired by Wong’s childhood memories of Hong Kong.
Following the intermission, SJCO delivered Ahmed Alabaca’s mournful yet hopeful “Across the Calm Waters of Heaven,” a response to the 2015 mass shooting in Alabaca’s hometown of San Bernardino. The orchestra concluded with a rousing rendition of Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla’s “Libertango,” eliciting an extended ovation from the appreciative audience.
This story was submitted by Harker speech and debate chair Jenny Achten.
Senior Rahul Mulpuri won first place at the prestigious Greenhill Round Robin in September. Only the top 12 Lincoln-Douglas debaters in the nation are invited to the round robin, and winning it is very difficult. Mulpuri was invited due to his semifinal finish at nationals last year. The topic of the debate was whether or not the United States ought to adopt a single-payer health care system. Speech and debate coaches expressed excitement over Mulpuri’s start to the season!
Yesterday, senior Sarah Mohammed visited the White House to read her poetry at a ceremony honoring the 2022 National Student Poets! Mohammed was invited as one of last year’s National Student Poets. The reading was attended by first lady Jill Biden, who Mohammed took the opportunity to meet.
This past summer, K-5 visual arts chair Gerry-louise Robinson and middle school art teacher Sofie Siegmann traveled to Thailand to learn more about the country’s art, culture and history, and how they can be integrated into Harker’s visual arts programs. The trip was part of the Raju and Bala Vegesna Teacher Excellence Program, which supports teachers seeking exciting professional development opportunities.
“Thailand is a rich melting pot of art and culture that has embraced traits from all the countries that border it,” said Robinson. “There are so many visible connections with India and East Asia, cultures that are part of our Harker community.”
The excursion began with a three-day stint at the University of Fine Arts in Bangkok, where Robinson and Siegmann gave a presentation and participated in a project with the university’s teachers and students. “We got to explore the many disciplines that the college has to offer and chatted with many professors who are practicing artists in their own right,” said Robinson.
“It was the most rewarding experience, because it brought everybody together,” said Siegmann “The students worked at home, and in the end we all created a wall with over 500 pieces!”
They then visited temples in the northern and southern regions of the country, admiring and analyzing the many different techniques that made each of the temples unique. The trek also included stops at places where locals were creating ceramics in a variety of styles, as well as visits to art studios to meet with and learn from local artists. During the several workshops they attended, Robinson and Siegmann took part in soap carving, paper making and mask painting.
Robinson said she hopes to use the striking scenes she experienced in Thailand’s floating markets into her instruction, in addition to paper making projects and works involving elephants, which are icons of Thai culture. Siegmann said she planned to integrate at least two pieces inspired by what she learned in Thailand into each of her classes, including paper making, soap carving and printmaking.
The teachers thanked global education director Jennifer Walrod for organizing the trip. “Jennifer Walrod did an outstanding job in putting this trip to Thailand together,” said Siegmann. “It was such a smooth, adventuresome experience.” Sakchai Boon-Intr, a professor at the University of Fine Arts, was also instrumental in making the experience so worthwhile. “He did so much to enable us to be at the college and engage with the students and staff,” Robinson. Finally, they thanked the Vegesnas, whose endowment granted this unique opportunity.
“Thank you to the Vegesna family for making this possible,” Siegmann said. “What an opportunity!”
Last week, the middle school marked the start of National Hispanic Heritage Month by inviting East Palo Alto City Councilmember Antonio López to speak at a special morning assembly. A passionate and energetic speaker, López talked about his upbringing in the mostly Latinx city of East Palo Alto. “It’s a community mostly of immigrants, a community where English may not be the first language,” he said.
He also described it as a “city that nobody cared about,” recalling a story about a music class with 30 students but only six recorders, each of which had to be sanitized after every use. Quality groceries were also out of reach for many people, including López’s family. As a child, he walked 45 minutes each way with his mother to the grocery store.
A major believer in the importance of quality education, López thought of school as his “sanctuary” growing up. “For a lot of us growing up in East Palo Alto … education was a thing that changed my life and I’m sure your parents’ lives,” he said.
The son of Mexican immigrants, López talked about his familiarity with the pressures of having parents with high expectations due to the risks they took moving to another country. While attending Duke University, he informed his parents that he wanted to be a poet, which did not get a positive reaction. He nevertheless pursued and earned a Marshall Scholarship to attend the University of Cambridge and went on to win the 2019 Levis Prize from Four Way Books.
Upon returning home near the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, López saw that East Palo Alto was still experiencing many of the same problems he had seen growing up, and decided to take action. With the help of his young cousin Adolfo, he organized a campaign for councilmember and began knocking on doors. “He didn’t have a passion for civic engagement, but he was open to learning about it,” López said of Adolfo, who set out learning about local issues, budgets and infrastructure. His platform of equal opportunities for youth won him the councilmember seat in December 2020.
“I want you all to have interests. I want you all to have passions. I want you all to guard those passions,” he said. “And I want you to be open to all the different ways that you can be inspired, that you can be pushed, that you can be encouraged.”
Bay Area-based artist Leah Rosenberg was named the second artist-in-residence of the Dickinson Visual Arts Endowment. Rosenberg has employed a wide variety of media to explore the many ways color is insinuated in the human experience, including painting, installation, sculpture, video and even food.
Featured in local, national and international solo and group exhibitions, Rosenberg has also participated in fellowships at Berkeley’s Kala Art Institute and the Montalvo Arts Center. Past residencies include San Francisco Recology (where she repurposed paint from a household hazardous waste facility), Vermont Studio Center, Project 387, Facebook, Google, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts and McColl Center for Art + Innovation. Her installations appear in locations across the Bay Area, including San Francisco International Airport, Santa Clara Valley Medical Center and UCSF.
Rosenberg’s residency will begin Oct. 10 with a lunchtime lecture at the Nichols Hall auditorium. In the following weeks she will conduct a series of workshops with middle and upper school art students, culminating with a special reception on Nov. 17.
The Dickinson Visual Arts Endowment was created in 2021 to support Harker’s visual arts programs and students, as well as deepen the school’s connection to the wider international arts community. Last year’s inaugural artist-in-residence of the endowment was Berlin-based painter and performance artist Britta Clausnitzer.
Bajaj became interested in science journalism after taking creative writing classes at Harvard, and to date has contributed 24 pieces for various outlets, including Time, WIRED and Scientific American. More of Bajaj’s journalistic work and other writings can be found at his website.
At the International Linguistics Olympiad in the Isle of Man in July, Rishab Parthasarathy ’22 received a silver medal and helped Team USA Red place first in individual competition and take the bronze with a tie for fourth in the team competition. Parthasarathy earned his spot on the team toward the end of the 2021-22 school year after placing fourth overall in the North American Linguistics Open Competition. He was also a finalist in the 2022 Regeneron Science Talent Search.
Upper school chemistry teacher Andrew Irvine competed as a member of the United States canoe polo team at the 2022 World Games in Birmingham, Ala., in July and the 2022 International Canoe Federation’s Canoe Polo World Championships in Saint-Omer, France, in August.
Irvine was originally scheduled to compete in 2020, but the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic put all competition on hold. “When were told the World Games were happening [in 2022] … we had some meetings and got together on Zoom and we talked about what the expectations were,” Irvine said. Despite some setbacks, such as team members leaving and the departure of their coach, the team regrouped and began training with visitors from New York and Texas. Irvine was selected as a member of the team in March.
The team held training camps and participated in a tournament called the Cup of the West with other U.S. canoe polo squads and a team from Canada. Members of the team local to the Bay Area trained every week at Shoreline Lake in Mountain View and the Berkeley Marina.
Going into the World Games, the team was up against some extremely tough competition. “They have programs that start as young as 7 years old, in schools and in universities,” Irvine said. Despite not winning any of their games, the team was able to overcome expectations. “We were more competitive than I think some people expected.”
Canoe polo ended up being the most popular event at the World Games, and Irvine said fans in attendance were highly appreciative and excited to meet members of the team. “We had people asking for our pictures, and someone asked for my autograph,” he exclaimed. “I was like, ‘You’re sure, right?’”
The following month, the team headed to France for the ICF World Championships, which featured a much greater number of teams and categories than the World Games. Team USA was grouped with teams from Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Spain and Taipei, Taiwan. They had three wins total, defeating Hong Kong twice as well as Japan, and recorded a tie against Taipei. “We were actually winning [against Taipei] up until the last minute, and if we had beat them, we would have been in the top 12,” Irvine said.
After the improved performance at the World Championships, “We reflected on how the World Games was like a training session, preparing us for the World Championships,” Irvine said, adding that he felt happy with his performance after seeing the level of competition he and the team were up against and remembering aspects of his performance. “I had some huge, impactful moments on the team,” he said. “I was happy to have found a way to contribute.”