See inside: A ONE-SIDED STORY pg 3 | HACKING INTO THE FUTURE pg 5 | ‘-’ HAS FEW POSITIVES pg 6 | SENIOR SPOTLIGHT insert
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Homestead High School 21370 Homestead Rd, Cupertino, CA 95014 · Volume 60 · Issue 8 · June 2, 2023
Gun violence instills fear around campus Students, administration share thoughts, responses to fears of school shootings By Zeinab Rakhshandehroo and Hope Saena The number of school shootings per year reached an unprecedented high in 2022, with more than 300 instances of gun violence occurring on school campuses, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database. This increase in campus violence has reached HHS in an incident where administration believed a student was in possession of a weapon, which turned out to be false, according to an email from Principal Giglio. These events have spread fear around HHS: 63.5% of students said they felt scared, unsafe or both due to the threat of school shootings, according to a survey of 233 students by The Epitaph. “[I’ve noticed] there are fears that it can happen at HHS,” Murray said. “Especially seeing all the new buildings that have a lot of glass and openness. Is that [design] the safest for students? Probably not.” HHS provides many mental health resources to support students who may feel uncomfortable coming to school, Principal Greg Giglio said. School based therapists, school psychologists and a mental health team are all available to students, as well as multiple advisories on mental health, Giglio said. “It is important to us that we are looking out for our students’ mental health,” Giglio said. “We try to reach out to our mental health support team and say, ‘let us know if you’re seeing any kids that are affected or if there’s a report,’ and they
might say to us, ‘this person seems to be really upset after this news,’ and we try to support them.” In addition to these resources, schools implement many safety measures to prepare for an active shooter situation, Giglio said. Once a year, HHS performs a runhide-defend drill and provides updates throughout the school year. In addition, teachers receive extensive training for the emergency situation each year from school resource officers (SROs), SRO deputy Aalok Patel said. The training is updated each year to reflect new data the police department gains regarding school shootings, Patel said. However, Murray said mental health resources are not enough to support students. Educating students on safety protocols in the event of a school shooting is essential to protecting the school community, Murray said. “School shootings are an important issue but we have not talked about them at HHS,” Murray said. “It should have been a very important first month of school thing to go over gun safety at the school, especially knowing that it was happening in a lot of other states.” Murray said HHS must be more transparent regarding the safety precautions surrounding the potential for gun violence on campus, as it’s important students know what’s going on in their school. “Being at HHS for four years, we [haven’t had many run-hide-defend drills],” Murray said. “It is really important to know protocols and understand what to do.” On the other hand, Giglio said holding more drills can have negative effects on students’ preparedness. “In some ways, [training is] pretty simple, right? It’s run, hide or defend,” Giglio said. “But in other ways, it’s a highly chaot-
ic and stressful situation and to be honest, no matter how many times you practice for it, something’s going to be different. So we don’t want to get too routine in our practices.” Freshman Adam Orrin said he believes in-depth instruction is necessary for students to remain safe during an active shooter situation. “We need to educate people on what situations are good to run, hide or defend, and why and how,” Orrin said. “Advisory is a great way for HHS to implement education about these issues. It is also important for teachers to talk to students about their plans, if anything does happen, andhow they can try and get to safety.” This sentiment is echoed throughout HHS, as 72.7% of students said they feel HHS should do more to protect and prepare students for school shootings and gun violence on campus, according to an Epitaph survey. Despite this, Giglio said there is a fine line on what HHS can do to be more vocal regarding on-campus violence. “School shootings are not an easy topic to talk about, and if you do too many drills, kids get desensitized,” Giglio said. “[Similar to] fire alarms, because fire alarms go off so often, people are asking ‘do I really have to go outside?’ It’s not something we want people to get comfortable with.” When a school shooting occurs, the first to respond are the SROs, Giglio said. In addition to responding to incidents that occur on campus, SRO deputy Jarvis Bui said SROs educate students and staff on safety procedures. Although training may feel unnecessary at times, Bui said it is essential to establishing guidelines for student safety. “When there’s an earthquake, students know to drop down
and go under the table because of the training you’ve done since you were kids,” Bui said. “Even though you have [training] once or twice a year, you should know exactly what to do if something happens.” While the rise of reported school shootings may inspire fear on campus, Bui said people shouldn’t allow this sense of helplessness to completely conquer their daily lives. “Don’t live in fear. It doesn’t do you any good,” Bui said. “Though it can be frightening, don’t let it stop you from doing what you want to do or from being happy.” Ultimately, Murray said school shootings are a reality that students must learn to live with. “Obviously, there are these great tragedies that do happen, but understand that school shootings are very rare, and that they are mostly targeted events,” Murray said. “So just moving on with your life and continuing even though it is a scary thing to think about is all we can do.”
Illustration by Faith Watters
Former mayor of Cupertino to serve on Board of Trustees as provisional appointee By Evelyn Wang and Veronica Zhao After the passing of former board member Roy Rocklin, former mayor of Cupertino Rod Sinks was appointed to the FUHSD Board of Trustees on May 16 to fill the vacant position and will serve until November 2024, board president Rosa Kim said. Through his work at the city council, Sinks said he gained an interest in becoming more connected with high school students, which encouraged him to join the board, where he hopes to make a difference at FUHSD. “Having had experience helping organizations listen to the needs of different kids, I’ve had some real interest in youth,” Sinks
said. “I thought I could make a difference at the high school district and there are a couple of topics of interest to me.” FUHSD superintendent Graham Clark said the board was looking for someone who could step in right away without a lot of training, as the board needed to appoint a new member in just eight weeks. “Mr. Sinks was the mayor of Cupertino and was on the Bay Area Air Quality Management and Valley Transit Authority Boards, so he had a lot of experience on what it was like to be a board member of different agencies,” Clark said. Similarly, Kim said Sinks’ experience of working with finance, housing, transportation and the environment stood out to her.
“Knowledge in these fields can be applied to education,” Kim said. “Sinks has experience in fields that are really important for us and for our students,” Kim said. “He put emphasis on communication and collaboration, which is my priority too, so I think we can work together to improve those.” The appointment process for a new board member consists of a series of steps, where board members discuss interview questions and the criteria for a new board member, Kim said. After the board members discussed, eight applicants were interviewed for the position and were then narrowed down to three finalists.
Sinks said he hopes FUHSD can increase transportation safety. (Photo courtesy See ‘Sinks on Board of Trustees,’ Page 2 of Rod Sinks) PAGE DESIGN BY ANUSHRUTI NAGARAJAN AND VERONICA ZHAO