When women first started competing in women’s sports, many were concerned that women would undermine the conventional “masculinity” of sports. According a “Washington Post” article titled, “The troubling paradox facing women Olympians: Sex sells. but with serious costs,” “[sport] leaders and the press highlighted female Olympians’ appearances and heterosexuality to reassure the U.S. public that women would neither overrun sport nor upend conventional gender relations.” Oftentimes, they designed uniforms for women that were feminine and aesthetically pleasing without offering any particular technical advantage.

Today, in lacrosse, male athletes are typically seen wearing a helmet, a loose-fitting jersey with padding underneath and shorts, while female athletes are seen wearing a tight shirt or a penny—a long athletic tank—on the top with either a skirt or shorts on the bottom. According to varsity lacrosse player freshman Sophia Howell, the Gunn girl’s lacrosse uniform features a penny and an uncomfortable skirt. “It’s not my favorite,” she said. “My skirt slips down quite a bit. While it’s not restrictive, it feels weird running in it.”

Since the skirts are mandatory for the team, Howell finds herself sacrificing her comfort to adhere to the dress code. “I think shorts are easier to run in, so I’d prefer wearing shorts over a skirt,” Howell said. “But because the skirt is part of our uniform, we have to wear them.”

In contrast, junior Julián Santos, who plays for the boys lacrosse team, enjoys the uniforms he wears and notes how the uniform’s padding is essential to how boys play the sport. “I think we look pretty fresh in [our uniforms],” he said. “My teammates and I are comfortable in them. The reason we have padding is due to differences in how we play the sport. Girls cannot hit each other with the stick or the ball, but in boys lacrosse, that is legal.”

While Santos notes that the differences in padding arise from technical disparities, he acknowledges that the uniforms are unnecessarily gendered. “The reason they are different is fully because of the masculine and feminine view of clothing on people in this century,” he said. “The hypersexualization of women has led to them [wearing] clothing with less fabric and more skin revealed.”

Design disparities in sports uniforms are present in other sports, including track and field, gymnastics, indoor volleyball and beach volleyball. In track and beach volleyball, professional female athletes are expected to wear athletic bikini bottoms and tops, while men wear longer and occasionally looser shorts. In gymnastics, women wear a skintight leotard that cuts off high up an athlete’s leg while mens unitards feature full-length pants or looser shorts. While some women may opt to wear shorts instead, the societal norm has evolved so that women are expected to wear less fabric without any functional benefit.

Indoor volleyball player sophomore Sophia Yen believes that the uniforms for girls volleyball are unnecessarily revealing. “We’re required to wear jerseys and spandex, which are basically very small, very tight shorts,” Yen said. “It’s one thing for [our uniforms] to be short, but it’s another thing for them to be short and tight.”

Due to their revealing nature, Yen often finds herself adjusting the length of her shorts to cover up. “I’m constantly pulling [my shorts] up or down,” she said. “It’s another thing for me to be thinking about on the court playing. I already have a lot of other things to be thinking about. I think it’s distracting.”

During the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the Norwegian beach handball team wore shorts instead of the expected bikini bottom in an attempt to protest the oversexualization of women’s bodies in their sport, in doing so, they defied the International Handball Federation’s rules that require women to wear tight bikini bottoms with a maximum length of 10 centimeters. The team was fined 150 Euros each.

Even today, viewers often follow womens’ sports for the sexual appeal of the competitors rather than their athletic prowess. Junior Hailey Yuan, who plays both indoor and beach volleyball, often observes these trivializing sentiments in the comment sections of her favorite athletes’ highlight videos. “If you watch [professional beach volleyball players] and read the comments under the videos, they can be kind of upsetting,” she said. “Kerri Walsh Jennings has attended five Olympic games and won gold in three, but these viewers focus on her body rather than her excellence at the sport.”

Due to personal preference, Yuan does not wear a bikini when she plays beach volleyball, but she finds herself in the minority. “In Northern California, the issue isn’t as bad,” she said. “But in Southern California, you go to tournaments and pretty much everyone’s wearing a bikini.”

In fact, wearing bikinis to beach tournaments, even for younger athletes, is encouraged. “My younger sister has started wearing them,” Yuan said. “You can see how it trickles down to the younger players. They’re even starting to have tournaments here for girls beach volleyball where you can win bikinis as prizes.”

Yuan believes that being around fellow athletes who are dressed in the same way makes the uniforms less daunting. “Honestly, I don’t think about outfits when I play because I’m in an environment where everyone else looks the same,” she said. “You feel a bit safer. I wouldn’t walk around in my uniform. But in the context of a tournament, it’s not as bad.”

Yen agrees that in an athletic setting, the uniforms are normal. However, around unknown audience, the uniforms feel overly revealing. “I have two women as coaches, so they’re used to seeing girls wearing [revealing uniforms],” she said. “But I think sometimes either at school or in tournaments where there are other spectators watching who don’t play volleyball, they’re not used to our uniforms. It can make me conscious of it.”

Howell explains that the uniforms have consequences beyond sexualizing their wearers. “They create a discrepancy in how we view male and female athletes and the emphasis that we place on them,” she said. “If you see comments on social media, they’ll say, ‘male athletes are so strong and so hard working,’ whereas they’ll say that female athletes are very pretty. Creating a uniform solely to highlight a feminine aesthetic makes it so that women’s sports are taken less seriously in general.”

Superman’s body type mirrors that of the fluctuating American beauty standards. The ideal male body has roughly remained lean, athletic and muscular in recent years—physical traits that reflect the social standard for male behavior as strong, confident and infallible. In order to feel like a man, society believes that one must look like a man.

In a study on adolescent male body dissatisfaction published to the National Institutes of Health, researcher Jessica H. Baker and her team found that the two main factors that govern a teenage boy’s satisfaction with his body are height and muscle. In the study, 67% of the boys reported low dissatisfaction with their height, while 79.3% reported intermediate to severe dissatisfaction with their muscle mass.

Due to coexisting desires to improve his mental state and transform his body, senior Darshan Dullabh found himself gravitating towards weightlifting. “I was overweight and borderline obese, and I saw weightlifting as an opportunity to change myself for the better, both mentally and physically,” he said. “This was and is my motivation for weightlifting: the ability to transform my body into what I want.
It became an addictive feeling that fueled and motivated me to get up and make a change.”

Many recent gym practices are targeted to build more muscle, a determination partly fueled by the desire to conform to the ideal male standard. This includes bulking, a procedure where a skinnier person looking to build muscle will consume calories far exceeding their typical intake in an effort to gain weight. Eventually, the intention is to turn that added weight into muscle through an intense workout and lifting routine called “cutting.” While the bulking and cutting procedure is a practice aimed at achieving positive results in the long run, such erratic diets and fitness regimens can cause lasting damage to the body. According to Healthline, side effects include increased risk of injury, sluggishness and elevated blood cholesterol and sugar levels.

While bulking may have its physical benefits, it can also negatively impact people mentally. “Due to the bulking process [that] adds more fat on an individual’s body, specifically in the midsection and face, athletes may oftentimes form minor negative feelings toward themselves and their self-image,” Dullabh said.

According to senior Amar Srivastava, his idea of the ideal male body is also shaped by the media he consumes online. “I think the media in general, whether it be social media, television or movies, has had the biggest negative effect on my body image,” he said. “I’ve realized that I’m not a ‘conventionally attractive’ man. I see the men that are regarded as being attractive, and I look nothing like them.”

While observing picture-perfect models in modern media can be disheartening for the everyday viewer, Srivastava’s eventual path to self-confidence gives him hope that others can feel the same. “I used to abhor the way I looked because I didn’t feel represented in the media as an ‘ideal’ male, even in my ethnicity,” he said. “But I feel as though I’ve made great strides. I actually love the way I look now. I like that I look unique. It’s important to remember that [ideal body types] aren’t representative of true beauty. At the risk of sounding cliché, everyone is beautiful, and looking different makes you beautiful.”

Even schools that claim to meet full financial aid often hand out insufficient aid packages, forcing students to undertake student loans or opt for a cheaper alternative. Until 1991, the Ivy League and 15 other similar institutions held annual meetings with the intention to offer the exact same aid packages to students who had been admitted to two or more participating institutions. Such sharing of information was anticompetitive—it forced students to pay a singular price without the ability to consider different offers from different schools, something many lower income students rely on to bargain for better aid packages.

In 1991, all eight Ivy Leagues and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were charged with price fixing, and the meetings were abolished. Still, collusion among elite institutions continues. On Jan. 9, five former students of prestigious universities filed a lawsuit against 16 colleges for fixing tuition for aid-seeking applicants. The 16 universities were part of the 568 Presidents Group, which calculates a student’s expected financial aid package using the same standardized metric. The lawsuit alleges that these universities, while claiming to be need-blind, prioritize applicants from wealthy donor families or consider student’s ability to pay when pulling from the waitlist. The recent allegations have yet to be verified or contested in a court of law.

The conversation surrounding equitable admissions policies remains relevant today. Less affluent students arrive at the application process with many disadvantages. Application fees have spiked in recent years, costing from $60 to $90 to submit. This forces students who do not qualify for a fee waiver to limit their quantity of applications. Admissions policies like Early Decision, which give applicants an admissions advantage for applying early under a binding plan, also disadvantage lower-income students, for whom financial aid packages are essential to choosing a college. The threat of a binding acceptance without a guaranteed satisfactory aid package means that many lower income applicants opt for Regular Decision— where applicants do not receive a boost in their chances—rather than the early round. The price of higher education has also steadily increased over time; in 1990, Harvard’s yearly tuition (including room and board and adjusted for inflation) was $41,372. Now, it is $74,528, almost double its original cost. Without the help of robust financial aid programs, low-income families can rarely afford to send their children to study at these institutions.

The admissions process itself favors wealthier applicants, who often have more resources, information and opportunities at their disposal. For instance, college counselors can tailor a high schooler’s profile strategically to gain admittance from top schools. By paying for SAT and ACT testing preparation courses, students are able to score higher than those without the same funds. Legacy admissions, or the tradition of prioritizing applicants whose family members have attended or worked at the institution, are yet another way that colleges serve established families. This advantage is not based on a student’s merit or capabilities, but rather on their relation to other people.

Every year, first-generation students or those coming from low-income backgrounds receive offers of admission from their dream institutions: the first leap in future social mobility for their families. This can come through the Questbridge National College Match, a hyperselective program that matches low-income student finalists to the elite universities of their choosing. Once a student is matched, they receive a full ride to the institution. These spots are extremely competitive; out of the many low-income students selected as highly esteemed Questbridge finalists, fewer than 20% are matched, meaning the other students—both non-finalists and those not matched—must compete in the Regular Decision round for spots in the freshman class. Still, far more spots go to those of affluent upbringings. At the Washington University of St. Louis, 21.7% of the student population belonged to the top 1% of wealth, while only 6.1% of students came from the bottom 60%.

Students of lower socioeconomic backgrounds historically benefit the most from an elite education. According to Jenny Anderson of Quartz, a poorer student’s likelihood of making it into the top income quartile increases by a factor of 11 by attending a prestigious college. For students with more affluent upbringings, this likelihood only increases by a factor of four. However, the apparent lack of representation of low-income students manifests in many campus’s cultures. University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) alumna
Jasmine Nguyen, who graduated in 2021, was in the 3% of UPenn students hailing from the bottom 20% of American household income. Her more affluent peers, however, were often unaware of the obstacles poorer students face when seeking social mobility. Instead, Nguyen recalls classroom discussions where her classmates concluded that poorer people simply did not know how to make good decisions or were not as smart as their richer counterparts. Along a similar vein, UPenn Wharton School professor Nina Strohminger states that 25% of her students believe that the average American makes more than six figures. In actuality, according to “USA Today,” the average income totals around $51,480. By limiting equal representation, educational institutions like UPenn run the risk of breeding a largely unaware and unconscious student population that fails to see the full picture of American life.

Elite institutions have great potential to channel bright minds into brighter futures. While appreciating this potential, we must also be aware of its drawbacks and flaws. Higher education has come a long way since segregated schools based on race and sex, yet obstacles against equitable admissions are still ingrained in its very framework. Selective institutions remain unrepresentative and elitist, failing to deliver the American dream they represent. In seeking reform, we can one day look to a future where higher education can claim its rightful place in the American dream, offering better tomorrows to the future leaders of our generation regardless of their affluence.

Part of Purnama’s depression can be attributed to her disillusionment with art, which had initially motivated her. “For two years, I wanted to be an artist,” she said. “I knew which colleges I wanted to go to, and I was so set on this path that I was already looking at application details. But somewhere down the line, reality gave me a good beating, and I realized it was just a fantasy. Now, I can’t pick up a pen and paper without wanting to throw my supplies on the floor. I’ve forgotten how to draw. With that, I’ve forgotten why I drew in the first place. Something I loved to do has slipped away, but I was too numb to stop it.”

Purnama’s mental state made her daily life feel increasingly robotic and monotonous. “I was just going through the motions,” she said. “I woke up and went to school; after school, I’d have volleyball practice, go home, have dinner, force myself to draw and go to bed. I saw a lot of things as meaningless—school, for one. My depression made me lose motivation to do a lot of things I once loved.”

In the beginning of her sophomore year, Purnama wrote a lengthy, vulnerable letter to her English teacher, Kristen Kim, in response to an introductory prompt for the class: “Tell me something about yourself that most people wouldn’t know.” The letter was the first time Purnama shared her struggles with depression to an adult. “I am struggling, and that’s something most people don’t know about me,” Purnama said in her letter. “I’m struggling to live as myself… I’m struggling to get a grip on life.”

Worried about Purnama’s mental health, Kim alerted then-Wellness Coordinator Genevae Dixon, who reached out to Purnama. Eventually, Purnama sought professional help off-campus. “My first step to recovery was accepting the help that was offered,” she said. “Being open to therapy and talking to my psychiatrist about my feelings really helped me in the beginning.”

Transferring from Gunn to Lydian—a private, personalized-learning-based school—for her sophomore year also assisted Purnama’s gradual improvement in mental health. “Being at Lydian meant that I was in control of my education,” she said. “Learning was at my pace, and I felt more capable. I had great teachers who wanted me to learn and cared about my education and personal life. I transferred back to Gunn this year, but Lydian was a huge part of my recovery.”

During her recovery, there was a shift not in Purnama’s overall philosophy on life, but in her reaction to it. “I used to have this notion of nihilism,” she said. “I’d think, ‘My life, in the very grand scheme of the universe, is insignificant, so it doesn’t matter whether I am alive or dead.’ Now, I’m more of an optimistic nihilist. I still understand that I play a very small part in this world, but because of this, I feel freer to live life however I want.”

After Purnama’s family decided that she was ready to stop going to therapy, Purnama found herself prepared to handle her new freedom. “In the beginning, having a professional psychiatrist was really great for talking through my issues,” she said. “But I realized that there was only so much my psychiatrist could do after she helped me navigate my past—it was up to me to improve myself for the future. After I stopped having appointments, it felt like I could find my own way in the world. I began to feel better a lot faster after that.”

After setting strategies to keep herself grounded, Purnama now feels more stable. “I like to rationalize my feelings by finding a logical explanation for them,” she said. “Most of the time, these explanations are simple: sleep, diet, my period. This kind of thinking helps me keep myself in check and avoid directing anger at myself. I also keep a conflict journal where I write through my problems by identifying reasons for them as well as solutions that I can use to resolve them.”

Purnama hopes that other students struggling with similar problems will reach out for help like she did. “Be honest with yourself and what you think you need,” she said. “A lot of the time, people who are depressed feel that their struggles aren’t enough to ask for help. Depression is an illness with actual diagnoses, but it doesn’t mean that there’s a certain threshold of ‘depressed enough’ in order for you to seek help. Everyone’s situation is different, and I don’t want to speak for everyone. It’s not easy, but I believe there’s always a way out.”

According to Hernandez, however, the workload this year has doubled in comparison to past years. “It’s frustrating because the added work takes away from regular scheduled duties,” he said. “We can’t work overtime.”

Other campus members have also noticed the issue. For teachers like Science Department Instructional
Lead Laurie Pennington, who have classrooms in close proximity to some students’ lunchtime hangout areas, it is frustrating to see the trash left behind. “It is disheartening to see students just get up and leave without considering whether or not they’re leaving a mess behind,” she said. “Yes, the custodians can clean your mess up, but they can do other things if they don’t have to clean up after you.”

Campus Supervisor Travis Schollnick believes that the implementation of California’s Free Lunch Program in response to the pandemic has played a large role in the doubling of the custodial workload. The program
has not only brought on a slew of new disinfecting protocols, but it has also encouraged many students to pick up lunch on campus that features items covered in plastic and paper wrapping. “The students have had a year and a half off, and they’re taking the opportunity to be more free than they’re used to being in their homes,” Schollnick said. “Also, COVID-19 protocols have forced student lunch items to be individually wrapped, and that creates extra packaging that can get lost. Outside of this, we’ve introduced new changes that mean prioritizing cleanliness and virus safety for both our staff and our students. Custodians have been disinfecting each room with far more care than before.”

Morning Shift Custodial Supervisor Nigel Hansen sees himself and the custodial team as Gunn’s human reset button. “I begin my day at 6:00 a.m. and stay until 2:30 p.m.,” Hansen said. “During that time, I’m just returning the chaos back to its original state. Sometimes there are accidents. [There] could be spilled milk, broken glass and bodily functions. Most of the time, though, I’m going around campus cleaning up, especially after the brunch and lunch breaks.”

To reduce the amount of waste left outside, the administration has made accommodations, including adding trash bins around campus. “We’re really trying to make it easy for the students,” Schollnick said. “There are even trash bins in really unexpected places on the outskirts of campus, since the school is trying to target areas where groups of students convene for lunch.”

Despite the administration’s efforts, students are not taking advantage of the nearby trash bins, according to Hernandez. “You’ll walk around campus, and there are empty bins with trash laying next to them,” he said. “It’s hard to know what else we can do.” Not only do custodians take care of regular campus maintenance, but they are also called to the scene when any unexpected disruptions to campus safety or
cleanliness occur.

In light of the recent “devious licks” challenge on TikTok—involving students stealing or defacing school property—vandalism has been thrust to the center of the workload for custodial staff, many of whom have seen similar cases on a smaller scale. “We are often the first responders in cases of vandalism,”
Hansen said. “There’s always been graffiti, but this year there’s been more than usual.”

These unexpected disruptions have become more prevalent in recent months, leading to more work for the
custodial staff and limiting the amount of school services they can provide. “It’s been bad this year,” Hernandez said. “At one point, all of the soap dispensers in every single boys’ bathroom on campus were out of order. Broken mirrors and toilet seats, stolen seat cover dispensers, graffiti on the walls, soap spilled all over the floor, destroyed toilet paper roll holders—you name it, they’ve done it.”

Like many other staff members, Pennington cares deeply about the community and wants to see the campus in good condition. “It really is disappointing,” she said. “The teachers are part of this place, too. When I see garbage on the ground, I really want to drop everything and pick it up, but I can’t always do that because I’m rushing from place to place. So when I see people deface things, it hurts.”

Students’ failure to clean up their mess not only affects the amount of litter left outside of the bins, but also the organization of waste into the three types: trash, recycling and compost. “We don’t have time to sort each piece of trash individually,” Hernandez said. “With what time we have, we can only sort a bin into recycling or compost if 80% or more is recyclable or compostable. I’ve seen rotten banana peels in recycling bins and plastic wrappers in the compost. It’s something that’s only begun this year.”

Green Team President senior Saman de Silva believes that students have an obligation to clean up after themselves, especially as it is a small gesture that will build good habits for students later. “As human beings, it is our personal responsibility to make sure that we dispose of any waste that comes along with our products,” de Silva said. “It requires so little effort. There are trash, compost and recycling bins everywhere. It’s important to build that sense of accountability.”

De Silva believes that keeping students’ surroundings clean is a group effort. “Try to take steps to cover what others may not be doing,” he said. “Even if you’re good about throwing your stuff away, not everybody in the population is. You can go and pick up that piece of trash that somebody left behind. It is so painless. Try and help out in whatever ways you can.”

Despite the heavy load this year, both Hansen and Hernandez are thankful to work at Gunn. “When I see the trash on campus, I think of it as job security,” Hansen said. “There are two sides to it—there is a lot of trash on campus, which isn’t great. But if there’s trash to clean up, it means that I’m needed.”

Hernandez urges students to think before they leave trash on campus or destroy school property. “You have to understand that this is your school,” he said. “This is your home. At the end of the day, we do the cleaning for you. By vandalizing and littering, you’re not hurting the admin, the school or the teachers. You’re hurting us.”

“Euphoria” is lauded as one of the most real, authentic and accurate portrayals of teen melodrama that caught mainstream attention. However, it portrays the inacurate relationship dynamic that everyone deserves a second chance. Nate Jacobs, a star quarterback, and Maddy Perez, a former beauty pageant queen, break up many times throughout the show, but always get back together. Throughout their relationship, Maddy creates a new, inauthentic version of herself that’s attractive to Nate, while he takes his aggression and insecurity out on her, becoming physically violent and at one point bruising her neck. Despite this, Maddy makes excuses for Nate, siding with him unrelentingly. She even reveals that she will love him no matter what he does.

Nate and Maddy are a perfect example of toxic masculinity and relentless-to-a-fault optimism—as a combination, they’re the textbook example of an abusive relationship. Still, neither the characters on screen nor the show’s fanbase seems to recognize the severity of the characters’ situation. In the show, characters envision the two getting married and living a happy life. Online, fans idolize Nate and forgive his actions. In this way, “Euphoria” has failed its audience by making an abusive character seem redeemable and forgivable. If younger viewers begin to believe that the character’s romantic moments outweigh extended periods of abuse, we may grow into a generation that fails to recognize and escape toxic relationships.

Other shows like “Riverdale,” “Pretty Little Liars” and the 1998 drama “Dawson’s Creek” idealize the trope of student-teacher relationships. Beyond the illegal age gap, the power dynamic of a student and a teacher is completely inappropriate in the context of a relationship. A teacher, as an adult of authority, holds far too much influence over a young student for the relationship to be considered consensual.

These shows do not address or criticize the lasting effects of this grooming. In fact, in “Pretty Little Liars” (Aria and Ezra) and “Dawson’s Creek” (Pacey and Tamara), the relationships continue as if there’s nothing wrong—Aria and Ezra even go on to have children together. Fans of “Pretty Little Liars” have even nicknamed the couple Ezria, reflecting the show’s failure to address the imbalanced power dynamic as anything less than inappropriate and unacceptable. Essentially, creators of the show have framed a couple founded on child grooming as the pinnacle of romance.

Beyond the classic TV tropes, the actors who play teenagers are both incredibly attractive and well beyond their teenage years, some even 30 to 40 years old. Sometimes, the two actors in an on screen couple are casted with gaping age differences. For example, in “Never Have I Ever,” the main couple is played by actors aged 30 and 19. The casting of actors with such a wide age gap is problematic in itself. Furthermore, when directors cast adults to play teens, it makes filming more scandalous scenes more acceptable and natural. Young people in their first relationships shouldn’t feel pressured to follow the pace of the mature romances they see on TV shows, nor should they feel pressured to look and dress like the “teens” on screen. Good-looking adults cannot accurately portray the awkward and clumsy nature of teen romance, and the beauty in teenagehood lies in the butterflies, awkwardness and firsts—why should it be otherwise?

More often than not, the teen entertainment genre involves high schoolers in unrealistically advanced relationships. For example, in the movie “Blockers,” three friends make a pact to lose their virginities at prom, with the context that many people their age have already lost theirs. Plots such as the one displayed in “Blockers” imply that all teens have to have reached a certain level of sexual experience by the time they graduate, but young people should be able to define their own timelines based on what they’re comfortable with, not what mainstream media suggests.

Young people are impressionable. When the entertainment industry condones portrayals of unhealthy relationship dynamics in media specifically catered to teens, they normalize these abusive behaviors, and in some cases, even romanticize them. These toxic tropes infiltrate our idea of a normal relationship, making it difficult to recognize when something is majorly inappropriate. By not portraying unhealthy relationships as dangerous, teenage television fails its viewers and puts them at risk of entering one of these relationships themselves; the hordes of Nate/Maddy and Aria/Ezra shippers online only confirm this notion. A brighter future in teen-targeted media still awaits, where healthy portrayals of teen romance are commonplace, and any worrisome couples are broken up by the season’s end.

The high school experience can often feel like a consuming never-ending, all-you-can-eat buffet: we’re served heaps of study sessions, tests and schoolwork, slowly filling up our plates until we can’t see past what’s right in front of us. All we do is wake up morning after morning, chugging through another repetitive day. While the work feels endless, it isn’t; we get nine weeks of well-deserved rest every year. But milking summertime for all of the academic potential it possesses eliminates the fun aspect of summer. It just feels like school continues in the summer, causing us to grow tired of enrichment and learning.

This summer, I’ve tried to take as much time as possible to interact with the people around me, recharging for the next year. I haven’t exactly succeeded, as I often find myself rushing from meeting to meeting, and it feels like I’m out of the house more than I’m in it. Consequently, summer’s frenzied nature prevents me from adequately resting in time for next year’s workload. In the long term, I fear missing out on the many memories I could have made during high school. Many people view their teenage years as one of the best and most carefree times of their lives, with enough freedom to explore but not enough responsibilities
to feel weighed down. What if one day I look back at my time here, and I can’t remember anything but work?

We’re only in high school once, and these are the last few years we have left with the people we love. My best advice? Take advantage of your summers as best as you can by spending quality time with family, making memories that’ll make you smile in your 50s and showing the people around you that you really do love them.

My family has a tradition of buying orchids as presents during the holidays, and when you first walk into our house, two potted orchids adorn the shelf along the hallway. The larger one is white, with marshmallow-like petals. The smaller one boasts flowers dotted with magenta and cream. The orchids are special; I can’t remember if we’ve ever gone a day without my parents cooing over them or taking pictures of them in the sunlight.

Orchids, like all other houseplants, are not mere ornaments—they are also living organisms that can be used as a way of practicing responsibility, bonding with your family and learning how to care for others.

On March 16, in Atlanta, Georgia, Robert Aaron Long drove 27 miles to three different Asian-owned massage parlors and opened fire with a 9-mm gun, murdering eight people—Delaina Ashley Yaun, Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Feng, Paul Andre Michels, Hyun Jung Grant, Soon Chung Park, Suncha Kim, and Yong Ae Yue—and injuring another. Out of those eight, six of the victims were Asian women.

Yet in media outlets across the nation, people debated whether or not the incident was a hate crime.

In breaking news press coverage, major news outlets such as the New York Times misrepresented victims’ names, splitting up and wrongfully abbreviating Korean names. In journalist Bret Stephens’ column in the New York Times, he accused news outlets of sensationalizing the Atlanta shooting, asserting that because the shooter said the attacks weren’t racially motivated, that they must not have been. Many people were outraged by the press’s handling of the shooting, believing that the coverage diminished the racial aspect of the crime.

A spokesman for the Cherokee County Police Department, Jay Baker, referenced the crime as a result of a “bad day” for the shooter, inciting anger among the public at minimizing what many saw as an important issue. Baker, who was later removed from the case but otherwise not punished, has had a history of racism against Asian Americans, specifically against Chinese people. On Facebook, Baker promoted t-shirts with the slogan “COVID-19 imported virus from CHY-NA” multiple times in March and April of last year. “Love my shirt,” he said. “Get yours while they last.”

Events in Georgia have hit close to home for many.

In the eyes of local Palo Alto mother and Asian solidarity rally organizer Gloria Huang, the media’s downplaying of the shooting and refusal to mention race was another slap in the face. “There was a lot of silence about the recent tragedy that I didn’t expect,” Huang said. “I also saw outright denial that the shootings had anything to do with race and that almost felt like a second strike to what was happening.”

In a year that’s seen a significant increase in acts of violence and hatred against Asian Americans, the murders in Georgia were the straw that broke the camel’s back, finally pushing Asian American stories and narratives into the national spotlight. Online movements such as #StopAsianHate and #StandForAsians received larger platforms and greater support, with many celebrities and civilians alike—including NBA star Jeremy Lin, actor Steven Yeun and Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Amanda Nguyen—beginning to speak up about the Asian experience in America.

Yet despite the increase in press coverage, this year hardly marks the beginning of anti-Asian hatred in America. In reality, the history of discrimination and violence against Asian Americans runs as deeply as two centuries back—it’s only now that Asian American voices are being heard.

A History of Discrimination

When people think of Asian Americans, their minds might wander to 2018 film “Crazy Rich Asians,” stereotypical tiger moms or sitcom character London Tipton—in other words, they might imagine a relatively affluent and well-educated minority in America, and one that has only been here for a few decades. In reality, the systemic oppression of Asian people in America runs long and deep. Even before the racism caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Asians have faced discrimination for more than 200 years in America.

In 1850, whispers of striking it rich in the California gold mines brought immigrants from all over the world, including China, to America’s west coast. This was the time when Asian individuals first entered America in large numbers, but nativism—the perpetual fear and hatred of foreigners—and anger at the growing competition in the job market ultimately led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, an immigration ban prohibiting all Chinese laborers to enter the U.S. As of now, it remains one of the only immigration bans solely on the basis of nationality.

Stanford history professor and Associate Vice Provost Gordon Chang, who has researched and studied American history and published books that highlight Asian American contributions to American history, highlighted the deep-rooted nature of anti-Asian discrimination. “What history shows me is that the violence directed against Asians in America is not new, but very long-standing, and has been a part of American history from the earliest beginnings of Asian migration to the U.S.,” he said. “Violence against Asians has often been overshadowed because of the terrible violence that we know more about against Native Americans and African Americans and others, but Asian American violence has been quite terrible too. And that is not as well known.”

Chinese Americans were also the victims of one of the nation’s worst mass lynchings. On Oct. 24, 1871, around 500 white and Hispanic people entered Los Angeles’s Old Chinatown and killed 19 Chinese Americans while looting businesses and assaulting Asian citizens. The Chinese Massacre of 1871 bookmarks a painful period in American history for many Asian Americans, yet according to United States History teacher Laurel Howard, it was not an isolated incident. “[A mob] lynched 19 different Chinese people who were just caught in the wrong place at the wrong time,” she said. “But that’s just one example. Up to 200 different Chinatowns across the West all faced violence in the late 19th century.”

As a result of occupational and geographic immobility, Asian immigrants were often forced to live in ethnic enclaves, squeezed into tight spaces that became unsanitary due to lack of state funding for public services, creating the stereotype that Chinatowns were more susceptible to disease.

Howard wrote her thesis in college about how diseases were often used against immigrant communities. “In the 19th century, before we understood a lot about how disease spreads, it was really easy to look at a lot of immigrant communities getting sick and say that they were getting sick because they were immigrants,” Howard said. “There’s nothing about your ethnicity that makes you more vulnerable to a certain disease, but that association still remains for us; the fear of the outside and the fear of illness tends to combine together.”

Later, during World War II, worries that Japanese Americans would betray the U.S. war effort prompted then-President Franklin Roosevelt to send hundreds of thousands of Japanese American families to internment camps along the Pacific coast. Many were uprooted from their businesses and homes, staying in the camps with minimal belongings and poor conditions for over five years. “In the aftermath of the internment camps, all of these people don’t really have a place to go anymore because their businesses, their farms and their households have been empty for three to four years,” Howard said. “This marks a massive redistribution of wealth.”

Palo Alto City Councilmember Greg Tanaka’s family has suffered greatly at the hands of anti-Asian discrimination. His great-grandfather died of tuberculosis in an internment camp, and when his family was released, they’d lost all of their belongings and assets. Many Japanese families faced the same situation: Internment camps tore down any financial stability that Japanese immigrants had worked so hard to build. “My dad lost his dad and then his family when he got out of the camps,” Tanaka said. “The whole business was gone, right? Because you’re basically in prison for five years.”

Even Asian Americans whose grandparents are native to America may find it difficult to stop being perceived as perpetual foreigners in their home country. When World War II came around, Tanaka’s father—an American who knew no other home—felt as if he had to prove his loyalty to America. “My dad signed up for the Marines, and he served the country as well as his brother,” Tanaka said. “They put life on the line for the country, because they wanted to prove that they were good Americans.”

The Asian experience in America is not only limited to violence and tragedy, yet history books often overlook Asian-led accomplishments or achievements. Gunn 2016 alumna Shawna Chen, a volunteer Editorial Director at the Yappie, a news publication reporting on Asian power, politics and influence, noted that even when she was learning about American history in high school, she rarely felt represented in textbooks or curriculum. “I only remember two times that I felt represented in U.S. history,” she said. “The first was when I read one line in my textbook about Chinese laborers building the transcontinental railroad, and it didn’t say anything about the kind of exploitation or abuse they faced—just said that they contributed. The second was one paragraph about Japanese incarceration during World War II, and again, it didn’t really talk about how much people suffered, or how it hurt.”

Racism During COVID-19

With the COVID-19 pandemic killing more than 500 thousand people in America, anti-Asian hate crimes have become more widespread, especially in places with a higher proportion of Asian residents, such as New York and the Bay Area.

Since March 2020, marking the start of the COVID-19 lockdown in America, hate crimes against Asians have increased by nearly 150% in America’s major cities, despite overall hate crimes dropping by 7%. NBC News reported that hate crimes more than doubled from 2019 to 2020 in major cities, making a total of 122 just last year alone.

In Feb. 2021, a 36-year-old Asian man was stabbed in the back while walking in New York City’s Chinatown. On Jan. 28, 2021, Vicha Ratanapakdee, an 84-year old Thai man, was violently pushed down while taking his routine hour-long stroll through his neighborhood in San Francisco, and later died from his injuries. On Jan. 31, a 91-year-old Asian man was shoved to the ground by a teenager in Oakland’s Chinatown, who was suspected to have attacked two other Asian elderly on the same day.  In March of this year, an Asian woman was sexually assaulted in a San Jose train station; her assaulter was reported to have yelled racial slurs targeted at Asian people at her before a bystander intervened. Across many major cities, scapegoating Asians for the pandemic has turned into cases of violence and murder.

Along with physical violence, reports of verbal abuse have also increased in the past year. The Stop Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Hate Reporting Center recorded 2,808 anti-Asian incidents from March to December of 2020. 70.9% of these cases were verbal harassment complaints, ranging from racial slurs to targeted COVID-19 affronts. Other reported attacks such as spitting or coughing on people have also increased in the past year.

This increase in violence and verbal abuse stems from the fact that many American citizens blame the Asian community—more specifically the Chinese community—for the pandemic. Among the 2,808 reported incidents, more than 40% of the attacks were reported by Chinese Americans, with 15% by Korean Americans and 8% by Filipino Americans.

The actions and words of a government can make a crucial impact in the way its citizens view a global crisis. In the past year, the Trump administration linked the virus to ethnicity by popularizing terms such as “China virus” and “Kung flu.”

In the eyes of Palo Alto “Littlest March” organizer Kalee Whitehouse, former President Trump weaponized the virus against Asian Americans in order to mask his administration’s failure to adequately institute protective measures in America. “I’ve had to explain to my children that in the same way Trump misrepresented ballot counts, he has lied about coronavirus,” Whitehouse said. “He didn’t want to take responsibility for ignoring the virus and failing to protect American citizens.”

According to Chang, the Stanford professor, the way public health crises have been politicized and used to blame certain minorities can lead to stereotypes and stigma. “Unfortunately, a lot of diseases are given ethnic names,” Chang said. “These are all unfortunate and terrible associations because they stigmatize different social groups, and people do that because they’re looking for scapegoats.”

Hate Close to Home

Nestled within Silicon Valley and neighboring a world-class educational institution, many see Palo Alto as a city where tolerance and acceptance are commonplace. Asians also constitute 33% percent of the Palo Alto population, far more than the national average of 6%. Yet living in Palo Alto doesn’t protect Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders from racist incidents.

In May of last year, to his shock, junior Justin Lin witnessed a cashier verbally abusing an elderly Asian woman in a local grocery store. “This happened in a place that was pretty close to my community, and there are a lot of Asian people around us,” he said. “I didn’t expect something [to happen] so close to us, and so close to my grandmother and my family members.”

Lin and his father were victims of a similar verbal altercation at another local grocery store. “A man looked at my dad and said, ‘Aren’t you Chinese? Aren’t you the one that brought this coronavirus?’” he said. While other bystanders were able to break up the incident swiftly, it resulted in lasting fear and apprehension among Lin and his family. According to Lin, his family began to make conscious decisions to avoid certain areas of Palo Alto where people are known to be intolerant of the Asian community.

Sinophobic sentiments have even affected prominent political figures in the area, including Greg Tanaka. While Tanaka was biking down Middlefield Road last March, a vehicle pulled up next to him and rolled down the windows. “[The vehicle occupants] started yelling at me, saying ‘you brought the virus from China,’” Tanaka said. “And I’m thinking, gosh, I’m on City Council. Isn’t this liberal Palo Alto? I’m fairly well known here, but probably not well enough. Or they just don’t care.”

Such occurrences have caused junior Corrine Zhao to become more alert when she ventures out in public. “At the beginning of the pandemic, when I went out with my Chinese friends or with my mom, people would just look at me weirdly,” she said. “They looked at me like I was spreading the virus, even though oftentimes they were the ones who weren’t following the guidelines.”

Legislative action to address anti-Asian hate, even in Palo Alto, has been slow. Following the Black Lives Matter movement last summer, Palo Alto’s City Council passed a resolution to address and investigate racially motivated violence against Black and brown communities. However, when Tanaka proposed adding attacks against Asian Americans to the investigation, he was unable to get support from the other City Council members. “Not a single one of my colleagues would second that motion,” Tanaka said. “They felt like Asians didn’t need it. We didn’t need protection. We didn’t need people to look into the racism that happens to Asians. What’s wrong with that picture?”

The Model Minority Myth

The idea of a model minority, originating in the 20th century, first began as a way to characterize Japanese Americans as affluent and successful, but quickly expanded to include the general Asian American population as well as Jewish Americans. By the 21st century, the concept of Asians being a model minority has been deeply ingrained in the Asian American experience: Asians are characterized as silent, law-abiding and successful individuals who do not challenge traditional systems of white supremacy—in other words, living proof that people of color can succeed in American society.

Yet the model minority myth can be just as harmful as overtly negative stereotypes. For one, the model minority myth is used to mask widespread Asian American poverty in major cities. In 2017, for example, Asians had the highest poverty rate in New York City, and many of those impoverished were elderly residents.

The stereotype of the model Asian is harmful not only in veiling the struggles that Asians face, but also in insulting other minorities. “The idea of the model minority did not originate from Asian Americans,” Chang said. “It was a description placed upon Asian Americans by social commentators who highlighted the different aspects of Asian American life, not so much to praise Asian Americans but to criticize other minorities.”

Chang elaborated on the model minority myth as a way for politicians at the time to ignore issues raised by the Black community, citing Asian immigrant success stories to combat theories of white supremacy in America. “The idea of a model minority suggests that other minorities are not models, that they’re not so good, and that pits different communities against each other,” he said. “Beginning in the 1960s, there were commentators who wanted to criticize African Americans because they were protesting for equal rights and wanting to have improvement in life, and they used the model minority myth to do so.”

In addition, grouping Asians under an umbrella of assumed affluence can have a muzzling effect on activists wishing to voice their thoughts on Asian-related issues. “This [model minority status] is used against Asians to say that Asians don’t have anything they really complain about,” Chang said. “So whenever Asians do [voice their opinions], people actually then turn around and attack Asians for being unappreciative of life in America. It’s really a double-edged sword to attack Asian Americans in addition to other minorities.”

The model minority myth still affects perceptions of the Asian community today, causing rifts between minorities, notably the Asian and Black communities. In light of the recent attacks, many people have noted that select perpetrators in Bay Area crimes have been Black, insinuating that anti-Asian hate is a problem that primarily plagues the Black community. However, in addition to historical tensions between the communities, efforts at achieving Black-Asian solidarity have also been widespread. 25 years after the 1992 L.A. riots, often seen as an eruption of Black-Asian race tensions, leaders from both Korean American and Black communities came together to support unity and solidarity. On Feb. of this year, organizers in Oakland rallied for Asian-Black unity, building coalitions in a time of tension.

Chang notes that while individual perpetrators may come from other minority communities, there is an important distinction between an individual and a movement. “You don’t see, for example, African American leaders or Latinx leaders or Native American leaders calling for the wholesale attack against Asians,” Chang said. “You don’t see these leaders using stupid terms like the Gong flu or the Chinese virus. They’re very much more respectful and call for unity.”

At the March 28 rally against anti-Asian hate, Palo Alto High School sophomore Johannah Seah spoke to the importance of uniting against racism and hatred. “Change looks like standing together against racism,” she said. “It looks like standing with Black communities, Indigenous communities and other communities of color. It looks like addressing the system and the government, not just the people.”

Local Asian activist Monica Yeung Arima, who helped spread the word for the Town and Country Stand for Asians rally on March 20, believes that the race of the perpetrators is a minor issue in the grand scheme of anti-Asian hate. “Whether it’s black or [Asian] or white, when someone is hurt, we all bleed,” Arima said.  “I think people need to have common sense that these kinds of things shouldn’t happen at all.”

Even with the help of organizations such as the Stop AAPI Hate website, where Asian Americans can report hate-related incidents, Asian Americans often do not self-report crimes, believing it easier to move on rather than linger on the past. “I think in general […] we stay silent about it,” Tanaka said. “We don’t complain. We just let it go. A lot of Asians don’t want to cause a ruckus, so they don’t want to report it as a hate crime. They just kind of take it.”

As a result, many anti-Asian stories are left untold, and the problem is minimized to the extent of disappearing completely.

Silent No Longer

Since the Atlanta shootings and countless previous attacks on Asian Americans, Asian voices have been thrust to the forefront of activism and racial justice. From New York to Los Angeles, people have attended protests and signed petitions in an attempt to enact meaningful change. A GoFundme fundraiser created to combat anti-Asian hate has raised more than $4 million, with approximately 41,000 donors from all over the world. Corporations such as YouTube, H&M and Airbnb have shown their support to the Asian community through monetary donations or providing educational resources on recent events.

The media also has started reporting on the violent attacks against Asians, yet the topic is still overlooked and undercovered. As a journalist, Chen found disparities in how different crimes and issues were covered, an issue that prompted her to join the Yappie. “I think [media coverage for AAPI issues] is something that has been a problem, to say the least, for a long, long time,” Chen said. “It’s just that people didn’t really care about [these issues] until now.”

Chen pointed out that while many people assume the Asian community is silent, it only appears that way because Asian activists so often go unheard by the general public. “Part of the problem is definitely lack of media coverage, but I also think people just didn’t care about the stories that did get published about anti-Asian racism,” Chen said. “It is still very frustrating for a lot of Asian Americans who have been living this reality their entire lives, and especially the last year, for all of a sudden to be catapulted into this huge thing.”

In Oakland, activists have been protesting and petitioning for the city’s officials to make a change. Just Cities, an organization based in Oakland, has been working on initiatives that give fair housing and leadership opportunities to minorities. In 2020, Just Cities helped to pass a landmark housing policy that removed discrimination against those who have criminal records. They are also working on preventing the displacement of lower-income people of color from major cities in the Bay Area. Margaretta Lin, the Executive Director for Just Cities and an activist for Asian rights, believes that racially motivated crimes can stem from inequalities in the housing system, which makes her work at Just Cities significant in combating anti-Asian sentiments. “The rise of anti-Asian American hate stems from all these structural gaps, around our education and around our multiracial understanding,” she said. “It stems from a history of racial segregation in schools and housing.”

In the last couple of months, Oakland and other cities in the Bay Area have organized marches and protests to stand in solidarity with the grieving Asian community. In San Mateo, Ashlyn So, a 13-year old middle school student, organized an #StandForAsians rally. In San Jose, Gunn alumnus Adam Juratovac organized another rally in solidarity with Asian Americans amidst the hate. Rallies like these show Asian Americans that they are not alone in their struggles and that they can find allies in their community members and neighbors.

In Palo Alto, residents have been coming out to show support to the AAPI community. In the last few weeks, local community leaders have organized rallies and protests in order to stop the violence against the Asian community. On March 26, city council councilman Greg Tanaka participated in a rally in Foster City. The day after, a kid-friendly protest in Palo Alto called “Littlest March” took place; protestors walked down University Avenue to the City Hall, where a moment of silence was followed by speeches from the general public and writing hopes for a better future on postcards tied to a “wishing tree”.  “We felt like this was necessary,” Huang said. “We were just two mothers who felt like Palo Alto also needed a march in solidarity with Asian Americans, especially as Asian Americans ourselves.”

Stepping Forward

In light of the anti-Asian hate and resulting movements against such prejudices, local communities have made attempts to counter xenophobia and move in solidarity for Asian Americans. On March 19, Principal Wendy Stratton condemned anti-Asian racism through a schoolwide Schoology message, sending solidarity and support to the many Asian American students impacted both personally and mentally by the occurrences.

On March 22, a little less than a year after Tanaka’s first attempt to bring attention to anti-Asian sentiments in Palo Alto, the City Council unanimously passed a resolution to denounce and combat xenophobia and racism towards all racial groups in Palo Alto, but more specifically the Asian American and Pacific Islander community. “I’m hoping that this will unite Asians somewhat in terms of standing up for each other,” Tanaka said. “We can’t keep having a higher standard for Asian hate crimes.”

Arima also attended the March 22 City Council meeting and spoke in favor of the resolution, believing that the handling of ani-Asian hate incidents in Palo Alto should be made more transparent. “If any [instances of anti-Asian hate] happen, it is important for the public to know—for the rest of the world to know—what has actually been happening,” she said. “The record for Asian hate crimes is zero in Palo Alto. So, what is counted as a hate crime, and what is not counted as an anti-Asian hate crime?”

Margaretta Lin believes that education is key to putting an end to the model minority myth. “Today, we’re not taught about each other’s histories in this country, and so when we’re not taught the truth and the reality of our experiences here in this country, it’s really easy for stereotypes about racial groups to become dominant,” she said.

Similarly, Chen believes that ultimately, the cure to racism and ignorance is education. “I think a lot of it comes down to education, but it [needs to] start from the very beginning of schooling, and I believe that that’s true for all racial groups, whether you’re talking about Native Americans, Black communities or Asian Americans,” she said. “[Education] needs to start from the beginning, so that you don’t just learn this whitewashed version of history.”