These resignations reflect increasing turmoil in higher education. Although controversy on college campuses is nothing new, the Israel-Hamas war and the Supreme Court decision ending affirmative action have precipitated a new wave of battles for institutions. As accusations, controversies and resignations play out, the future of free speech, inclusion and academic integrity.

The Limits of Free Speech

On Dec. 5, three elite U.S. university presidents — Gay, Magill and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth — testified before the U.S. Congress on the topic of campus antisemitism following the onset of the Israel-Hamas war. While the presidents recognized the rise in antisemitism and Islamophobia on their campuses and said they were taking steps to address the issue, their answers were widely condemned. When asked whether calling for the genocide of Jews would violate their schools’ codes of conduct, the presidents failed to provide clear answers, saying that it depended on context and whether the speech was reflected in conduct.

Politicians, alumni and university donors alike attacked their legalistic, ambiguous responses, leading to calls for the presidents’ resignations. Both Gay and Magill resigned within a month, with Gay’s resignation marking the shortest presidential tenure in Harvard’s history. Currently, Kornbluth retains her position as MIT’s president.

The congressional hearing had implications extending beyond the three university campuses, fueling debates over which forms of speech are protected by the First Amendment — especially at educational institutions dedicated to diversity of thought and perspective. Social studies teacher Laurel Howard highlighted the difficulties in navigating conversations about geopolitical conflicts like the Israel-Hamas war.

“We used to say when you’re talking about these polarized issues, you have to have both sides represented,” she said. “But as these kinds of conflicts come up, when you say you support one side, people immediately assume that means you want the death of another group. We jump to these extremes really quickly, and that makes it a really dangerous thing to have these open conversations even though they’re so important to be having.”

She explained that even with legal guidelines, there is not always a clear-cut answer for what constitutes free speech.

“We do have guidance in our constitution and in the Supreme Court cases about free speech that say if it’s speech that immediately leads to violence, it is not protected,” she said. “So that’s what I come back to personally. Is this speech trying to incite violence against another group? If so, we probably should not be protecting it. The larger conversation is, when are we getting to that point? At what point does my language lead directly to violence, and how do we determine that collectively?”

Gunn alumna and current UPenn sophomore Sage Leland believes that there’s an important distinction between legally sanctioned and morally permissible speech.

“I think that distinction is something that the university should try to make, where it’s not so much restricting speech but drawing the line of community-minded speech,” she said. “Even if legally you could say something, is it the right thing to say? Should you be saying it?”

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Gay was Harvard’s first Black president, and her resignation fueled the on-going conversation about diversity, equity and inclusion — or DEI — in higher education. Since early last year, conservative lawmakers and academics have sought to undermine colleges’ DEI efforts, with anti-DEI legislation being introduced in at least 21 states since 2021, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. The bills aim to ban diversity training, employment and funding for DEI offices, and the use of diversity statements and identity-based preferences in admissions and employment.

As white men continue to constitute the majority of U.S. college presidents, Howard noted the intense pressure on university officials such as Gay who come from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds.

“Nobody wants to be reduced to just their racial identity or just their gender identity,” she said. “It shows that the bar is so high, and there’s so much scrutiny on people who are thought to have received those positions because of their identity.”

Debates over systemic DEI are not new, but recent events have resulted in further polarization. According to social studies teacher Tara Firenzi, DEI should come naturally, and conflicts can easily be avoided.

“This question of diversity, equity and inclusion really should be a no-brainer for everybody,” she said. “It’s been manipulated in order to inspire passionate responses that often end up falling along political lines to benefit certain political actors. It goes back to a lot of the ideals of our country. We should make amends for injustices of the past in ways that are fair and equitable. These are things that most of us can agree on.”

Although Leland recognizes UPenn’s efforts to support DEI, she doesn’t always feel or see the effects as a student.

“I think meaningful diversity, equity and inclusion work that addresses all marginalized communities — not just focusing on one — and that reaches more individual students is something that is super important, instead of just pledging to do something and not actually doing it,” she said.

Academic Integrity

In addition to the controversy from the congressional hearing, Gay’s resignation resulted from an investigation of plagiarism during her academic career. The fallout was similar to that of Tessier-Lavigne’s resignation in August 2023 after he was accused of academic misconduct in and mismanagement of his past studies. More recently, former MIT professor Neri Oxman was found to have plagiarized sources such as Wikipedia in her dissertation. Oxman’s husband, billionaire and hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman, was one of Gay’s most notable critics and had tried to remove Gay from Harvard’s board, according to the New York Times.

This recent pattern of events brings an underlying crisis of academic integrity to light. Yet situations like Oxman’s and Gay’s make it clear that plagiarism accusations are not entirely apolitical: They have become entangled with debates over free speech and DEI. In an interview with Politico, published on Jan. 3, conservative activist Christopher Rufo acknowledged that the plagiarism allegations against Gay were made by specific figures and news outlets to dismantle her legitimacy, especially regarding new DEI programs.

Many of these attacks stemmed from not blatant plagiarism but subtle replication of ideas with a lack of citation. Because the line be-
tween plagiarism and originality can be murky, Howard urges all of her students to be safe rather than sorry.

“It’s really common if you’re doing a lot of research to accidentally replicate something,” Howard said. “Obviously, if you’re pulling from another person’s work and if your thoughts directly match their progression, even if you use your own words, it’s really important to cite that kind of thing.”

Firenzi believes that intentionality is the key distinguisher of plagiarism.

“I think plagiarism is when you knowingly and intentionally are taking someone else’s work and representing it as your own,” Firenzi said. “And that can be verbatim or it can be in substance. I think it’s not as black-and-white as it may seem to a lot of people.”

These attacks on university leadership have brought along another wave of skepticism toward educational institutions: The percentage of young adults believing in the importance of a college degree has fallen from 74% in the early 2010s to about 40% in recent years, according to the New York Times. Still, some have questioned whether these resignations were necessary and if the backlash was too harsh.

“In all of these cases, the question of degree has been at the heart of the debate,” Firenzi said. “It really behooves everyone to be extremely careful about any time you’re using someone else’s work, and making absolutely sure that you’re giving all the credit that you can for it and not cutting corners.”

Furthermore, Firenzi highlighted the importance of understanding the nuances of these issues — from academic integrity to free speech — in Palo Alto, a highly educated community.

“These things are probably felt more prominently here than they are in a lot of other places,” she said. “That brings with it an awareness that ultimately benefits our students — that you do have to do these things in a way that puts both integrity, equity and inclusion front and center and ensures that proper credit is given for ideas and words to the authors that created them.”

Thirty-six years later, divides continue to persist, particularly in regards to schools’ resources and funding. While equity advocates may have won the legal battle through the Tinsley settlement, its application remains far more complex.

History of the VTP

In the late 1960s, Palo Alto and East Palo parents joined to form the Midpeninsula Task Force for Integrated Education, due to concerns regarding the racial disparity between RCSD and neighboring school districts. Tinsley attorney Jack Robertson noted the stark demographic statistics in an interview with the Palo Alto Weekly. “East Palo Alto was 100% Black [while the] other districts were practically all Caucasian,” he said. Eventually, the 33 parents in the task force worked with Robertson and two other lawyers to present their case in court, selecting Margaret Tinsley—an African American East Palo Alto mother—as the main plaintiff.

The VTP originally allowed for up to 206 minority kindergarten through second grade RCSD students to attend schools within eight surrounding school districts’ boundaries—including Palo Alto Unified, Menlo Park City and San Carlos. If more students applied to transfer than spots available, a lottery system would be used to determine who could participate in the Tinsley program. Once their racial minority population reaches 60%, districts are no longer required to reserve the court-mandated spaces for the VTP: As of 2022, the Redwood City School District and Belmont-Redwood Shores School District have met the population threshold, resulting in the current 135 annual transfer spots.

Furthermore, the court order also allows students attending school in the eight participating districts who are not minorities to transfer into RCSD. This option, however, elicits significantly fewer participants: from 1986–2006, only two non-minority students transferred into East Palo Alto. In contrast, 2,508 students transferred out of RCSD during the same time period.

Transportation Issues

In accordance with the Tinsley settlement, Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) allows 60 students from RCSD to attend Palo Alto schools. Although these students could previously choose to enroll at the PAUSD site of their choice, the district terminated bus routes to several schools—including Gunn—at the end of the 2021–2022 school year.

Students at sites no longer served by the district’s buses can opt to attend a school that does have bus service or find their own form of transportation. Junior Stephanie Castillo Baltazar noted the adverse impact of the arrangement on both her and other Tinsley program families. “A lot of students that live in East Palo Alto have parents who work two jobs or have more than one kid,” she said. “The change was super stressful because we had to figure out how I was going to get to school and back home. My mom drives me now, but she’s emotionally drained and has less time to get dinner ready.”

According to Assistant Superintendent of Equity and Student Affairs Yolanda Conaway, two main factors drove the decision to cut routes: a lack of bus drivers and excessively long bus rides. “We are one of the most resourced districts in the area and yet we couldn’t find bus drivers,” she said. “This was also an equity issue, since we were essentially saying, ‘If you’re [a VTP student,] you have to get up at 5:00 in the morning and don’t get to sleep.’ It ultimately came down to the fact that getting kids to school was more important than having [their] first choice school available.”

Tinsley program parent Alma Navarrete expressed frustration with the district’s lack of communication regarding the substantial decision. “There were a lot of changes in the program like the termination of bus routes,” she said in a conversation translated from Spanish by her daughter. “While I appreciate the district helping us out and allowing my daughter to have a better education, it seems like they’re cutting off valuable resources and not eliciting feedback from parents and students.”

Social Impact

Beyond transportation, VTP students, such as freshman Elizabeth Perez, have noticed social impacts stemming from her longer commute to Gunn. “I wanted to go to some of the football games, but wasn’t able to because it’s too far away and my mom can’t give me a ride,” she said. Castillo Baltazar echoed Perez’s thoughts and offered deeper insights. “Living farther away changes everything,” she said. “A lot of people in Palo Alto view East Palo Alto as ‘ghetto,’ but most of us can’t afford to move to Palo Alto. Sometimes, I feel like I don’t necessarily belong at Gunn because I wouldn’t be going here without the Tinsley program.”

Data and Professional Development Teacher on Special Assignment Tara Firenzi points to the challenge of increasing student body diversity while avoiding feelings of isolation. “I would love to see more students from underrepresented backgrounds on campus,” she said. “That being said, [the students from East Palo Alto] are still a very small population of students when compared with the majority groups at Gunn, and it can be easy for them to feel a profound sense of isolation.”

Firenzi, a former Social Emotional Learning and Functionality (SELF) coordinator, began an attempt to ameliorate this issue in 2018. Alongside Assistant Principal Courtney Carlomagno, she worked to create a SELF cohort solely consisting of students in College Pathways, a program that aims to close the resource gap for underrepresented and first-generation college students. “The students had a stronger connection to each other and to their mentor,” she said. “They were able to talk about their feelings of being discriminated against and not feeling connected to the wider school community in an environment where they felt safe.”

World Languages Instructional Lead Daissy Tabares volunteered to mentor for the cohort—she noted the students’ unique perspectives on certain SELF lessons, such as ones on racial disparities and redlining, in which they may have personally experienced the consequences. “A lot of kids opened up more than they would have if they were in another class with other students,” she said. “I would often hear something along the lines of ‘[Things are unfair for us,] but how are we going to fix it?’ They didn’t believe that things could be better.”

While not all Tinsley students participate in College Pathways, many face similar challenges to those who do. Perez acknowledges the merits of the experimental group, but also believes minorities should not be treated as a monolith. “Every opinion is different and a lot of people want to be around the people that they most relate with,” she said. “Personally, I don’t like feeling different from the rest. I’d be okay with [being in a similar cohort,] but it wouldn’t be my first choice.”

Likewise, Firenzi recognizes the importance of striking a delicate balance between the sides of this dynamic. “It’s really hard because you don’t want to tell students that they should only be with others that look like them,” she said. “At the same time, that can also make minority students feel much safer and more connected. Ultimately, you need to have specialized opportunities for students to feel safe, and you need to do a better job of creating a school culture where everyone feels welcome.”

Student Supports

Although the PAUSD website states that one of the goals of the VTP is to improve educational achievement of Ravenswood students, some are concerned with their teachers’ approaches in meeting the aim of “achievement.” “Teachers will ask if I need help, but it doesn’t seem like they actually mean it,” Perez said. “They ask for the sake of asking and don’t truly want to do anything.” For Castillo Baltazar, her experience was less about teacher apathy, but rather teachers failing to properly advocate for and believe in their students. “I feel like we get cushioned compared to everybody else,” she said. “In middle school, other students got a blank set of notes, but my friend [who is also from East Palo Alto] and I received filled-in ones. I was in sixth grade and definitely could have done the blank notes on my own.”

Castillo Baltazar also noted a less-subtle ordeal with a teacher that made her feel uncomfortable. “[During] my freshman year, I remember one of my teachers saying that I was having trouble in his class because I was Latina, and that I would need to put in more effort to pass,” she said.

Granted, these experiences are not unique to students in the VTP. “These are much larger systemic issues that we’re looking at,” Firenzi said. “We need to be focusing on all the factors, including how accessible and safe we make a student’s social and academic environment across the board.” Conaway shared similar thoughts. “We should do our best to make sure families and students from East Palo Alto feel welcome here,” she said. “But from an equity leader’s perspective, there’s just a lot more work we need to do in general to make people of color and people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds feel like they are welcome in a place that is predominantly wealthy. We have work to do, but that’s our nation’s work, not just Palo Alto’s.”

Future Outlook

While a major component of the Tinsley settlement order was the creation of the VTP, two additional parts, the Models Schools Study and Ravenswood Improvement Program, are often overlooked. “The consultant shall estimate the high, average and low enrollments expected in model schools, develop a plan for a model school(s) and explore the problems, costs, advantages, disadvantages, feasibility and reasonableness of said plan,” the Tinsley settlement states. “The consultant shall consider the creation of one to three model schools designed and located to attract both minority and non-minority students.”

Unfortunately, a model school was never built in East Palo Alto, leaving the district with no dedicated high school. Currently, students in RCSD attend Menlo-Atherton High School, located in Sequoia Union High School District, to finish their secondary education.

Firenzi believes the unrealized part of the settlement is a crucial aspect of achieving education equity through the VTP. “We shouldn’t need to have students take a bus and be dislocated from their communities,” she said. “They should be able to go to a good school with lots of resources in their neighborhood. Without a secondary school in the Ravenswood community that serves the needs of East Palo Alto, you get stuck with some non-ideal options.”

Conaway reiterated Firenzi’s thoughts while considering realistic benchmarks for the near future. “I do agree that we need to think about a better solution because every community deserves a high-quality school,” she said. “There are some rockstar teachers in East Palo Alto that just need more pay and more opportunities to do what is right for students. I don’t know if that’s going to happen soon, but I do know that in the meantime, the 600 to 700 kids that we have in the Tinsley program deserve our best.”

Although the VTP is far from perfect, those in the program—such as junior Andy Vega—appreciate its ability to provide opportunities for underrepresented groups. “Being able to help students go to better schools for multiple years is [in itself] a success,” he said.

In a survey sent out to VTP parents in Fall 2019 and published in the 2021 PAUSD Western Association of Schools and Colleges report, one parent voiced similar thoughts. “As a mother of a child in special education, one can see the difference in the amount of support that my son receives,” she said. “My children are exposed to a diversity of cultures and this allows them to learn new languages and traditions. [Overall,] the academic level is much better.”

Although there has never been an abundance of staff members willing to teach SELF, there have always been enough to fill the necessary spots—until this year. Last spring, several SELF mentors were reluctant to return to the program, mostly due to a realization that Paly’s teacher advisors—analogous, at least superficially, to SELF mentors—were being compensated at higher rates than the SELF mentors at Gunn.

According to SELF Mentor and former SELF Coordinator Tara Firenzi, the pandemic created difficulties in maintaining communication with Paly around their respective programs. “We had been coordinating quite a bit with Paly in terms of knowing what they were doing, and then 2020 broke down that communication in a lot of ways,” she said. “Then, [after the pandemic,] we found out that there was a very different [compensation] model in place at Paly.”

SELF Coordinator Kathryn Catalano noted that Gunn’s compensation rate reflected an estimated 71 hours annually for SELF mentor duties—mentors were not being paid for teaching during the SELF period itself, but rather for other duties they were expected to perform, such as attending meetings about the program. However, as the SELF coordinators and Gunn administration found out in May, the rates of compensation across both campuses were vastly different: During the 2021–2022 school year, Paly teacher advisors for grades 9 and 10 were paid $10,000 a year, while advisors for grades 11 and 12 were compensated at one-fifth of their salary. These advisors taught four periods, but were paid as if they taught five, with their Advisory period constituting this “fifth” class. At the same time, all Gunn SELF mentors were paid $4,500 a year.

The disparities in compensation between the two campuses originate, in part, from the differences between their respective programs. Paly students participate in Advisory, an older program more strongly connected to academic counseling than social-emotional learning. On the other hand, Gunn’s SELF program—launched in 2017—was created specifically to address California’s social-emotional learning standards and to place an emphasis on student wellness, according to Assistant Principal Courtney Carlomagno, who helped set up the program. “California was adopting [social emotional learning] standards, and we had to show we had a place where we were meeting these standards,” she said. “SELF was [also] a response to the fact that we needed more community and we needed to make sure that all students had access to a trusted adult.”

Given that the two programs were created to fulfill separate needs, staff members’ roles for SELF and Advisory differ. Teacher advisors at Paly for example, write letters of recommendation for their students and advise them throughout the college admissions process. In essence, they perform many of the tasks that guidance counselors usually perform, and this explains part of the funding gap. Because teacher advisors function similarly to counselors, Paly has fewer guidance counselors than Gunn and is thus able to compensate its advisors at a higher rate. Catalano found that this disparity played into some SELF mentors’ decisions about returning for the 2022–2023 school year. “As soon as we knew about [the discrepancy], we immediately went to our mentors,” she said. “It became clear very quickly that the majority of our mentors were not comfortable continuing to meet every week at the $4,500 yearly compensation.”

Given the paucity of people available to staff the program, administrators and SELF coordinators at Gunn made the decision to transition to a biweekly model, with mentors doubling up on SELF cohorts in order to cover the shortage. With a lower number of mentors, it was possible for each to be compensated at twice the original rate, reducing the pay gap between the two campuses and alleviating the mentor shortage—in fact, after adopting this model, there were more than enough SELF mentors willing to continue with the program, according to Firenzi. “[We didn’t] have enough teachers who agreed to be compensated at half or less of the rate of Paly, so we increased our rate,” she said. “[Then] we had enough teachers.”

According to Firenzi, mentors who double up on cohorts alternate, seeing their freshman or sophomore cohort one week and their junior or senior cohort the next. Teachers with only one SELF cohort see that cohort every other week, and teach the newly added Study Hall for at least part of the year in order to fulfill their obligation of teaching for five-sevenths of instructional minutes. They will be compensated at the same rate as the previous year. All teachers not acting as SELF mentors have a Study Hall period as well. This is in contrast to last year, when teachers who weren’t SELF mentors were not teaching at all during the time designated for SELF, and were thus actually receiving more than their allotted two-sevenths prep period time for the PRIME and SELF periods. (Last year, SELF mentors taught full periods of SELF and PRIME, voluntarily putting themselves above the five-sevenths required teaching time). Teachers and SELF mentors working part-time have had their duties adjusted proportionally.

This schedule change is likely to have a vast array of consequences, both positive and negative. Catalano noted that having a SELF program with a smaller pool of mentors could be beneficial. “This new setup means that we have a smaller group of mentors who are really, really dedicated to the program, which is exciting,” she said.

However, there are some potential drawbacks to the change—most notably, the fact that students will be meeting with their mentors half as often in a program which works to establish student relationships with a trusted adult. Social Studies Instructional Lead Jeff Patrick was among the teachers voicing this concern. “What we’re going to lose is the time to develop the individual relationships with students, which is unfortunate,” he said.

Some students, including SELF Advisory Board member senior Elliot Grant, considered the change to be a good move. “Especially as a senior, I think it’s smart that we only do [SELF] every two weeks now because I think it helps students become more productive,” he said.

According to Principal Wendy Stratton, throughout the process, feedback will be solicited from students regarding the changes to the program. There is also a district ad hoc committee composed of teachers, students, school administrators, members of the Board of Education and other members of the community.

Ultimately, Catalano hopes to maintain a robust SELF program. “At the end of the day, I want our program to be one that serves the needs of our students and balances the need for social and emotional wellness [while] also helping them find some balance in their coursework and in their school life,” she said.

On Feb. 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. The two nations have a history of conflict, which can most recently be dated back to the Russian annexation of Crimea—an ethnically Russian peninsula bordering both Russia and Ukraine—in 2014. Now, eight years later, the conflict has escalated to a full-scale war, and its effects have rippled worldwide. At Gunn, it has fostered discussions about both its short-and long-term impacts, inspiring students to create change.

Classroom Discourse

The war’s effect is most dominant in social studies classrooms, where discussion of current events is consumed by the ongoing war and lessons have shifted focus to draw parallels with the present. Rather than proceeding with her curriculum, U.S. Foreign Policy teacher Tara Firenzi has put the current war at the forefront of her class discussions. “We talk about it every day,” she said. “Some days, we’ve actually devoted the entire class period to it. But most days, we have 10 minutes to check in about any new developments.”

Similarly, Social Studies teacher Dr. Benjamin Beresford—who has a Ph.D in history with a focus on Soviet and Russian history— has been informing students about the ongoing war and its developments. “I have colleagues and friends who have family in Ukraine and Russia who are directly impacted by this,” he said. “It’s something that I felt really strongly about—to make sure that people knew what was going on.”

Placing the war in a broader historical context and discussing its long-term effects is crucial to Dr. Beresford’s class discussions. In his Contemporary World History classes, Dr. Beresford began the year by covering the Cold War and the emergence of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Students were then able to contextualize one cause of the conflict: Ukraine wants to become a part of NATO—a military and political alliance founded in 1949 in response to aggressive actions of the Soviet Union during the Cold War—and Russia is opposed to it. In his classes, Dr. Beresford also discusses the “war of information,” which refers to the Russian government’s heavy control of the Russian media and ban of the term “war” when referring to what the Russian government calls a “special military operation.” He uses the opportunity to talk about detecting reliable sources and censorship.

In the Contemporary World History SJP class, the discussion revolves around race relations and inequalities. The class recently watched a video clip of a group of students of color who were trying to cross the Polish border but were denied entry. Sophomore Annabel Honigstein found the clip particularly compelling. “It hits harder to see things happening in front of you rather than just reading about it,” she said.

In almost every class discussion, Honigstein has observed a strong emotional reaction. “I think discussions are difficult, to be honest,” she said. “For most people, it’s very emotional. They know people in Ukraine, and I know people in Ukraine, so it’s been rough.”

Teachers such as Firenzi feel that the emotional reaction is an essential component to discussions. “Everybody is pretty appalled,” Firenzi said. “The moral and the human implications are always a part of the conversation [in addition] to just the technicalities of what’s happening.”

Student input has also been at the forefront of both the discussion about the conflict. In U.S. Foreign Policy Honors, students like senior Andrew Schoenen have been able to reflect on the war. “After we cover some news article or hear some interview, Ms. Firenzi has been super helpful in giving us question time about logistics of the war we don’t understand, as well as providing a floor for people to give their takes about what they think will happen or how well the U.S. and other countries are handling the war,” he said.

Community Response

In the SJP, many students have been spurred to action, primarily through the protest. According to Miller, students took initiative in organizing the Mar. 25 event. “Students came up with different ways that they wanted to show their support and bring attention to some of the social justice issues that are happening during the invasion of Ukraine,” he
said. “[The protest] wasn’t just about supporting Ukraine; it was also about supporting Russian middle-class workers that are out of jobs, children harmed by the invasion and the refugees of color who are having a difficult time getting out of [Ukraine].”

Along with bringing signs and shouting chants during the protest, SJP students compiled a brochure with information about the war and how others can support it. They encourage donating clothes, food and money to organizations such as Voice of Children, International Rescue Committee and Razom for Ukraine, which then deliver directly to Ukraine. Another way to help the cause is to email California senators Diane Feinstein and Alex Padilla about how they can help support Ukraine.

Clubs are also taking action. Most recently, the Red Cross and Amnesty Clubs partnered to hold a feminine hygiene product drive for Ukraine. The clubs are accepting pad and tampon donations in bins outside rooms E-02 and H-01,  which they will send to Meest America, a U.S.-based distribution center accepting humanitarian aid packages for Ukraine. The products—which the clubs say are often overlooked when donating—will be delivered to the Ukrainian city Lviv and dispersed to relief organizations located in the country.

Support for Ukraine is not exclusive to Gunn; it reflects the response throughout the greater Palo Alto and Bay Area communities. In Palo Alto, lawn signs sporting the slogans “We stand with Ukraine” and “Support Ukraine” have populated residential home lawns. The city hall is also lit in blue and yellow every night. Community members have put Ukrainian flags in front of their homes as well as posters with QR codes to donate to Nova Ukraine, a nonprofit created in 2013 by a group of Ukrainian Bay Area residents to provide humanitarian aid and raise awareness for Ukraine. The organization regularly hosts events—fundraisers, meetings with Ukrainian celebrities and roundtable discussions about Ukraine—which have helped them raise $8 million since 2014.

Since the outbreak of the war, however, the Nova Ukraine group has focused on their Emergency Response project. They post regular updates to their website about how to help Ukrainians; most recently, they have partnered with United Nations Children’s Fund USA, delivered aid to Ukrainian refugees and organized rallies.

To contribute, consider visiting the donation resources page compiled by the SJP (https://linktr.ee/helpukrainegunn) or donating feminine hygiene products to the Red Cross and Amnesty Clubs.