On July 6, 1925, the historic town of Mayfield —  along with California Avenue — was incorporated into Palo Alto, and the region later became known as Palo Alto’s “second downtown.” Downtown Palo Alto encompasses iconic locations such as the retro Palo Alto Creamery Fountain & Grill — formerly known as the Peninsula Creamery — the Museum of American Heritage Williams House and the Hewlett-Packard House and Garage, where tech giant HP was founded in 1939. 

South Palo Alto

South Palo Alto is home to residential areas and community centers, ranging from Eichler homes built in the 1960s to libraries such as the College Terrace Library and the Mitchell Park Library. Other key locations include the Oshman Family Jewish Community Center and Cubberley Community Center — formerly Cubberley High School, until it was closed in 1979 and later became a shared facility for PAUSD and various organizations and schools. Over the recent years, the south Palo Alto area has been attracting new residents due to its family-friendly, accessible community spaces. 

Points East/Baylands Area

In 1921, the City of Palo Alto purchased the John Fletcher Byxbee Recreation area (also known as the Baylands Nature Preserve), named after Stanford alumnus and Palo Alto city engineer Fletcher Byxbee. After the purchase, the 40 acres of the marshland was set to become a recreational area until the 1960s, when citizens advocated for a park instead. Over the years, the City has added the Nature Interpretive Center, Mundy Marsh, Renzel Wetlands and Byxbee Park Hills. Today, the preserve is a space for recreation, providing activities such as interpretive programs, water sports and golf. An area of undisturbed marshland remains. 

Stanford Area

In memory of their deceased son, Leland Stanford Jr., Leland and Jane Stanford founded Stanford University in 1885. Their 8,180-acre vineyard and farmland was transformed into the Stanford area, which overlaps the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe territory, and now includes the campus, Sand Hill Road, a portion of El Camino Real, Town & Country Village, Stanford Shopping Center and El Palo Alto Park. After her son’s and husband’s deaths, Jane Stanford continued to support the growth and development of the university area. 

University Avenue

Named by Palo Alto co-founder Timothy Hopkins in 1889, University Avenue extends directly to Stanford University’s Palm Drive. Several landmark buildings remain, including the Squire House, the Forbes Residence and the Stanford Theater — an architectural treasure known for its iconic marquee and lavish vintage furnishings. Over the years, businesses have been continuously established on University Avenue, and it continues to be an emblem of Palo Alto and its culture.

Lucie Stern Community Center area

Levi Strauss’ widowed wife and heiress Lucie Stern, also known as Palo Alto’s fairy godmother, established and financed community-center building projects nestled in the area north of Old Palo Alto in the corner between the intersection of Embarcadero Road and Middlefield Road. These include the Lucie Stern Community Center, Children’s Theater, Children’s Library and Palo Alto Junior Museum & Zoo. Other locations in the area include the Palo Alto Art Center — originally the City Hall — Christmas Tree Lane on Fulton Street, Duveneck Elementary School and the Rinconada Pool. The community-center area offers a place for families and friends to enjoy both educational and extracurricular activities.

American football, or gridiron football, is a sport loosely derived from soccer and rugby. The first collegiate-level football game was in 1869 between New Jersey’s Rutgers University and Princeton University. There were 25 players per team, aiming to advance a round ball to the opposing side of the field without carrying it. Although that game was vastly different from modern football, it set the stage for America’s most popular sport. In 1880, Yale University player Walter Camp introduced 11 player teams and the “snap,” which involved the quarterback and the center player, initiating the start of an offensive play. Two years later, the rules were amended by Camp so that teams were limited to three downs, in which they had to advance a minimum of five yards in order to keep the ball. This led to the marking of yard lines in multiples of five, resulting in the name of gridiron football. Now, players are allotted four downs to advance a minimum of 10 yards.

High school football began in the early 20th century and has slightly different rules than collegiate football. Its rules are dictated by the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS). Some key differences between collegiate and preparatory football are quarter lengths, kickoff starting lines, touchback rules and penalties.

Gunn’s football team was established in 1964 with a small junior varsity (JV) team. In 1965, a varsity team was formed. The Gunn football team had a rough start—with three JV players being cut in 1964 for illegal alcohol use. Additionally, during its first season, the varsity team had a losing streak of 0-8. However, Gunn finally won their first varsity game against Carlmont in 1965, breaking Gunn football’s previously unsuccessful outcomes.

Although Gunn football is traditionally known to be less athletically gifted than its neighboring school, Palo Alto High School (Paly), the Gunn football team has won two league championships: one in 1971 and another one in 2021, as well as several California Interscholastic Federation-Central Coast Section (CCS) playoffs.

Varsity football player junior Nolan Tok believes football is an important component of high school, despite Gunn’s poor performance in recent games. “Compared to some other schools in the area, our team is not that great,” Tok said. “However in terms of the team itself, we still have fun just like any other team.”

Sports Commissioner senior Pooja Bucklin notes that football receives a significantly higher level of attention in comparison to other sports. “We have a lot of sports at Gunn that are really [good] that don’t get celebrated at all,” Bucklin said. “Our tennis team is really good. No one talks about it. Our girls water polo team is really good. They won a lot of titles, [yet] still a lot of the focus is on football.”

Gunn football commentator Chris Johnson speculates one reason behind football’s popularity in terms of fans and attendees is the fact that it is a very social sport. Fans are passionate about their team and a culture has formed between the various teams, fostering competition and deep loyalties. “There’s rivalry,” Johnson said. “There’s camaraderie. [It’s] a lot of fun.”

There are many traditions integrated into the culture of football such as tailgating: a pre-game ritual in which fans hang out, often barbecue food and dress up in fan gear. At Gunn, football games are one of the few chances outside of spirit weeks to dress up in different themes to showcase Gunn pride and have fun.

Although the number of players have decreased as time has progressed due to fears regarding serious injuries, football is still known as one of the most prominent high school sports. However, Johnson notes that other high school sports have also been gaining popularity in recent years. “For a long time, football was the big fall sport,” Johnson said. “Then water polo became more popular, and then lacrosse.”

Bucklin believes that in spite of the lack of attention towards other sports, football still deserves its popularity. “I think football is fairly emphasized [because] a lot of the kids on that team are not a part of other groups on campus,” she said. “Because it’s such a big team, it’s giving them a platform to be seen and share something about them. There [are] a ton of kids on that team that don’t do other stuff at Gunn and this is their way to be a part of the community.”

Overall, football will remain a central aspect of high school. Football games are an event where various subgroups of school life can unite and demonstrate school spirit. Tok explains that homecoming was a big influencing factor in his decision to pursue football. “The culture around football is pretty fun and lively,” Tok said. “Things like the Homecoming Game and the Paly game makes you want to play.”

Bucklin feels that any student can enjoy football, regardless of their level of understanding of the sport. “Football [is] a big sport that brings a lot of people together because it’s something you can have fun at, even if you don’t really get it,” she said. “You don’t even have to know what’s going on—you can just scream and it’ll work. That’s the [most fun] part about it. Football just really brings the community together.”

A prime example of this issue is in the textbook “World History” by William J. Duiker and Jackson J. Spielvogel, which is used in the yearlong World History course for freshmen and the semester-long Contemporary World History course for sophomores. The text covers events from prehistory to after the Cold War, including worldwide imperialism and colonial rule in Africa, India and Southeast Asia. On page 634 in the textbook, at the conclusion of the imperialism unit, Duiker and Spielvogel contend that “neither extreme position [of arguing for or against colonialism] is justified.” They argue that one can weigh the oppression and murder of millions against the “cross-cultural encounters” or “global economic development.” Such an argument grossly understates the vicious nature of imperialism and justifies the cruelty inflicted upon those in colonized countries. Granted, textbooks are meant to be objective and include a variety of perspectives. However, there is a difference between presenting motivations and justifying actions. There is no justification for killing or forcibly removing people from their homes. To add insult to injury, the passage cites a series of white men, neglecting to include the perspectives of prominent historians of color or even female historians.

This problem extends to the text for the AP U.S. History, in “The American Pageant, AP Edition” by David M. Kennedy and Lizabeth Cohen. Although the book has been updated over numerous editions, the text still contains a number of problematic passages, most notably about the treatment of Native Americans. On page 22, the book says that though “Spanish invaders did indeed kill, enslave and infect countless natives,” they also “grafted their culture, laws, religion and language onto a wide array of native societies, laying the foundations for a score of Spanish-speaking nations.” It then goes on to say that “[The] Spanish paid the Native Americans the high compliment of fusing with them through marriage and incorporating indigenous culture into their own.” Throughout the textbook, Kennedy and Cohen use the term “Indians” to refer to Native Americans, rather than “American Indians,” “Native Americans” or “indigenous peoples.” This is a single page of the book, yet it manages to mislabel an entire culture, say that the slaughter of said people was excusable for the pursuit of empire and imply that this group was lesser than the Spaniards. It’s easy to see why this text is appalling, especially considering how dependent AP U.S. History students are on textbook readings; “The American Pageant” is a staple of the curriculum.

The same issue holds with the English curriculum. The classics students read throughout high school are often revered for their vivid characterization or complex themes, though many are written by white authors and have racist elements in them. Take, for example, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” a foundational text about race in the Jim Crow South. While it has been taught for its good points for generations, it perpetuates the “white savior” narrative through one of its principal characters, Atticus Finch. Throughout the novel, he’s presented as “saving” the black man Tom Robinson, who has been wrongly convicted of raping a white woman. There are much more relevant books written by a diverse array of authors that discuss the same topics—Angie Thomas’s “The Hate U Give,” for one, or Bryan Stevenson’s “Just Mercy.” Learning about society through literature means learning about a variety of different racial groups from a variety of perspectives. How else is one to have a holistic view?

This isn’t to say that there hasn’t been progress. Both the English and history departments have taken steps to improve the situation. According to English Department Instructional Lead Paul Dunlap, teachers have been working to expand the pantheon of authors and place an emphasis on discussing issues about race in recent years. This has been especially true in the wake of the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020. Social Studies Department Instructional Lead Jeff Patrick noted that the history department also has conversations about the topics and curriculum at meetings, with the goal to approach racial issues in a way that promotes understanding of the motives behind actions without justifying the actions themselves. The Student Equity Committee at Gunn is involved in discussions about textbooks and curriculum as well. Flexibility in both departments makes supplementing the problematic textbooks and novels easier. Right now, the perspective for both history and English isn’t to remove, but to augment.

This augmentation, however, comes with its disadvantages. Giving teachers more freedom with which texts are used or how rigorously they are used could cause students’ experiences in history and English to vary considerably depending on what instructor they have. One teacher might choose to teach more texts with authors of color, while another might opt for less diverse books; one teacher could rely heavily on the World History textbook, while another might not. The lack of standardization, while beneficial in some respects, means that some students might go through their English courses with less exposure to writers and characters of color; in history, they might see their culture misrepresented.

So what’s the solution? It’s important to acknowledge that there is currently a nationwide discussion on this topic. While some are electing to remove texts that contain offensive material from libraries, others are banning teaching critical race theory. It’s necessary, then, to approach the matter carefully. This isn’t a call for all problematic textbooks to be thrown out the window. Rather, the goal is to bring attention to the issues that are present, in the hopes that students and teachers can spend more time discussing this inside and outside the classroom. Conversations and academic discourse foster greater curriculum changes and broad education. After all, the texts societies use and how they use them reflect their values and ideals as a whole. Haven’t people always said the pen is mightier than the sword?

Why are there so many prominent parallels throughout history? What leads history to seemingly repeat itself? And, if “those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it,” what’s next for us?

Here are three similarities the 2020s share with the late 20th century; perhaps, through these similarities, we can gain some degree of insight.

Government Distrust

Extraordinary circumstances call for extraordinary leadership. It’s no surprise, then, that the federal government’s dismal response to a raging, uncontrollable disease has inspired mistrust of the government, especially among marginalized communities. Though once again, we’re not just talking about 2020—we’re also talking about the global HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, which has claimed the lives of almost 800,000 Americans, as of 2018.

It didn’t have to be that way.

Dr. Timothy Seelig, the Conductor of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, who is HIV positive and lived through the AIDS epidemic in Texas, is unrestrained in his criticism of the government from that period. “Had the government paid any attention, we would have massively fewer deaths,” he said. “The government didn’t kick in, didn’t even notice [and] wouldn’t even say the word [HIV/AIDS] for so long. And all of the things that we did discover then, the cocktail of medications, and then ultimately a maintenance drug—all of those things could have happened so much sooner.” That negligence planted seeds of distrust in the LGBTQ+ community.

Seelig sees obvious parallels between HIV/AIDS and the current pandemic facing America. Even 40 years later, according to Seelig, the uncertainty at the beginning of a pandemic stays the same. “The early days of COVID were like the early days of AIDS; in the early days of AIDS, nobody knew how you could get it,” Seelig said. “Everyone was afraid to touch anybody or touch anything. People were completely freaked out by touch.”

Seelig also draws numerous distinctions between then and now, specifically with the push for a vaccine. In the 80s, the government stood by idly as AIDS progressed into a global epidemic. This time, they scrambled—the project to create a vaccine was literally called Operation Warp Speed. “The whole world wanted this vaccine; and the whole world wanted this to happen,” he said. “And the whole world wasn’t even paying attention when AIDS became a pandemic. So yes, the loss of life could have been drastically less.”

Since its start in 1978, the Chorus has lost over 300 members to the disease.

Seelig remembers the impact the losses had on him and the chorus. “The chorus was in every stage of grief all the time,” he said. “When you were shocked by a death, and you moved into anger about that, someone else died, and while you were shocked at that one, you’d already moved on to bargaining for the first person. We couldn’t catch our breath. We couldn’t rest long enough to even come up for air and know what was happening.”

It’s not just the LGBTQ+ community; there’s also residual mistrust of medical institutions in the Black community. A recent study released by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases noted over half of the Black adults in the U.S. are hesitant to receive the COVID-19 vaccine; only 16% of that same demographic believe the vaccine will be distributed equally.

The Rise of New Media

The evolution of media, too, has played a dramatic role in shaping the late 20th century as well as today.

While it’s true that 2020 was mostly downhill from its inception, with the 21st century explosion of social media sites and a 24-hour news cycle, it’s worth begging the question: is more happening, or is the presence of social media just making us hyper-aware of everything occurring in the world? Especially with the pandemic, when screen time has skyrocketed, we have now become more dependent on our devices to keep busy in lieu of human contact, as well as to deliver us a barrage of constant updates, welcome or not.

Along with amplifying stress and anxiety, new forms of media have also fanned the flames of our country’s polarization. “The internet allows us to engage in the ways that are the most seductive to us and our psychologies,” Foreign Policy Honors teacher Tara Firenzi said. “And I think we want to get into arguments; we are drawn to conflict. The internet unfortunately brings out this part of us that explodes things rather than tries to look at them in nuanced and careful and thoughtful and empathetic ways.”

Again, 1968 presents a striking similarity: thanks to the advances of television technology, the Vietnam War was the first war broadcast directly into the homes of the American public. Seeing the horrors of war live and in technicolor strongly shifted public opinion and support for the war. Footage of young soldiers, thrust unwillingly into a pointless war, led anti-war activists
to rally moderates with calls of “Bring back our boys!” Meanwhile, staunch war supporters used those same images to argue marching against the war was an affront to the troops and all they were serving for.

The rise of social media—and social media’s role in shaping the narrative on recent events—has had a similar effect on us in modern times.“I think we are moving more left and more right,” Firenzi said. “Which is probably not the best way forward.” AP United States History teacher Christopher Johnson echoed Firenzi’s sentiment. “There were a lot of conspiracy theorists on social media talking about if this election does not go for Donald Trump, then there’ll be another Civil War,” Johnson said.

A New Wave of Activism

It was in decades such as the ‘60s, as polarized as they were, that many young people became optimistic, unabashedly idealistic and dared to hope for better. Back then, such individuals were labeled as hippies and famously dismissed by Nixon as a “vocal minority” fighting against the “silent majority.” “Even those more left-wing movements in the US in the 1960s were not a large segment of the population,” Johnson said. “And that’s what conservatives really focused on—the silent majority, those people who
just wanted to keep doing what they’re doing, raise their families, maintain their jobs, and keep a roof over their head, and [who] don’t really want dramatic change.”

In much of the same way, the same phenomenon is still seen today: despite endless vilification of the progressive cause as imminently and unstoppably dangerous by conservatives, the movement is still a small and burgeoning one. For every one breakout, young progressive politician who has successfully overturned a moderate Democrat in a primary election (think Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), there have likely been tens of cases where such young progressives failed—in fact, now Congresswoman Cori Bush lost her first primary election to moderate Democrat Lacy Clay in 2018 before taking his seat in 2020.

Youth-led groups are often ridiculed for being idealistic, or being naive. Where have we heard that before? “I think that the big mistake that has been made, generation after generation, is the immediate reaction of dismissiveness [to deviations from the norm],” Johnson said. “So the younger generation comes up with an idea. And the old ones say, ‘Oh, no, that’s never gonna work.’ Well, how do you know until you try?”

In times of crisis, it can be rewarding to turn to history as a learning tool, helping to both avoid past mistakes and replicate past successes. As panic in response to COVID-19, a pandemic that recently caused the shutdown of all Palo Alto Unified School District schools till April 13, rises, this process becomes incredibly important as a mechanism to explore what each of us can do to improve the situation. Through an analysis of four major health crises, including the Spanish Flu, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), the Swine Flu and the H2N2 virus, commonly referred to as Asian Flu, as well as comparisons to modern-day COVID-19, it is possible to learn many lessons about how to prevent a pandemic. 

COVID-19 is believed to have originated in a “wet market” in Wuhan, China,  possibly coming from transmission between the animals there and humans, but probably originating in bats. SARS, which is thought to have also originated in bats, first saw cases in Zhongshan City, China possibly due to other “wet markets” there while the H2N2 virus, which came from ducks, was first seen in Guizhou, China. The Swine Flu started in Veracruz, Mexico near a pig farm (and the Spanish Flu’s origin is mostly unknown but some hypotheses include a British army base in France, Fort Riley in Kansas and, more recently, somewhere in Northern China). 

This seems to suggest that the highest risk areas for the start of epidemics tend to be places where humans are in close contact with live animals, such as a farm or “wet market.” These diseases tend to be zoonotic, meaning they spread from non-human animals to humans. In fact, it is possible for zoonotic diseases to show no symptoms at all in the non-human animal but severely affect humans due to differences in immune systems. 

One of the most important parts of the timeline of a pandemic is its “spread,” or what allowed it to go from one case to thousands. One reason is close proximity to other people. The Spanish Flu is one of the clearest examples of this, as it is mostly thought to have moved through World War 1 bunkers where soldiers were shoved into cramped places and spent weeks living inches away from each other. It infected over 500 million people and killed over 50 million, globally lowering the average life expectancy by 12 years. 

Still, one of the things to watch out for in comparisons between pandemics, especially between COVID-19 and the Spanish Flu, is the time period during which the pandemic occurred. In 1918, the medical field had not advanced nearly as far as it has today. Key innovations such as respirators or more protective medical gear were simply not available, meaning that more people got infected and treatment was less effective. That’s not to say that COVID-19 is not bad, it is a fast-spreading dangerous virus, but that its spread (and casualty rate) is inhibited by technology that did not exist at the time of the Spanish Flu. This lack of technology helped allow for the Spanish Flu to spread rapidly and kill over 50 million people.

Specific features of each of these viruses also made their transmission more likely. One of the reasons COVID-19 is spreading faster than SARS is because, according to Vox, it replicates in the upper respiratory tract rather than the lower one, allowing it to transmit even without the host showing any symptoms. It’s very likely that teenagers and young children may not show any symptoms at all but act as carriers to the disease, spreading it to people that may be more affected, such as elderly grandparents. The Swine Flu, a strain of influenza, was also special due to its ability to infect people of various age ranges rather than other strains of influenza which disproportionately affected those over 60 years old. 

The next step in the timeline of a virus is containment: how did government or social policies help to curb the virus’ spread? Quartz’s article on the Spanish Flu, which compares the spread of the flu in St. Louis, Missouri and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania helps to highlight the necessity for social distancing. Specifically, while Philadelphia held a war march of over 200,000 people while in the middle of the pandemic and ended up overflowing its hospitals with cases, St. Louis was able to effectively reduce its cases by closing most public centers (including schools) in the first two days, and banning public gatherings of over 20 people. 

This concept, commonly referred to as “social distancing,” seems to be the best way to combat contagiousness. Whether implemented through government policy, like the recently announced lockdown of all non-essential Bay Area businesses, or through social norms where people agree to limit the spread of the disease, it can be one of the only ways to at least slow down the spread. 

However, self-quarantine requires trust of governments: both to believe that the measures are necessary and that the crisis is real. Some countries attempt to bypass that necessity for trust by brutally enforcing policies, often leading to a more effective containment but worse quality of life. For example, according to Eugenia Tognotti’s article “Lessons from the History of Quarantine,” Chinese police during the SARS went as far as to install Web cameras in homes to maintain the quarantine, while also imposing harsh punishments such as the death penalty on those who violated the quarantine. Although these policies helped to significantly reduce the spread of the virus, it is up to the individual to decide whether invasion of privacy is worth that reduction. Still, self-quarantine will always be effective by limiting interactions and stopping the infections from getting worse.

The final step of a pandemic is its resolution, typically when the World Health Organization (WHO) declares it to be in its post-pandemic stage. This doesn’t mean that cases don’t continue to happen, but rather that there are no large or unusual outbreaks of the virus. Each of the four pandemics assessed ended in a couple years, with the Spanish Flu lasting from 1918 to 1920, the Swine Flu pandemic lasting from 2009 to 2010, the H2N2 pandemic lasting from 1957 to 1958 and SARS lasting from 2002 to 2004.
None of these resolutions came directly after one significant step taken, but rather individual events that compounded together to inhibit the spread. Developed immunity, the rise of vaccines, quarantine policies and even changing weather all played a part in finally ending these pandemics. When we look at COVID-19, it is our responsibility to each individually do our best to help this crisis reach that post-pandemic level quickly. By following policies set forth by local governments, practicing “social distancing” and listening to other key lessons from history, we can each make an impact on working toward the resolution of this crisis.

Google is one of the most widely known companies in the world. Since its creation, Google has steadily taken over the internet as the world’s number one search engine. Google currently holds 89 percent of the search engine market share, with its many other services including email, chat, hardware, music and more.

This multibillion dollar company began as a research project in the Stanford University dorms of Sergey Brin and Larry Page in 1998. They created a processor that used backlinks to locate specific data from the mass of information on the internet, which was much more efficient than methods at the time.

Google’s headquarters, Googleplex, is located in Mountain View and was purchased by the company in 2006. The Googleplex campus sprawls over a large area of land, including a park. Google is ranked the number one company to work for by Business Insider and is  famous for its brightly colored and playground-like interior. Not only does Google offer gourmet meals, employees can enjoy yoga classes, massages, fitness rooms and company bikes.