You can never go wrong with a sandwich. As long as you have the ingredients—which, of course, are totally up to you—a sandwich can be made and packaged in under three minutes. Some common and delicious options are a classic peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a ham and cheese sandwich or a BLT with chipotle aioli. Pair it with some fruit, and you’re good to go!

Instant Noodles

For the lazy student, instant noodles can be a delicious lifesaver. Although they are not the healthiest option, instant noodles are easy to make. Pop them into the microwave or quickly cook them in boiling water. When finished, place the noodles into a thermos so you can pack it easily. If you’re looking to spice your ramen up, consider adding soy sauce, an egg or some brown sugar for a richer experience.

Pre-Packaged Salad

If you’re looking for a nutritious meal that skips the lengthy preparation process, pre-packaged salad is for you. Green, leafy and somewhat appetizing, pre-packaged salads fit easily into your backpack or lunchbox and are easy to come across at any grocery store, such as Trader Joe’s. With ranch or a simple vinaigrette, you can turn a box of leaves into a hearty meal.

Leftovers

For mornings when cooking is not an option, leftovers are a great choice. Dinner leftovers are often healthier and more filling than other lunches, and they are a great way to clear space in the fridge without being wasteful. Whether from a recent hearty breakfast or yesterday’s dinner, leftovers can be easily packaged and transported.

Almost everyone—male-identifying or not—has been called “a guy” at least once in their life, whether it’s through the welcoming words of a teacher, an enthusiastic text or an obnoxious shout across the hall. To most, this word is just that: a common greeting.

It’s become so commonplace that many don’t even consider the genders of the people they’re referring to, and if they do, they find no issues with it. Others, however, disagree, citing the significant discomfort and exclusion it causes; for some, being frequently misgendered is nothing short of erasure.

Language undeniably impacts every aspect of our lives, even if we barely think about it that way. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to tell our parents that we love them (or gossip fruitfully with friends); we wouldn’t be able to complain endlessly about homework or make blunt jokes about others. While language is often used in the same way—to communicate—the manner of getting the message across varies at an immeasurable level.

It may seem trivial to focus on seemingly superficial colloquial phrasing and ancient gendered language systems; however, at the very least, it’s important to consider how much it impacts others. At its core, even the smallest differences in language can contribute to a variety of perspectives and meanings, many of which can be harmful or outright incorrect.

AAVE

The most profound—and possibly the most well-known—impact of language differences is made clear in African American Vernacular English (AAVE), a dialect commonly used by Black Americans that has recently been the subject of numerous cultural appropriation debates. With its distinct sentence structure and dropped consonants, AAVE has been around since the 17th century, stemming from Africans that were brought over from Africa, the Caribbean and South America, according to Stanford Linguistics Professor John Rickford. The dialect was formed in an environment of oppression—one with many speakers and very few teachers.

Rickford noted that, to African Americans, AAVE is a more informal, conversational dialect they may use when speaking to others in the same community. Non-African Americans, however, view AAVE differently. “People tend to think AAVE is careless and unstructured,” Rickford said. “But it’s just like any other language in that it has rules. You can’t just make things up.”

This faulty perception is undoubtedly harmful for AAVE speakers. According to Rickford, AAVE is often seen as “lazy” and “unprofessional,” making it harder for speakers to earn the credibility that they deserve. In his explanation, Rickford cited the trial of George Zimmerman for the murder of Black American Trayvon Martin in 2012, when Rachel Jeantel, the leading prosecution witness, gave her testimony in AAVE. The jurors dismissed her vital testimony and acquitted Zimmerman, likely because they could not “hear, understand, or believe her,” Rickford and linguist Sharese King wrote in a paper.

Naima Small, founder of the Instagram platform “Dear Dark Skinned Girls,” expressed a similar sentiment and argued that this skewed perception limits opportunities for AAVE speakers. “I think it harms the Black community largest because [of] that idea [that] you speak AAVE equals you can’t possibly be educated [or] have anything to say,” Small said.

Most recently, social media apps such as Twitter and TikTok have pushed many AAVE terms like “chile,” “finna” and “periodt,” as well as AAVE’s unique sentence structure, into the spotlight. These terms are now being used by everyone—not just African Americans. For instance, Asian American actress Nora Lum, more commonly known as Awkwafina, is notorious for having a “persona [that] has veered too close to black aesthetics for comfort,” according to Vulture Magazine.

Rickford, on his end, doesn’t find this adoption very problematic, yet noted that some AAVE speakers do. “[These speakers say,] ‘They are taking our language without paying their dues,’” he said.

Small echoed Rickford’s general indifference to the widespread use of AAVE terms, but added that it’s important for all users to understand the origins of these terms. What frustrates Small the most about the adoption, however, is that these terms are viewed as a “trend” instead of a lasting part of the dialect. “What really gets me mad [is] that people are like, ‘Who still says chile?’” she said. “Like, [chile] wasn’t just some kind of trend.”

Gendered Nouns

Of course, it’s not just dialects that can shift meaning—entire languages can be constructed around gender and perpetrate sexism. In most romance languages—French, Spanish and Portuguese, to name a few—nouns are assigned a gender and are preceded by one of the two definite articles: the feminine or the masculine. Usually, the gendering of nouns isn’t problematic; very few complaints have been raised about the femininity of a cup, for instance. When it comes to professions or descriptions, however, the negative effects of this foundation become clear. In languages such as Spanish and Portuguese, there are multiple options used to refer to an occupation. But when referring to groups of people—or someone whose gender is unknown—the masculine form becomes the norm. For example, a group of actors and actresses is “los actores” in Spanish, even though an actress is “la actriz.” “If there’s a convention of picking the masculine form as default, then you’re reinforcing a notion that the normative person in this profession is male, and you only go out of yourway to say, ‘Oh, this is a female author or a female teacher or a female doctor’ when that’s true,” University of Washington Computational Linguistics Professor Emily Bender said.

This clear lack of lingual representation may perpetuate harmful stereotypes about the gender compositions of professions that are outright false or discourage women, who frequently hear these masculine forms being used, from pursuing certain careers. “[Women] can feel sort of out of place,” Bender said.

Furthermore, romance languages have recently faced extensive criticism due to their lack of non-binary pronouns. The Spanish language, for example, contains only two pronouns: el, the masculine, and ella, the feminine. This system only functions if there are only two genders; these pronouns don’t describe non-binary or genderqueer people, or people whose genders lie outside the gender binary, according to Stanford Youth Development Manager Ana Lilia Soto, who works in the mental health field. “It can be super problematic for young people who might not identify [with the gender binary] or are more fluid with how they describe themselves, and it can be off-putting,” she said. “It’s kind of like asking somebody, ‘Well, where’s my community if I don’t identify with this or with that?” To adapt, many Hispanics have adopted the pronoun “elle,” or the plural “elles,” as a gender neutral option.

Similarly, for people of Latin American descent, the all-inclusive term “Latinx” was coined to replace “Latino” and “Latina.” Yet according to Pew Research, even though one in four Latin Americans have heard of the term, only 3% use it. World Language Instructional Leader Liz Matchett, who teaches Spanish, noted that making changes in favor of inclusivity will always be difficult—no matter what, not everyone will agree. “There [are people] that say, ‘Don’t do it because the people in charge of language say that you just need to do this, and language doesn’t make any kind of political or gender judgment statements,’” she said. “It’s just saying that this is [how it is]. And then there’s the people who say, ‘Don’t even tell me how to do this because you aren’t even part of my culture. I don’t want to be told by anyone what the right way is.’”

English teacher Diane Ichikawa brought up another concern that comes with adapting these languages: fluidity. “It’s a necessity to take care of everybody who’s in our community and in our society,” she said. “And at the same time, linguistically, [a] roadblock to that is that [it’s not] fluid to say ‘Latinx’ like that. How do you even say that in some languages, right?” In response to the somewhat confusing pronunciation of “Latinx,” some Spanish speakers have adopted “Latine” as a more fluid alternative.

To address these recent debates over the romance languages, Gunn’s Languages department has encouraged teachers to be more gender-neutral. According to Matchett, a steering committee is currently developing a plan to bring to the district in hopes of establishing more inclusive practices in the language departments. “I haven’t ever done anything formalized with my department, but I have said in passing to teachers and especially teachers who may have non-gendered students in their classes or transgender students [to] find a way to be inclusive,” Matchett said. “I don’t care what it is, I don’t care what you follow, but make sure you find a way to be inclusive.”

Matchett acknowledges, however, that there isn’t one correct way to address the issue of inclusivity. “I’m not going to advocate for one way to do it because there isn’t an agreement in the language world about the right way to do it,” she said.

Colloquial Terms

Gendered language also rears its head in colloquial terms such as “you guys” and “dude.” Though frequently used to refer to people of all genders, both of these terms have masculine roots. “The singular word guy is definitely masculine,” Bender said. “If you say, ‘I met a guy the other day,’ most English speakers are going to imagine a male-presenting person.” Using these terms to refer to non-male individuals may lead to discomfort and exclusion, among other things. In a video for Makers.com, author and activist Alice Walker argued that the continued use of these masculine terms, especially by women themselves, is only due to a “fear of feminism” or a desire to ignore any sentiments of feminism. Others raised concerns that these terms may only exacerbate any underlying sexism from earlier centuries. For transgender people specifically, these masculine terms may misgender them, serving as an unwelcome reminder of a past they’re looking to forget.

Ichikawa noted, however, that these terms aren’t problematic to everyone. “You can make a lot of arguments that it’s fine [and that] we need to be okay with that and not so thin-skinned,” she said.

These terms are so strongly embedded into our everyday language that it makes any awareness of their impacts—and tangible change—rather difficult. “Our language has become so colloquial that we don’t really think about it,” Ichikawa said. Still, many people are looking for change and have adopted gender-neutral terms such as “folks” and “y’all.”

Gunn, meanwhile, is trying to make inclusive practices the norm. On March 21, the Student Executive Council, along with Adolescent Counseling Services and Outlet, hosted a Pride Week Livestream where they provided a list of more inclusive alternative words to refer to relatives and friends. The list included terms such as “partner” in place of “husband” or “wife,” “folks” and “everyone” in place of “you guys,” and “sibling” in place of “brother” or “sister.”

Mental Health

Language’s impacts, of course, don’t stop there; mental health—something Gunn has been striving to address—is widely affected, particularly in regards to terminology surrounding suicide. In colloquial language, mental health presentations and informational articles, we often refer to someone “committing suicide,” a phrase Soto and countless others have pushed back on. “When we think of ‘commit suicide,’ there’s this criminal act that happens, like people commit murder [and] people commit burglaries,” Soto said. “It’s a criminal thing.”

Instead, medical and mental health professionals have shifted towards using “died by suicide” whenever possible—a change that emphasizes that suicide is a public health issue and a change that, according to Soto, others should follow. “I think it’s really about acknowledging that this person died by suicide because of things that they were going through and [that] this is an action that was taken,” Soto said.

Soto also notes that referring to suicide attempts as “successful” or “unsuccessful” has been problematic. These terms, according to the Mental Health Center of Denver, imply that suicide is something to be accomplished. “Is there a really ‘congratulatory’ [or] a ‘successful’ suicide?” Soto said.

Instead, people should opt for using more direct language like “suicide attempt” in place of “unsuccessful attempt” and “died by suicide” in place of “successful attempt.” This language, Soto added, helps make dialogue about suicide and other mental health issues much less ambiguous. “I think the more direct that we can be with getting people who do have suicidal ideation [to engage] in their own decision making, as well as [demystifying] that to the general public, I think it’s helpful,” she said.

From the exclusion fostered by starkly gendered romance languages to faulty, damaging misconceptions of AAVE, language’s deeper implications—although sometimes difficult to recognize—assert themselves in meaningful ways.

Thankfully, some progress is being made. Linguists are adopting new words and phrases to minimize the exclusionary effects gendered language has, and are increasing general awareness of language’s effects through numerous articles and social movements.

Gunn’s teachers, in particular, have attempted to make the classroom more welcoming by altering their language. “As a teacher, I will accept you for whatever you decide to use as your pronouns and the way to speak about it, and I’m not going to force you to choose a pronoun that doesn’t feel right to you,” Matchett said.

Despite these recent efforts to make language more inclusive and direct, there is still more work to be done. “It is [clear] that a lot of our social world is constructed through language,” Bender said. “So in that sense, [the] categories we experience and the way we understand that people in relationships around us is very much influenced by not only what we name and how we talk about things, but also [language] variation.”

A myriad of harmonizing voices, singing a creative jingle, flood into the microphone: this is the way the most recent episode of “Fools R Us”—a podcast created by junior Quincy Rosenzweig and Gunn alumna Katie Brown—opens.

The Holiday Special marks the ninth episode of the podcast since it was created in July with the hopes of keeping in contact with others during a time of social isolation. While many other podcasts are created with a purpose or message in mind, Brown notes that “Fools R Us” is simply produced for fun. As such, she usually ignores the number of viewers. “We don’t care that much if people are watching [the podcast]; it is more just to chat and share what’s going on,” Rosenzweig said.

The name “Fools R Us,” which is derived from the popular island survival TV show “Survivor,” is quite indicative of Rosenzweig’s and Brown’s favorite discussion topic: “Survivor.” But in addition to ranking and debriefing of the new seasons, Rosenzweig and Brown enjoy discussing unpopular opinions, ranking desserts and simply talking about life. By doing so, Rosenzweig hopes that the podcast is a way for listeners to relax. “If they’re stressed out, or anything, it’s just a nice way to sort of chill,” he said.

Looking forward, Brown hopes to continue producing “Fools R Us.” “I think one of the biggest goals is for us to continue [the podcast] because I was in Palo Alto this semester for college, but now I’m going to college,” she said. “So, it might be a little trickier [to produce], but I believe we’ll survive.”

Society360

When you hit play, four steady beats fill the room, followed by an introduction: “Hi everyone! My name is Anshika, and welcome to ‘Society360.’” “Society360”—a podcast created to dissect pressing societal issues—has this same start to each of its 11 episodes.

Along with a few of her peers, senior Anshika Agarwal started “Society360” after COVID-19 spotlighted numerous societal
problems. “I really wanted to help break these issues down into different perspectives and be able to analyze them from different angles,” Agarwal said.

In breaking down these issues, Agarwal and the rest of the “Society360” team hope to spark meaningful discussion to inspire change. “The point of the podcast is not to oversimplify or trivialize these issues, because the work doesn’t end there,” she said. “Instead, we recognize that becoming aware is only the tip of the iceberg, in terms of advocating for large changes. For us, getting people to the first step of activism is accomplishing our goal.”

On their podcast, “Society360” has featured various individuals, ranging from student activists to Stanford professors, each of them bringing their own perspective to the table. Their episodes have discussed issues such as climate change, educational equity and the impacts of COVID-19.

In addition to their podcast, “Society360” has a blog and an Instagram page that also bring attention to the pressing issues at hand. Still, Agarwal believes that podcasts are a unique form of media that allows speakers to express themselves through thought-provoking words. “One thing that’s really unique about the podcast is that we really get to use our voices and actually have conversations and discussions that we can bring to wide audiences—a social media post or a blog post or a news article on its own can’t really have that same effect,” she said. “So, really using our voices and having important conversations that can be listened to by a lot of people, I think, has a lot of power.”

Your Confidants

With a simple play on words, the name “Your Confidants” is emblematic of the message the “Your Confidants” podcast hopes to spread: self-confidence. Released in August by juniors Leah Kozakevich and Soleil Lemons, the podcast serves to inspire those who may be struggling with body positivity and self-love.

While participating in an entrepreneurship summer program, Kozakevich noticed a lack of teen representation and discussion in body positivity podcasts. “I’ve always seen people talk about it, but they’re in a little bit of an older age demographic than us,” she said. “We didn’t see much [body positivity discussion] coming directly from high schoolers.” As a result, Lemons and Kozakevich created the podcast to reach out to the surrounding teen population.

Although it’s aimed towards teens, Lemons believes listening to “Your Confidants” is still beneficial for other age groups. “I think it’s good for other people to listen to it as well, just because they get a perspective that they didn’t have before,” she said.

With casual conversation on a multitude of topics, from skin imperfections to modern beauty standards and individualism in today’s society, Lemons and Kozakevich hope that their 11 episodes will be relatable, relaxing and eye-opening. To gain traction, Lemons and Kozakevich utilize their Instagram page to not only promote “Your Confidants,” but to further spread their message. Their Instagram page boasts over 250 followers and numerous inspiring quotes.

Although exposure is important, Kozakevich argues that impact is much more meaningful. “Even if a few people can just listen and benefit from anything we say, I think that’s being successful in a way of its own,” she said.

Superintendent Don Austin’s reopening plan was first introduced at the Feb. 9 PAUSD board meeting, but is contingent on Santa Clara County being in the red tier of California’s COVID-19 tracking system for at least five days. If carried out, the plan would allow students to choose whether they would like to return on campus two days a week.

According to Assistant Principal Michalis Gordon, the opt-in and opt-out system will offer students with last names beginning with A through K the option of attending school in-person on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, while the remainder of students will be able to choose to attend school in-person on Thursdays and Fridays. During the day, students will move between classrooms; however, classes will still be held on Zoom. 

Principal Wendy Stratton emphasized that in-person attendance is voluntary, but whether a student’s decision must be made for the entire week or just the day is still undecided. Ladomirak, too, highlighted the voluntary aspect of the plan. “I cannot stress enough that this is a personal choice for every student,” Ladomirak said. “Every student has different needs.” 

While the master schedule will not change, students are required to stay on campus during the school day. Stratton confirmed that students leaving campus for the day would not be able to return except for sports practices and other after-school activities. 

Students that have a prep during the day (periods 2, 3 or 6) are required to remain in a designated space on campus during their prep; students with preps at the beginning or end of the day (periods 1, 4, 5 and 7) are allowed to arrive at the start of their first class or leave early. Gunn Together and SELF will alternate between Wednesdays and Fridays each week so that students will have an opportunity to attend SELF in-person if they choose to. In between classes, students will be asked to walk in designated directions and maintain all social distancing protocols. 

According to Assistant Principal Leonel Argumedo, PAUSD has implemented a variety of safety precautions for both students and staff during this reopening. “There’s been a lot done to ensure everyone’s safety on campus,” Argumedo said. 

Each morning, students, teachers and staff will be required to fill out a health screening questionnaire to ensure that they have not been experiencing symptoms of COVID-19 or been in contact with people that have been. In addition, desks with plexiglass dividers will be assigned and be spaced six feet apart. Each class will also have upgraded HVAC systems or air purifiers, hand sanitizer and a variety of masks. Furthermore, starting on Feb. 28, teachers who live or work in Santa Clara County can make an appointment to get vaccinated for COVID-19. 

In the event that a student or staff member contracts COVID-19, PAUSD has a 3-scenario plan. If a student or staff member presents symptoms of COVID-19 or answers “yes” to any of the questions in the daily health screener, they will be sent home and asked to be tested. Classroom instruction will continue for the remainder of students. If someone (like a family member) in close contact with a student or staff member tests positive for COVID-19, the student or staff member will be sent home and asked to be tested. Even if they test negative, they will still be required to quarantine at home for 14 days or until the infected person completes their quarantine to prevent any future infection. If a student or staff member tests positive for COVID-19, they will be sent home and asked to quarantine for 14 days or seven days after symptoms have disappeared. Any school-based close contacts will be notified, instructed to get tested and asked to quarantine. Both the school administration and the public health department will be notified.

To enforce these protocols, there will be at least three supervisors and teachers on campus during breaks to monitor student behavior; however, Gordon stressed the ultimate responsibility fell to the students to adhere to guidelines. “We are going to rely on you, the student body, to enforce these protocols you know and for you to set the example for those who might forget to wear [their] mask when we quickly step out of the classroom,” Gordon said.

In many regards, the rushing highway traffic represents affluence and comfortable middle-class life: the fleet of sedans and SUVs making their way up and down Highway 101 boast passengers working in the world’s most affluent tech companies and high-end San Francisco businesses. Indeed, Palo Alto, the common destination of such travelers, is itself a hotbed of wealth—in 2018, city residents’ median household income was more than double the national median.

Yet less noticeably, Highway 101 remains the de facto divide between affluent Palo Alto and East Palo Alto, a city with an estimated poverty rate of 12.6% and a place known as the per-capita murder leader of the U.S. in 1992. Although East Palo Alto has made encouraging progress in safety and decreasing the city’s poverty level, such vast disparity is far from a coincidence. In fact, this artificial divide is caused by an extensive history of racial segregation that has long infiltrated the community.

A multitude of discriminatory housing practices, such as restrictive deeds and redlining, have contributed to vast educational and socioeconomic inequalities—and the implications of such practices, far from being relics of a bygone era, threaten to rear their heads once more in the current debate over who should have access to Foothills Park.

A history of housing segregation

Despite spurring quintessential Silicon Valley innovation and laying claim to a seemingly progressive community, the Bay Area was not—and still is not—immune to the gentrification and racial segregation that plagued cities all over the country.

During the economic boom following World War II, minority families began flooding into the Bay Area to look for a place to settle. However, they were met with widespread resistance: in Palo Alto, certain properties in multiple neighborhoods subdivided from 1925 to 1950 had deed restrictions specifying that “no person not wholly of the white caucasian race shall use or occupy such property unless such person or persons are employed as servants of the occupants,” according to the website Palo Alto History.org.

Social studies teacher Laurel Howard, a Palo Alto resident since childhood, recalls that bylaws embedded in the deeds of nearby houses were surprisingly commonplace. “My parents own a house in Palo Alto,” she said. “When they bought the house, [it was] actually written into their deed that they can’t sell the house to a person of color.”

A similar practice of barring property sales to people of color was in place near Stanford University’s campus. During World War II, the Peninsula Housing Association of Palo Alto purchased a large amount of land to build 400 houses in response to the housing shortages at the time. In their bylaws and deeds, the association incorporated a quota system promising that the proportion of Black homeowners on their land would not exceed the proportion of Black individuals in all of California. Later, they sold their land to a private developer with a Federal Housing Administration (FHA) agreement detailing that no properties could be sold to any Black individuals.

As a result, people of color were prohibited from settling in most Palo Alto neighborhoods. Left with no other options, minority families turned to a nearby area, the soon-to-be called East Palo Alto, where housing prices were lower and housing restrictions were less frequent.

Although these types of racial restrictions were outlawed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1948, de facto restrictions nevertheless persisted through bylaws and deeds. The effects have cascaded to from the modern-day divide: houses were often passed through generations, creating the segregated community seen today.

Discrimination and FHA redlining

Of course, these practices of racial segregation weren’t just limited to Palo Alto. In 1934, the FHA was established on a nationwide scale. Originally, the agency was created to improve housing standards and increase employment in the midst of the Great Depression; in order to do so, the FHA worked with real estate companies to provide loans to potential homeowners.

Real estate companies, however, wanted a guarantee that potential homeowners would actually pay back their loans; thus, the federal government marked out neighborhoods to provide “risk ratings” that would judge which neighborhoods would pay back loans on time, resulting in a process marred by racism. “The neighborhoods that tended to be the most safe investments [for real estate companies] tended to be neighborhoods with that very strict, stereotypical cookie-cutter white family, because those were socially seen as more respectable and safer,” Howard said. Neighborhoods seen as “high risk” were outlined in red lines, leading to the term of “redlining.” Neighborhoods of color were outlined in red more often than not, leaving such areas deeply segregated for years to come.

In nearby San Francisco, for example, 87% of previously redlined neighborhoods are still classified today as low-income, according to the Urban Displacement Project. Other nearby cities subjected to redlining policies in the past include San Jose, Oakland and Berkeley.

Some neighborhoods in Palo Alto, however, were less segregated than others. “The Greenmeadow neighborhood was more integrated,” Howard said. “However, just because they would sell the house [to people of color], doesn’t mean that [they] had equal access to it.”

Setbacks faced by minority families, such as the lack of access to loans, still played an influential role in housing settlement; even if families were allowed to live in a neighborhood, they often could not afford to do so.

Redlining was ultimately made illegal with the Federal Fair Housing Act in 1968, a ban that was later reinforced by the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975, which required banks to report their public loan data. Yet the damage was done: only 1.6% of Palo Alto residents are Black, according to the 2019 U.S. Census estimate.

East Palo Alto gentrification

Through both discriminatory deeds and illegal redlining practices, the divide between East Palo Alto and Palo Alto widened in the years following World War II. During the 1960s and 1970s, Palo Alto began to thrive. The technology industry was booming and Stanford University became a premier institution, attracting professors, students and innovators alike. However, housing prices remained steep, and the discriminatory practices kept many from settling in Palo Alto. “East Palo Alto, right next door, became the space where people who are coming to this region, either to work as domestic servants or even people who are coming to be graduate students at Stanford, [lived],” Howard said.

Yet East Palo Alto was not incorporated as a city until 1983, denying it the money and resources that would have helped it advance. Former Stanford Dean of Freshmen Julie Lythcott-Haims argued the decision it left East Palo Alto free to be preyed on by developers. “[Developers thought,] ‘There’s no land left on the Peninsula, so we better start buying up East Palo Alto,’” Lythcott-Haims said. “And then East Palo Alto got gentrified.”

Gentrification is the practice of reforming an area or neighborhood to conform to the current taste of society; in other words, developers change the character of the neighborhood in response to an influx of affluent residents or businesses and make it more appealing to those with power and money.

As tech powerhouses began settling in the Bay Area, especially along the southwest border of East Palo Alto, the community began to change accordingly. “[Facebook] employees [were] like, ‘Oh, we’re in East Palo Alto. This is a sketchy area,” social studies teacher Haley Perkins said, illustrating a common viewpoint held by nearby tech corporations.

As such, companies longed to make the community “safer” for their new employees to live in; for instance, Facebook–whose headquarters lie on the Menlo Park and East Palo Alto border–currently funds a branch of the Menlo Park Police Department specifically for policing the area surrounding their headquarters.

The consequence of gentrification was a rise in already expensive housing prices. Some East Palo Alto residents, especially those who settled in the city after being denied housing elsewhere, were displaced. One University of California at Berkeley study found that East Palo Alto “lost thousands of low-income black households” from 2010 to 2015, with no similar effects reported in predominantly white neighborhoods in the same time period.

Yet gentrification does not inherently have to create a negative impact, according to Perkins. “I think that, philosophically, when people are removed from their homes because they can no longer afford to live there or because of other governmental policies, that’s a moral wrong,” she said. “Gentrification isn’t necessarily a bad thing if what it’s doing is investing in communities for [those] that exist there, and making the community better for existing [individuals living there]. But what gentrification tends to do is invest in communities so that other communities can thrive in that community.”

Lythcott-Haims echoed Perkins. “We ought to be able to bring opportunity and look after the needs of those who are already there,” she said. “Otherwise it’s just another form of colonization.”

Impact on the education system

The effects of Palo Alto’s extensive history of racial segregation has compounded to form clear disparities in the quality of education offered by East Palo Alto’s Ravenwood School District and the Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD). In 1986, the Tinsleys, an East Palo Alto family, filed a class action lawsuit against eight local school districts. “East Palo Alto schools were so incredibly underfunded that a lot of people sued, saying that their children were not getting adequate education,” Howard said.

The lawsuit also cited the discriminatory practices that prevented the Tinsleys from settling in more affluent areas in the first place. PAUSD pled no contest. In response, the district created the Voluntary Transfer Program (VTP), also known as the Tinsley Program, which allows 60 East Palo Alto students to take a bus into the city and attend Palo Alto schools.

According to Assistant Principal Pier Angeli La Place, the reason behind the program’s founding is largely—and unfortunately–unknown to the community. “It’s more viewed like it’s just this benevolent, kind thing that Palo Alto is doing to allow these kids from East Palo Alto to come over,” she said. “Whereas, in fact, the history of it is that it was a very racially motivated decision to create this boundary that would prevent those students from being a part of [PAUSD]. And as a result, that is why we have that program.”

According to La Place, historically underrepresented students are still not receiving the attention they deserve and are often overlooked in favor of the majority of PAUSD students. “85% of our students are doing fantastic,” she said. “[People then think,] ‘That’s good enough; we’re clearly a successful district because we have a high performing record for most of our kids.’ And so it becomes easier to sweep aside the 15 to 20% [of students] who, on every statistic you could possibly name, are not successful academically.”

Special Education teacher Courtney Carlomagno adds that the socioeconomic status of students’ families often determines the voice they have in decision-making. “The parents who have more capital and live nearer to the school are going to be the ones who are making the demands on the educational system,” she said. “They’re going to be the ones speaking at the school board, and so they’re going to gain a lot more access and rights that’s in line with what they want for their students, from their white homes.”

Similarly, there seems to be a lack of community acknowledgement toward these socioeconomic disparities, according to Perkins, making any efforts to resolve them more difficult. “This kind of divide between East Palo Alto and Palo Alto is so known to the community but so unspoken,” Perkins said.

Even as diverse groups of students are brought together in educational environment around the Bay Area, the social and cultural divide deepens, according to Carlomagno. “A lot of our Black and Brown students don’t see themselves in the school community or see themselves in the teachers they have, or they just don’t feel like they’re represented,” she said. “I’ve had students tell me that the only way it’s going to change is if we find a way to increase our enrollment of Latino and African-American students, or to increase the staff we have that are people of color, specifically [those who identify as] Latino and African-American.”

Howard cited the distance between the two communities as yet another factor dividing students. “If you are living in East Palo Alto, you have to take this really long bus ride,” she said. “You’re not close to any of your school peers, because you’re coming from this other region.”

Perkins believes focusing on creating resources is key to lessening the education gap between students from low-income families, including those from East Palo Alto, and students from affluent Palo Alto homes. “One of the big solutions would be to pay attention to and where they’re going to,” she said. “Are the resources being allotted to the students who need them the most? Or are the resources being allotted to the students who already have the most?”

A nature preserve for a select few

Educational inequalities aren’t the only modern-day remnants of Palo Alto’s history with racial segregation. Even today, a debate is raging over who exactly should access Palo Alto’s Foothills Park. Foothills Park, a large nature preserve owned by the city of Palo Alto, has limited park access to Palo Alto residents ever since it was purchased in 1965. A recent lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other plaintiffs has threatened this policy.

According to Palo Alto City Council candidate Greer Stone, the plaintiffs’ rationale is that the current policy violates non-residents’ rights to freedom of speech, travel, protest and assembly. “If you’re a non- resident, you can’t go into the park to protest the park being closed [or say] that it should be a public space and the public should have the right to be able to enter the vehicle to enter the park,” he said.

While there is no direct evidence that the decision to close off the park was made with racist intent, the ACLU also cites Palo Alto’s history of racial segregation in their lawsuit.

Indeed, the stated intent behind the residents-only policy, according to Palo Alto, is associated with the park’s purchase. In 1965, when the city was making plans to buy the land, Palo Alto reached out to neighboring cities to see if they were interested in splitting the cost. No one cared to chip in. Since then, Foothills Park has been open to Palo Alto residents only—in other words, only to those who pay taxes to keep the park open.

In that vein, some Palo Alto residents argue that opening the park up to non-residents would sharply increase maintenance costs due to the required presence of a full-time ranger and the potential increase of garbage collection needed.

Yet this past summer, the City Council approved a pilot program to open the park to select non-residents willing to purchase a permit. Lythcott-Haims hopes that Palo Alto will ultimately open up the park. “I’m ashamed to live in a city that restricts access to this open space that was never originally belonging to Palo Alto,” she said.

Despite numerous efforts to bridge the gap between the two cities, especially in light of recent nationwide equality movements, much work remains. “It’s clear that we do have the vestiges of the systemic inequities within this community from these various housing policies in the 1950s and 1960s,” Stone said.

On Monday, following a statewide surge of COVID-19 cases, Santa Clara County was moved from the red tier of California’s COVID-19 monitoring system to the purple tier. As a result, schools that are not currently open will not be allowed to open until the county has moved back into the red tier for at least 14 consecutive days. PAUSD elementary schools, however, will remain open. 

“Moving into the purple tier was a real shot to our reopening plans,” Austin said. “I’m not pulling the plug on [the reopening plan] yet, and our board is going to want to have a discussion about it, I’m sure. But the chances of reopening on the path that we had hoped for is hurt.”

But according to Austin, the reopening survey for second semester will continue as planned. “We’re still collecting responses for [students to choose distance or hybrid learning], just in case,” he said. 

While middle schools may be able to reopen at a later date—that is, in the middle of second semester—high schools beginning second semester in distance learning will have to remain online for the rest of the year, given the logistical difficulties of switching between distance and hybrid learning, according to Austin. 

The delay of the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test—colloquially known as the PSAT—has led to raised concerns, especially among juniors who are worried that they may no longer have access to the National Merit Scholarships. However, Gunn College and Career Information Specialist Leighton Lang assured students that this would probably not be the case. “Some schools that are closed and can’t do the PSAT in October will be able to have the opportunity to do it in January,” he said. “It’s not going to affect any of the merit money.”

Assistant Principal Harvey Newland hopes to register Gunn for the College Board’s new proposed PSAT date: Jan. 26, 2021. “We are going to work towards the January date and try something for that one, even if it is outdoors or something like that,” he said. “I’m not sure yet, but we are working with [Palo Alto High School] to make that happen.”

Unlike the PSAT, the ACT is now providing an online option. Its launch was originally planned for Sept. 2020, but was postponed to allow testing centers to focus on administering the paper test. The ACT hopes to formally begin online testing in 2021.

However, this move has raised concerns about preserving the academic integrity of the test. “I’m concerned about the tests being online and the College Board is concerned about kids cheating,” Lang said. “I don’t know how they are going to make it secure.”

Meanwhile, all SATs in the Bay Area have been cancelled since mid-March, when school closures began. Gunn is attempting to work with the College Board on future in-person SAT administrations, preferably limited to PAUSD students. “If you were a school test site, you’d have to allow students from anywhere to take the exam at your school site, which [would] be very difficult,” Newland said. “Because then we’re getting people from possibly all over California taking an exam in one place, and that would not be the best thing for infection rates. I’d like to see it so that we can test [only] our own students.”

Some Gunn students, like senior Connor Missett who drove to Reno to take the SAT, have started looking for out-of-state testing options. “I started studying for this test in August of 2019, and I paid for tutoring,” he said. “I have taken in between 10 and 15 practice tests, and given the amount of work and time that I’ve put in, I wanted to have the opportunity to take the test and show what I knew.” 

This, however, has raised equity concerns, as not all students can afford flights or road trips out-of-state. “There are people that I know flying to Reno and going to Arizona to take standardized tests,” Lang said. “I believe there is an equity issue. It’s going to come down to if you can afford to pay to take standardized tests, you will.” 

Equity in standardized testing has been a controversy for years—it is the reason why many colleges have changed their requirements for admission. Recently, a judge in California ruled that the University of California system could no longer use students’ test scores for admissions or scholarships. This precedent has paved the way for more colleges to turn away from standardized testing and lean toward other holistic assessments of students on college applications. “I would hope that more colleges, instead of suspending or going test-optional, would just say, ‘you know what, we don’t need the testing. Let’s find out about the students from the work they’ve done. Let’s see what else they have to offer,’” Lang said.

However, California’s long battle with COVID-19 is far from over. Students should minimize unnecessary outings such as social gatherings, parties and events to protect themselves and their families; following social distancing guidelines and minimizing contact is the only way we can slow down infection rates. 

Even while infection rates are steadily decreasing, individual and community safety should be prioritized. As of Monday, the average COVID-19 caseload has decreased by 27.6% from the previous week, according to the California Department of Public Health. Despite this feat, which has taken time, effort and commitment, the risks of going out persist; according to the Santa Clara Public Health Center, there have been over 19,000 cumulative cases in our county alone, as of Monday. The threat of contracting the virus from an unsuspecting person or unknowingly infecting others should still encourage students to stay at home. Any unavoidable outings should be executed with extreme caution.

Furthermore, restaurants reopened for limited outdoor seating in early June, according to the Santa Clara County Public Health Center. While the risks of outdoor seating, especially with socially-distanced tables, is significantly less than that of indoor seating, the possibility of contracting the virus is still present and should not be taken lightly. One can never be sure whether the restaurant or those around you is taking proper precautions, so try to minimize dining at restaurants, especially with those you don’t live with.

To justify their group gatherings, teens often turn to the low mortality rate of their age range. According to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the death rate for youth ages 5-17 is 16 times lower than that of adults aged 18-29. Furthermore, many read that most of the teens infected with COVID-19 are asymptomatic and can live normally. This low mortality rate leads some to falsely believe that they can disregard protective safety measures without consequences, and has given adolescents a justification to continue partying or participating in large social events despite warnings from the CDC.

Yet at this point, teens may still serve as carriers of the virus, transferring it to more vulnerable populations. Ultimately, teens can still face serious health complications from infection, and even if they are asymptomatic, they can still be a danger to the people around them.

In addition, social media and the actions of public figures have also contributed to less cautious social gatherings. Currently, on applications such as Instagram and Tiktok, large numbers of influential creators are producing content with other creators. At times, these creators are not properly social distanced nor following guidelines. According to the New York Times, 60 to 70 guests flocked to a popular Los Angeles creator house, the Hype House, for a party in late July. Few creators sported masks in the numerous videos and pictures posted during the event. When these public figures disregard safety measures, they serve as poor role models, leading students to believe that ignoring these measures while hanging out with friends is acceptable. Consequently, they are putting themselves, their friends and their families in danger.

While social media figures play a crucial role entertaining teens, it’s important to recognize the downfalls of their visibility, especially in a global pandemic. At the peer-to-peer level, seeing friends’ posts on social media serves as an equally attractive or motivating factor to go out. Thus, mindfulness in this sensitive situation is crucial to keeping everyone safe. 

It’s no doubt that we each want to hang out, party and reopen as soon as possible. However, without following guidelines and keeping yourself safe, cases will inevitably begin to rise. Protect yourself and those around you by abiding by the CDC-suggested safety measures and by simply waiting a little longer before things return to “normal.” Go out only when absolutely essential, but be sure to follow guidelines and stay masked. Try to keep outdoors, where air circulation is better and the risk of spread is smaller, and minimize the frequency of these outings if possible. Instead of heading to that restaurant for dinner, consider getting takeout or making an elaborate home-cooked meal.

The longer we social distance and abide by CDC and county regulations, the faster we can continue to reopen without major setbacks. 

“If (and it’s an if) Santa Clara moves from [“purple” status to “red” status] on Sept. 8, schools COULD reopen for in-person as soon as Sept. 22,” superintendent Don Austin said in a Sept. 1 tweet. “[Palo Alto Unified School District] would NOT return for large-scale in-person until a minimum of Oct. 12 as previously stated.”

The school board meeting on September 22nd will discuss a reopening plan; however, it is unlikely that Gunn will open up immediately on Oct. 12. The district has made it clear that priority will be given to reopening elementary schools before secondary schools, according to Gunn School Board Representative Thomas Li. 

Li, for his part, stressed viewing the situation realistically. “I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions,” he said. “There are still many difficult decisions and details the district needs to make before schools may reopen.”

This story is developing and will be updated as more information becomes available.