I remember reading that rejection letter the first time at my desk in the middle of Placement Calculus, and for the following week, I felt devastated and hopeless. If I couldn’t live out my fantasies being a NASA intern, then what really was the point of school, of friends, of anything? In hindsight, this notion makes absolutely no sense, but in the moment, my hopes and dreams had just been mercilessly ground to dust. I spent the next month sulking, cringing whenever my friends mentioned any sort of summer program that they were attending and imagining all sorts of wonderful things that I was missing out on as a reject.

While hammering out my plans for the summer on a calendar, I noticed that the NASA internship would have occurred at the same time as an important diving meet. As an athlete dedicated to my sport, I felt some small relief at not being forced to decide between the two. And even closer to the end of the school year, I was lucky enough to be offered a summer internship at a local robotics company alongside two of my friends, with flexible hours and — even better — free snacks. It wasn’t as shiny as getting to show off a NASA badge on my Linkedin profile page, certainly better than nothing.

By the end of that summer, not only did I have the time of my life at that robotics internship, but I also ended up qualifying for multiple high- level diving competitions. Had I been selected for and gone on that NASA internship, I would undoubtedly never have been able to do either of those things, and likely would have had nowhere near as much fun.

My experience that summer helped me realize that no matter what sort of disappointment or setbacks I experienced, there was always a path forward as long as I kept looking for one. Over the course of my subsequent senior year, as I was rejected by more programs, bombed tests and suffered injuries that temporarily put me out of my athletic training, I kept in mind the valuable lesson I learned and continued moving forward to the best of my ability.

I’m not here to tell you to just “look on the bright side” or “think of the glass as half full” in the face of failure. Instead, I want you to know that you shouldn’t stay down. No matter how hard you get hit, the silver lining is always going to be right around the corner. It might be just out of sight, and you might have to drag yourself across the floor around that corner to reach it, but I can promise you that it’s there.

In society today and perhaps especially at Gunn, it’s too common to focus excessively on success and synonymize failure with defeat. It’s true that failure can lead to defeat, but only when you don’t get back to your feet, readjust your gloves, and put your fists up for another round.

“I met him at a math competition in middle school,” Fan said. “You should have seen the pictures of him back then. You would have thought, ‘Oh, yeah, this guy’s a nerd.’”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, however, Fan and Zhang began to talk online, as they were part of the same math competitions.

“We did some competitions together for Gunn Math Circle because it was being run by other people,” Fan said. “We just tagged on for competitions. And then in sophomore year, we talked more. We did a lot of random math things together.”

Fan and Zhang’s overlapping interests and activities helped forge their friendship. Today, the two serve as co-presidents of Gunn Math Circle Club, organizing the Gunn Math Competition, writing problems to select competition team members and hosting weekly lunch meetings.

“One thing we do for Math Circle is just run a bunch of events,” Fan said. “We run a math camp over the summer for middle-schoolers to get people into math. We ran the Gunn Math Competition too, and that was a lot of work and also a lot of fun.”

Zhang finds his partnership with Fan effective and rewarding.

“As a person, Roger is really ambitious and on top of things all the time,” Zhang said. “So it’s nice to have a partner like that who can sort of keep me in check.”

Fan and Zhang continue to spend time with each other, even outside of math-related activities.

“We do so much stuff together, it’s impossible for us to not be friends,” Fan said. “We sometimes do homework together, and sometimes we just chill.”

Fan finds his friendship with Zhang fulfilling and sees their notoriety on campus as an additional bonus.

“We’re like a power couple, a power dynamic,” Fan said. “That’s us.”

The Idaho regional competition comprised practice matches, qualifications and playoffs. During the qualifications, robots accrued ranking points for a chance to compete in the playoffs, which determined the event winners.
After the first round of qualifications,
GRT — registered under the team number
192 — was in 43rd place of 43 teams due to
repeated control failures. After all rounds
of qualifications, however, GRT was in 20th
place, and was selected to join Alliance 7 by

the alliance captain, team 2122.
In the final best-of-three rounds, GRT’s
alliance and the opposing alliance each won
one match, leading to a final tiebreaker that
ended with a score of 103 for Alliance 7 and
97 for Alliance 1.
Learning from past mistakes allowed the
team to be successful this year, according to
Safety Captain junior Amelia Perry.
“We have a system to pass information to
future years, which is why we have lasted so
long as a team,” she said.
As the regional winners, GRT and their
alliance captain team 2122 from Boise, Idaho,
will continue to the April 17 to 20 FIRST world
championship in Houston, Texas.

“Me and my partner have gone to a couple of national circuit tournaments,” he said. “The most recent national circuit tournament we went to was at Berkeley, one of if not the biggest tournament of the season in the whole country.”

The club consists of four branches: speech and three forms of debate (parliamentary, policy and public forum).

Sophomore Aman Solanki, a public forum debater who competed at Berkeley, sought the help of fellow accomplished debaters at other schools.

“For me, it’s become a forum for me to bond with other students at tournaments and connect with other local schools, like with Paly or a local Bay Area School, in preparation for national tournaments,” Solanki said. “Putting in a lot of work and time makes it rewarding.”

On March 1, two teams and two individuals — including Parlimentary Debate Captain junior Karen Tang — advanced from the state qualifiers tournament to the state championships.

“(California State Qualifiers) is a really prestigious, long, high-endurance tournament,” Tang said. “And that tournament was really great for (Parliamentary).”

“(When my sister went) off to college and she was like, ‘Want to play Mario Kart?’ all the boys were surprised,” he said. “They were like, ‘What, you know how to play this? But you’re a girl!’”

This sentiment still persists. Marginalized individuals who play video games in the modern day face toxicity and harassment from other gamers much more frequently than their non-marginalized peers. A 2021 study by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, an organization that works to reduce negative stereotyping in entertainment and media, found that 50% of gamers between the ages of 16 and 19 witnessed homophobic language while playing video games. Of the same age group, 47% witnessed racist language, 41% reported seeing sexist language and 41% reported ableist language.

Female gamers today are often forced to guard themselves from sexist and sexual comments from men. According to the 2021 Geena Davis Institute study, men “were found to feel more entitled to express social dominance in the virtual world than in the real world, because men outnumber women in networked video games and masculine behavior is typically rewarded.”

Special Education Instructional Lead and English teacher Briana Gonzalez has been harassed on the basis of her gender by fellow gamers.

“Far Cry: New Dawn had a co-op option that I really enjoyed, and unfortunately I just don’t participate in it anymore, just because the moment they hear my voice, it’s just really inappropriate,” Gonzalez said. “I unfortunately have experienced sexual harassment through online gaming.”

Senior Emma Cao, who is experienced with online gaming, has also found the world of gaming to be dangerous. She takes measures to minimize her chances of being harassed when interacting with other gamers online, though they are not foolproof.

“I protect myself a lot — like I don’t talk when I don’t need to,” she said. “I speak in a lower intonation. It sucks that (harassment) happens. You just have to pray that the loser named CatWoman420 doesn’t choose to hate you.”

Ableist language is also abundant in gaming communities. Senior Vincent Boling, who is autistic, has experienced hostility from other gamers because of his neurodivergence.

“(If) I was trying to communicate with my teammates, and I was maybe a little sloppy, or I was not always picking up on the implications of the signals, then I would definitely get pretty ragged on for that and called a lot of slurs and stuff,” Boling said. “There’s a lot of ignorance surrounding neurodiversity, and they definitely weaponize that.”

According to Kitada, video games’ allowance of anonymity facilitates online misbehavior and harassment.

“If you can’t see the reaction of the person you’re hurting, then it’s the sense of, ‘Oh, I can say whatever I want and just be as mean as I want,’” he said.

Despite the rampant negativity from other gamers, marginalized groups can find safe havens by forming sub-communities with gaming as a mutual interest. Gonzalez was a part of one such group.

“I found a really unique community at my undergrad: other people just like me, other girls also interested in gaming,” she said. “I could talk about Call of Duty: Black Ops, and before, that would never happen.”

Increasing the diversity of video game characters may also help marginalized gamers feel welcome in online spaces. In many games, character customization options are limited and don’t allow marginalized players to accurately represent themselves in the game.

“Especially if your characters are supposed to serve as your avatar, you’re supposed to create somebody who looks like you, right?” Kitada said. “What are the character creation options, or is it just standard like a bald, young white man? So many FPS (first-person shooter) games have that kind of character who’s the standard avatar. You’re like, ‘That’s not me.’”

One way to improve representation in video games is to introduce more diverse viewpoints into the game development process. The field is currently heavily male and white dominated, with 62% of developers identifying as male and 78% identifying as white, according to the International Game Developers Association 2021 Developer Satisfaction Survey.

“I just feel like companies need to be a part of this (diversification) process and re-evaluate their own culture and their own hiring practices,” Gonzalez said. “Because as long as you’re only hiring a certain group of people, that’s the content you’re gonna get in turn.”

According to Boling, harmful comments online often come from miseducation rather than malice. As such, these instances of bullying can be sometimes leveraged as opportunities for growth.

“A medium like a video game where you’re cooperating is a good time for people to learn and grow,” Boling said. “A lot of gamers are stubborn and old and terrible, but most of them aren’t. Most of them are just kind of cranky, but are genuinely willing to listen.”

Administrators adopted this measure after noticing an upward trend in discriminatory behavior. According to PAUSD’s Uniform Complaint Procedures logs, there was a 21.6% increase in logged reports and complaints of discrimination at Gunn last year, from 37 reports in fall 2022 to 45 reports in fall 2023.

Assistant Principal of Student Equity Courtney Carlomagno, who helped create the initiative, noted that the new reporting method will allow administrators to respond to incidents more quickly and effectively, as well as gauge the true number of cases on campus.

“We (wanted to) take away the obstacle of having to come to the office and speak to an administrator right away,” she said. “Instead you can access this form at any time of day, and you could access it whether you were the one who was impacted by something that occurred or you just observed it.”

This approach also addresses students’ and community members’ dissatisfaction with the administration’s apparent lack of response to discriminatory behavior, according to Principal Dr. Wendy Stratton.

“The perception I think within our community is like, ‘Oh, nothing really happens,” she said. “You hear something, and there’s no visible evidence that we stand against that and that we don’t tolerate that. We need to do more on this to make it really clear that behavior along the lines of hate speech or something like that is really not acceptable here.”

Cases reported to the form through the QR code are submitted to PAUSD Title IX Coordinator and Compliance Officer Robert Andrade, who reviews the report and determines whether it should be further pursued as a district investigation or if the case should be handled at the site level.

The consequences for those who are reported to the form vary, depending on the context. They range from suspension to restorative meetings, in which offenders can learn how to repair relationships with those they have mistreated. As part of the initiative, corrective action focuses less on punishment and more on education and growth.

“The growth is so rich if you can turn around and have a conversation and really get something out of it,” Stratton said.

As of Feb. 6, the form has not yet been used to document any cases of harassment or discrimination. Still, Co-Diversity Commissioner junior Nia Porter anticipates that the form can improve student experiences at Gunn.

“I was pretty happy to see that they had something, because I’ve heard a lot of people sharing their experience and talking to me about how it wasn’t handled well by admin,” she said. “They don’t really know how to ask for help, but I think the form is going to help with that a lot.”

Stratton noted that the initiative emphasizes the importance of educating students at Gunn outside the realm of academics.

“A really important part of being an educated person is to recognize that you can have free speech, … but you need to be respectful of people around you, and that’s part of being a community member,” she said.

Report cases of hate and discrimination at tinyurl.com/GunnSeeSomethingSaySomething

“In the past I’ve done a lot of things, such as Bollywood, semi-classical Indian dance and contemporary, with some jazz in
there as well,” he said.

Aggarwal’s diverse dancing background has allowed him to develop a distinct hip-hop style.

“The fact that I started with those and then moved into hip-hop definitely changed my technique around hip-hop,” he said. “A lot of the time hip-hop is kind of just ‘feel the music’ — there’s generally less technicality and teachers are generally less focused on cleanliness. Starting with those other forms allowed me to bring that cleanliness with my dancing into hip-hop.”

Hip-hop is a fusion dance genre, without a single defined dance style. Thus, Aggarwal believes that the individuality of each member of Hip-Hop Club at Gunn is valuable.

“For example, there’s Dylan, who is more of a freestyler, and there’s me and a couple of others who focus more on choreography, and within that everyone has their own different styles,” he said. “For me, it’s more of like grooving and a little bit of popping in there as well. Grooving is kind of just like
feeling the music and vibing, more of those chill low-key moves, and popping is where you hit a beat, when you accentuate your movement and make it a sharp hit on that beat.”

Aggarwal’s dancing journey has been relatively hurdle-free so far, with the only setback being a scarcity of fellow dancers.

“It was a pretty big struggle last year for me as a club officer, and Stella and Dylan, to find dancers for the Hip-Hop Club,” he said.

While Aggarwal does not plan to pursue dancing professionally, he will continue dancing on the side in the future. His next goal is to pick up breakdancing.

“What I hope to do, especially in college, is to find a bigger, more advanced group and a bigger community to do it with,” he said. “(I hope) to increase the frequency of my performances, and also just continue to dance throughout my life with people I enjoy doing it with.”

For Aggarwal, dancing has always been more of a lifestyle than an activity. “Dancing has always been a part of who I am,” he said. “It shaped my personality in terms of the people I surround myself with and how I listen to music and how I go around my days.”

The trick-or-treating event, which was held in 24 classrooms across campus, consisted of teachers’ waiting at the door and asking visiting students a variety of riddles. Participants received one piece of candy for attempting to answer the riddle and an additional two pieces for providing the correct response.

Math teacher Rachel Congress was among the teachers offering candy.

“Everyone seems really excited about it,” she said. “It’s nice seeing students who I haven’t seen since last year come by.”

Congress fostered collaboration among participants who unsuccessfully answered her riddles.

“If a group didn’t get it, then I would usually not tell them the answer,” she said. “I would let the next person in line try to answer it. So that made it more fun, because they could help each other.”

Hall’s halloween costume contest featured four categories of competitors: solo student costumes, group student costumes, solo staff costumes and group staff costumes. The first-place winner from each category received a $50 prize.

Hall was extremely pleased with the turnout and high quality of costumes, which made judging difficult.

“The group costumes really impressed me this year more than previous years, and some of the solo ones were really good,” he said. “Part of me starts thinking maybe I should do second and third because there’s definitely some second and third places, and we were having trouble choosing between the teacher groups. Certainly there could have been a couple of ties.”

Although Hall’s costume contest is a Gunn-exclusive event, it has its roots across town.

“We started it in 2013-ish at Paly,” Hall said. “We did it for about five or six years there. When I moved over here to take over the Japanese program in 2020, we couldn’t do it that first year, since we were all on Zoom. But then the minute we got back on campus, I was like, let’s do it.”

Hall expects the event to become even more popular over time.

“This is year three, and so far, it keeps trending up,” he said. “I’m sure next year there’ll be an even larger turnout.”

“Hall”-oween Costume Contest Winners:
Solo student costume: Junior Kameron Sato
Group student costume: Junior Dea Zajimi, senior Danny Cox, senior Julia Maecker, senior Sophie Rong, senior Joey Rueff, senior Kristy Rueff, senior Quinn Sarrazin and senior Sophia Turean
Solo staff costume: English teacher Jordan Wells
Group staff costume: Science department

Following the development of ChatGPT and other generative AI, the district formed the short-term committee to not only address issues posed by AI, but also brainstorm ways to help students use it responsibly. According to English teacher Dr. Jennifer Cassel, the purpose of the ad hoc committee is to gather input and relay an action plan to the school board. The committee was open to all students, and some students were recommended by their teachers.

At the first meeting, the committee discussed appropriate academic uses of generative AI, including generating questions for test review and self-assessing grammar in world-language assignments.

Members also received the staff AI ad hoc committee’s rough policy guidelines. The guidelines define principles such as academic integrity and teacher autonomy, and list objectives such as encouraging responsible use of generative AI to enhance learning and fostering open communication between students and teachers. The guidelines also detail inappropriate uses of generative AI, such as on exams.

Committee members expressed interested in bolstering students’ comfort with making mistakes so that they won’t turn to generative AI. “We can’t ever lose sight of academic integrity,” Cassel said. “At the end of the day, especially in an English class, we want students to be able to write the AP exams without ChatGPT. You want students to be able to write independently of this tool, and also manage the tool and be in charge of the tool, and not (be) just at the mercy of the tool.”

At the next meeting, scheduled for Nov. 30, the committee plans to continue exploring productive educational-use cases and best practices of generative AI. The committee will also review the staff-drafted policies again to suggest potential improvements.

The end product of the committee will be a recommendation to the PAUSD school board, according to senior Dylan Huber. “Through communication with parents and teachers and staff, as well as the committee at Paly, our committee at Gunn will make a recommendation to the district board, and they’ll use that recommendation however they want to,” he said.

Although the committee is short term, sophomore Sam Laxman anticipates that the district will continue to adapt to AI use in education. “I think (the policies) are going to have to be revised pretty frequently because AI’s capability and the things it’s able to do are going to change very fast,” she said. “If the set of guidelines is really broad, then maybe that can stick for longer. But if they’re more specific, I think it could be a more long-term thing that’s meeting more frequently.”

Huber looks forward to further exploring the intersection of education and AI with the committee. “We’re trying to find a harmony between students and AI and teachers, and find a place where everyone’s happy with what the policy at Gunn is,” he said.

Cassel highlighted the value of collaborating with students to find a happy medium. “Every time the students help inform the committee, it’s golden because the students are ahead of a lot of teachers in terms of understanding the technology and how to use it,” she said. “Nobody is interested in prohibiting this, but we want to get a handle on how it can be used responsibly, and how teachers might be in a position to help students learn how to manage this new tool better.”