News Winning Entry – by Jenny Won, Portola High School
The Citrus Unified School District (CUSD) Board of Education removed five titles from the core and supplemental lists of required reading and created a new enrichment list of optional reading, effective Feb. 22, in response to parent complaints that these texts portrayed black history and culture in a harmful manner.
Core texts are required to be taught to all students, while supplemental texts can be selected by individual teachers to be taught to their entire class. Under the new policy, texts categorized as enrichment can no longer be required reading in classes, but will remain optional for students to read independently.
“The number one goal of public education is to provide access and opportunity to all students,” CUSD Superintendent Alice Carleton said in a press conference on Feb. 20. “We are removing these five books from core and supplemental reading lists because we believe that there are better, less hurtful options out there for students.”
The five titles that will be moved to the enrichment list are former core novels “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee, “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck, “The Cay” by Theodore Taylor, “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry” by Mildred D. Taylor and former supplemental novel “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain.
Five CUSD parents, including Constance Helling, parent of a ninth grade student at Tangerine High School (THS) filed complaints against CUSD regarding the requirement of these texts in classrooms. In a complaint filed on Jan. 6, Helling claimed that her daughter faced harassment through derogatory racial slurs from classmates who had learned the word from the required reading “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry” at Tangerine Middle School in 2019.
“Our Black children are facing potential harm in the very classrooms that are supposed to represent safe environments in which they can learn and grow,” Helling said. “These books cast Black people in negative, hopeless, or secondary roles, and frame racism and racial injustice as relics of the past, rather than a pressing issue of today.”
Carleton assembled an ad hoc committee of teachers, parents, administrators and students on Jan. 15 to discuss the course of action to take with the five texts in question.
Following four weeks of discussion, the committee agreed on the need for the district to diversify the perspectives portrayed in its required texts and to provide teachers professional development on how to effectively teach racial and cultural history in their classrooms, according to Carleton.
However, it was unable to reach a consensus on the five specific texts in question. As such, Carleton proposed the new policy to create the enrichment list of optional reading independent of the committee, and the Board approved it on Feb. 19.
“We are not banning books and we are not banning what students can and cannot read,” Carleton said. “Rather, we are determining through an informed and inclusive lens which books should be mandatory and which ones should be optional.”
Donna Bennett, English teacher at THS, stated her stance against removing the books from required readings in a letter to Carleton on Feb. 12.
“I want to express my concern — as well as my colleague’s concern — over your decision to ban books from the classroom. These books are the cornerstone of literary instruction across America and have been taught for many, many years,” Bennett said. “If students are to be taught critical thinking as the current educational standards require, they need to be exposed to material that may make them uncomfortable from time to time.”
Bennett also alleged that CUSD failed to provide adequate time and resources for teachers to revise their teaching material, deeming the procedure “unprofessional” and “unacceptable.”
In an Instagram statement and online petition on Feb. 20, 11th grade student David Santana from Tangerine High School also challenged the decision.
“These books are not turning students into racists,” Santana said. “When a student uses these books as a scapegoat to minimize punishment, we need to understand that these books are not what really caused their actions. Rather, these books are a possible solution. For every one incident of a student being immature or cruel, there is a classroom full of students having hard-hitting discussions of why we need to actively play a part in mitigating racial inequality.”
The argument that banning the texts in question will only serve to hinder discussions of race and bias in the classroom is also supported by the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC).
“The decision to remove the books is educationally and legally unsound, is disrespectful of the competence of the district’s educational professionals, and is poor policy,” the NCAC wrote in a letter to CUSD on Feb. 19. “At a time when hundreds of thousands of Americans are in the streets protesting police brutality and systemic racism, it is more important than ever for educators to teach books that help their students understand the role that race has played in American history and how it continues to shape our society.”
Carleton affirmed that the policy change was approved by the Board and is thus a final decision.
Feature Winning Entry by Katharine Lee, Santa Margarita
A photo of a man crouching beside a beaming labrador retriever with dark eyes aglow and tongue wagging seems fitting for a quaint family photo tucked right above the mantle. But the dog is not just another household pet; its name is K.9 Spar, and the man proudly beside him is Al Hredecky, founder of Impact Canine Solutions (ICS).
ICS, a premier drug detection canine service that has reached over 230 schools in Southern California, stemmed from a personal vision of Hredecky’s. Originally from Colorado, Hredecky abandoned his snowy homestate for the promises of California, hoping to immerse himself in the law enforcement field there. The reasons were personal. Though Hredecky’s father had warned his children against drug use, threatening that they would become “homeless crackheads pushing a shopping cart on the street” if they dared associate themselves with marijuana, Hredecky’s older brother began dabbling in drugs after their father’s passing.
“We were from the same family, yet we chose different paths,” Hredecky said. “So much of what we do that impacts our lives begins from when we were young, choices you make that will impact the rest of your life. I felt compelled to reach out to those youth.”
His brother’s situation is no stranger to teenagers. Statistics reveal that 86% of students claim their classmates abuse drugs, 50% admitting to have used a drug of some kind. With this in mind, Hredecky sought to bring his vision of promoting drug awareness to fruition. A firm believer of writing ideas out on paper, creating a game plan, then figuring out how to execute it, Hradecky took his job in postal narcotics and decided to do something better. The answer lay in the canine world and tackling the wide realm of drug detection in middle and high school.
“It’s one thing to interdict someone on the street for drug possession, but I wanted to take it farther than that,” Hradecky said. “Let’s go instead to the source of the problem instead, starting as young as 6th grade.”
As the first entrepreneur in his family, Hredesky had little experience in starting his own business, what would become ICS. All he knew was that his goal remained resolute: stop the epidemic of drugs in schools, and, as the company name suggests, make an impact within the community. With the support of his family and long-time friend, LAPD sergeant Joe Alves, Hredesky teetered towards the brink of risking it all by putting out all his money to launch ICS.
With the livelihood of his wife and family on the line, the idea of failure was no longer an option. Relying on motivation, work ethic, and determination, Hredesky started out with a single canine companion. At his first meeting with Alves at a LAPD station, raising awareness to parents about the dangers of drug use, recognizing the signs in their children, Hredesky has since cast his influence wide. Two years later, the business tripled in size as they cover three to four schools a day, five days a week.
A large part of what makes Hredesky’s business possible are the stars of the show: the canines. Trained by master trainer Julie Case’s four week program, the canine team consists of floppy-eared, detection-only labrador retrievers. They are certified to search for and detect minute quantities of an extremely wide range of substances. These include marijuana, hashish, cocaine, crack, heroin, commonly abused medications, alcoholic beverages as well as gunpowder- based items/firearms.
Though navigating through schools and covering so much ground every week may seem daunting and tiresome, Hredesky emphasizes the playfulness and eagerness in which the dogs approach their work.
“Work for them is really just play, hide and seek,” Hredesky said. “They are working, but they’re still dogs, still living and breathing creatures.”
When the dogs do detect traces of illegal substances from students, however, Hredesky makes clear that this is a positive finding rather than a negative one. Since a large part of his goal is to help kids achieve their futures untainted by drug abuse, using a personable approach in creating dialogue with kids is an important and gratifying of his mission.
“I don’t want to be the guy who tells you, ‘This is wrong,’” Hredesky said. “We’re all human, and we should all be treated with respect. It’s not the end of the world if we make mistakes. Everyone does. We just have to learn from them.”
Though the COVID pandemic has provided some setbacks, Hredesky refuses to be daunted by obstacles. It is true that there are less opportunities now, the canines restless to get back to work, but Hredesky’s focus remains centered on his initial goal from when he founded his business, all those years ago.
“I’ll quit only when my mission is complete. Until then, I’ll keep pushing until we can safely secure a drug-free environment in all schools,” Hredeshky said.
Editorial Winning Entry by Hope Li, Sunny Hills
Removing book titles addressing racism doesn’t add up — that’s the truth
One plus one will always equal two.
In America, in Brazil and in Canada — one plus one equals two.
In 20 years, one plus one will still equal two.
Thus, truth stands despite time and culture.
In America, as students recite the Pledge of Allegiance in their schools, we must affirm the same truths of “liberty and justice for all” even if 100 years pass.
But on Feb. 19, after over four weeks of discussion without a consensus in an ad hoc committee, Citrus Unified School District [CUD] superintendent Alice Carleton decided to remove from the district’s reading list four mandatory novels and one supplementary one in response to a Jan. 6 complaint from a parent that one of the books prompted students to use the N-word to bully her daughter.
These books include Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and Mildred D. Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry as mandatory reading books. Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a supplemental book teachers may choose to teach.
“In 2019, my daughter, who was an 8th grader at Tangerine, was taunted by two other boys in her class who called her the N-word repeatedly [after hearing] the word in class during their reading of Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry,” Constance Helling said in her complaint. “Students of color should never be forced to sit through a conversation in which this vile and hurtful word is used.
“Our Black children are facing potential harm in the very classrooms that are supposed to represent safe environments in which they can learn and grow.”
Under Carleton’s new decision, the five books altogether will make up an enrichment list that students can read independently or in book clubs facilitated by a teacher. Instructors cannot read these books in their curriculums or even say the N-word out loud.
But if students cannot say the N-word or even address novels with derogatory language in them, students cannot confront the prejudice in our past.
Helling and Carleton fail to understand educators’ roles in exposing and condemning this language. Saying the word in class, or at least addressing it, will help, not hurt, students in understanding why saying the word is an offense to Black people, and will facilitate discussions about empathy and equality in response to racism — lessons with truth in them that will withstand the test of time.
Yes, Carleton did not ultimately ban these books — in fact, she repeatedly stated that the CUD will not ban or censor books or language, but students must grapple with America’s ugly history, as Tangerine High School English teacher Donna Bennett wrote in a letter to Carleton on Feb. 12.
“If students are to be taught critical thinking as the current educational standards require, they need to be exposed to materials that may make them uncomfortable from time to time,” Bennett said.
At the press conference, Carleton said the district would release a new reading list before the end of the school year, as well as offer professional development for teachers in educating students about race and racism.
This would help instructors, but including books such as To Kill a Mockingbird on the reading list would guarantee them an opportunity to apply their knowledge from the development sessions.
The Citrus Unified School District must continue to educate its students of the truth in America’s past. We must reconcile our racism-, prejudice-, hate-filled past in acknowledging texts such as Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, Mildred D. Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.These novels speak truth — lessons of history that stand the test of time and shed light on racism as a horrendous plague. These novels encourage students to confront and condemn racial prejudice in their own lives, issues that still unfortunately remain today.
Sports Winning Entry by Justin Hsieh, Fountain Valley
It’s April 2020. Across the world, businesses are shuttering, schools are closing, fans are getting their concert tickets refunded. Baseball, tennis, track and field—all are cancelling games, matches, meets. As the COVID-19 pandemic shuts down fields, courts, and gyms, athletes, coaches and fans alike see their seasons slipping away.
But for James Fraser-Murison, things are just getting started.
For Fraser-Murison, a teacher at Queen Mary’s College (QMC) in Basingstoke, England, April 2020 is the beginning of something he’s worked for years to make possible. A chance to pioneer, for the United Kingdom but also for the world, the next step in the development of the world’s newest, fastest-growing, and—to Fraser-Murison—most exciting sport:
eSports.
In April 2020, Fraser-Murison was about to debut the United Kingdom’s first ever national eSports degree curriculum, and to have a front-row seat to the pandemic-facilitated explosion of an industry that many people would be exposed to for the first time thanks to the online landscape of life in 2020. For Fraser, however, the eSports wave was something he’d been riding for much longer.
“For the past three or four years, every time there’s been a break between classes, I’ve seen students less and less inclined to run to the vending machines, and more likely to stay and log onto YouTube or Twitch [to watch online gaming],” Fraser-Murison said. “So there was an obvious engagement, an obvious interest there.”
For Fraser-Murison, a lifelong gamer himself (currently enjoying Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, he says), that observation was fascinating—and it inspired him to dig a little further.
“To be able to relate to my students, and to understand their joy in playing or watching eSports, it was really something,” Fraser-Murison said. “So I did a little research, and realized that there was a lot of money and interest there, so I decided to try to work it into an enrichment program.”
In the United Kingdom, enrichment programs are voluntary activities offered by college teachers to students in their free time, for ‘fun’ subjects ranging from film to music. Fraser-Murison said that at QMC, enrichment programs often drew 30 or so student signups, and around 10 would actually be available to show up and participate.
“With eSports, we got 65 students willing to wait an hour after college,” Fraser-Murison said. “So I spoke to Hewlett-Packard, and they gave us a student discount on 20 gaming rigs.”
QMC eSports was born.
Since then, Fraser-Murison’s program has expanded dramatically, and QMC has invested £250,000 ($350,000) in developing its own eSports Arena, a first-of-its-kind college space in the United Kingdom that includes two labs home to several dozen gaming rigs each. QMC has also collaborated with companies and brands including Hewlett-Packard (HP), Guild, Belong Gaming Arenas, and Yoyo Tech.
“I think [these collaborators’ investments] just go to show the importance of eSports within education,” Fraser-Murison said. “These people are aware of that, and that’s why they’re working with QMC.”
Fraser-Murison’s recognition of the importance of eSports not just for competition and entertainment but in education, as well, led him to the next step in his journey to push the boundaries of British eSports. Throughout 2019, Fraser-Murison worked to develop the first-ever eSports degree curriculum approved by the United Kingdom’s Business and Technology Education Council, and in Jan. 2020 it had been finalized and ratified at a national level. After its initial embargo unwound in April, the curriculum looked set to elevate eSports to a new level in the United Kingdom.
Then came COVID-19.
“It was really tricky to advertise because just when we were able to get started in April was when COVID-19 hit the United Kingdom,” Fraser-Murison said. “So I was trying to launch a brand new course entirely online, and trying to do that initial setup without physically meeting people and without getting to communicate with people who didn’t already know about it was difficult.”
Fortunately for Fraser-Murison, he was able to get 27 students to enroll in the course, an impressive accomplishment for a virtual debut. It was the beginning of a series of successes that eSports at QMC would pull off during the COVID-19 pandemic. The next? An international Rocket League tournament, played against students from James Monroe College in the United States.
“As a member of NASEF [the North American Scholastic Esports Federation], I was approached by a colleague in America who’d started at about the same time as me,” Fraser-Murison said. “We’d had all of our stuff in the UK cancelled, so when he reached out to me and asked if I fancied a Rocket League tournament, I thought ‘why not?’”
The tournament was a success, and QMC proceeded to organize a national Overwatch tournament for charity involving the British eSports Association and schools in Coventry and Swansea. Meanwhile, the success of QMC eSports has been reflective of the broader way in which eSports has been uniquely suited to rise to the moment in a virtual world.
“I think what Fortnite is doing, by hosting virtual concerts with musicians, is genius,” Fraser-Murison said. “And I think more and more, after COVID-19, we’ll see more musicians jumping onto the bandwagon there.”
And as eSports’ recognition grows, it stands a chance at achieving greater awareness not just as a means of entertainment, but as what it is–a sport. The QMC eSports Arena has a café and classrooms for yoga and pilates. Professional eSports players have coaches, nutritionists, physiotherapists. An Olympic eSports inclusion, Fraser-Murison says, is not just possible, but likely.
“The audience is there,” Fraser-Murison said. “It may not be recorded in a traditional way, but it will go on to be greater than traditional sports.”
Whatever happens, he will be there.
Winning Editorial Cartoon by Angela Xia, Oxford
Winning Critical Review by Jade Bahng, Troy
“Amazing Stories” left in the cellar
Teenagers these days are eager to delve into a love story—especially if it spans across the centuries—however, Chris Long’s rendition of “Amazing Stories” left the audience cringing at the “cliché millennial’s” attempt at mixing romance and science fiction. On March 6, 2020, Apple TV+ released a reboot of the television show from the 1980s: “Amazing Stories.” It must have slipped the producers’ minds that creating a reboot demands more than simply copying the all-too-familiar science fiction stories of the past while simply switching out the actors to familiar faces of the 21st century. The pilot episode, “The Cellar” doesn’t necessarily invoke a nostalgia for old-time shows or an excitement to be immersed in a world of mysteries; it rather makes the audience want to bury the show in the basement of their memories.
Perhaps the most important aspect of a show’s success is its actors and actresses, as they set the mood and progress the plot of the story. But despite being excited to see familiar faces such as Dylan O’Brien and Victoria Pedretti, watchers were disappointed by the cast’s highly exaggerated and awkward acting. It seems as if actors were reading directly from textbooks, their monotonic voices reciting clichés such as “if this life isn’t for you, then find what is.” Overused platitudes prevented audiences from focusing on the plot but rather made them concentrate on concealing their giggles for the awkward character interactions.
Not to mention, the build up of the story was confusing and to be frank: too obvious. Writers could not naturally incorporate key points of the story into the script, instead straightforwardly explaining inferrable details such as Evelyn’s engagement and the time capsule concept. This inability to integrate main points prevented the audience from forming their own opinions and inferences about the film, therefore decreasing their interaction with the film. Leaving nothing to the audience’s imagination—which is a key component of science fiction—effectively ostracized “The Celler” from all genres, not for its unique innovation, but for its lack of defining themes. In focusing too much on minor details, the foundations of the main plot were compromised. There were many too many instances where the audience expected a climax, whether it be when Evelyn and Sam were separated or when Sam supposedly drowned. After a few surprises, these “fake” climaxes did little to keep audience members on their toes but more to make them wonder when the episode will finally end.
Because “Amazing Stories” is the modern day reboot of a 1980s classic, directors and producers clearly tried to incorporate modern-day important issues of gay marriage, adoption and gender equality. However, “The Cellar” reeks of tokenism as the single gay character, Jake, is only mentioned as a background character and dumbed-down into the stereotypical gay character: a manly character with feminine roles of cooking and cleaning. Not only do the producers fail to encapsulate the reality of a gay man and replacing him with a stereotypical persona, they throw him around into random holes in the plot as if to promote their minimal effort at inclusivity. The show’s attempt to address gender inequality in the 1900s is also proven ineffectual, as Sam, who initially pushes Evelyn to follow her own dreams, later becomes the generic dominant male lead as he tries to decide her fate for himself. Giving credit where credit is due, however, the show did surprise audiences with a long-awaited divergence from the cliché love story. By replacing the expected happy ending with a bittersweet acceptance of long-gone love, the producers are able to highlight one valuable lesson: everyone finds their own place in life.
Of course, the final ending hinting at an infinite time loop and saccharine love story makes audience members let out a sigh of relief as they realize they haven’t completely wasted their time on a bad show, but it nonetheless makes one question: did the show really have to be 53 minutes long? To say this pilot episode was boring is an understatement. Not only was it confusing and all over the place, it’s a story that has been reused hundreds of times in shows such as “The Twilight Zone” and more recently, in “Black Mirror.” As compared to these shows that have significantly shorter episodes and actually try to reflect modern day society, “Amazing Stories” gave the audience nothing but a rushed love story and an awkward attempt at teaching a valuable lesson. There was nothing amazing about “The Cellar’s” plot or characters; it would be best left in the past.
Winning Yearbook Copy & Layout by Frances Walton and Alia Noll, Fullerton
News Photography Winner – Coco Tsaur, Northwood
Feature Photography Winner – Aliyah Ahmad, Sunny Hills
Yearbook Photography Winner – Yeonji Baek, Sunny Hills
Best of Show Division 1 – Sunny Hills
Best of Show Division 2 – Northwood High School
Best of Show Online – Sunny Hills
OCJEA 