Features

At 9:04 a.m. on Tuesday, Jan 20., most teachers were not lecturing or going over homework. Instead, they were streaming the inauguration ceremony for President Barack Obama in their classrooms to let students watch history in the making.

However, a group of 52, including students, teachers and chaperones and a couple other individual students who traveled with different organizations had the spectacular opportunity to travel to Washington D.C. and watch the inauguration in person. Another group from Saratoga also traveled to Washington—Redwood Middle School Marching Band and Auxiliary paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue as part of the inauguration parade.

Testing has always been a tedious process. For many students, taking the SAT means sitting for hours and rushing through problems to finish within the time limit. After the test, however, students often have to repeat the process numerous times to improve their scores. Even then, after taking the test a second time, the score may not improve much, or worse—it could worsen.

To ease the stress, students want the privilege of choosing the best scores of each test for colleges to see. This March, that wish will finally be granted. According to an article by the New York Times, the College Board, the company primarily responsible for the regulation and writing of the SAT, has decided to allow students taking the SAT exams to use Score Choice.

If you’re looking for senior Sandeep Chandrasekhar on Facebook, try typing in his new name Deep Deep Mustafa Muhammad.

A rumor that colleges and universities will check Facebook profiles and use the information to make admissions decisions has caused several seniors to change their Facebook names to make it harder for colleges to find them.

With so many students stepping up as leaders through their extracurricular and in their classrooms, it comes as no surprise that the administration has decided to harness some of this power to enact positive changes for the school by forming a leadership class.

Last year, Saratoga was ranked No. 72 nationwide in U.S. News and World Report’s first annual ranking of high schools.
This year, however, students were slightly disappointed to find the school’s true ranking had dropped No. 80 in second year of the ranking—behind local schools such as Gunn and Monta Vista.

Meet Dave. He is a friendly and hard working student at Saratoga High who receives good grades in school and shows an enthusiasm for extra-curriculars. Dave also happens to be gay.

English teacher Paul Page has recently released his third CD, a collection of piano music called “Autumn Sequence.”

“The music on this CD is sort of a hybrid classical, which means that although the music is contemporary, it is based on classical models,” said Page.

After a 12-week season, freshman JV tennis player Priyanka Arunkumar was looking forward to a nice, relaxing break. To her surprise, she found out that she only had two weeks until she would have to go to a sports P.E. class to complete her semester requirement for physical education.