News

Hundreds of students dressed in freshly ironed suits and armed with legal pads flooded into the quad on Dec. 6 to participate in the Saratoga High Novice Debate Tournament. The tournament, hosted by the SHS speech and debate team, offered Parliamentary, Public Forum and Lincoln Douglas debate to first year debaters.

With the first competition less than two months away, the mock trial team has begun to finalize their cases and has started rehearsing full run-throughs. They will have their first full dress rehearsal on Dec. 16 with Judge Philip Pennypacker, a Santa Clara superior court judge and Saratoga alumni, presiding.

It had been threatened many times before, and now it has happened.

The ASB has narrowed down the number of clubs on campus to 45, a drastically low number compared to the over 70 clubs the school had before.

When the lunch bell rings, upperclassmen rush to their cars and drive off campus to restaurants like Chipotle, Togo’s and McDonald’s, while underclassmen line up to buy pizza or pasta from the cafeteria. On December 19, however, students are scheduled to eat lunch on-campus and be catered food from both Chevy’s and Red Robin.

The event will be hosted by the leadership class in order to raise money for the school. Fifteen percent of the money paid will go to the school. The food was previously ordered; each student who wanted some had to fill out a form and turn it in to the office. The menu includes burgers with fries, quesadillas, flautas and tacos.

The holidays are a time for tradition, and the senior class fundraiser is succumbing to the same tradition it had hoped to avoid.

In past years, Lip Sync has been the victim of numerous postponements and cancellations, something this year’s senior class officers were hoping to avoid. The annual fundraiser originally scheduled for Dec. 18, has been postponed until the spring due to a lack of participation, said senior class president Lewis Chen.

Service clubs at Saratoga High, including Key Club, Interact, California Scholarship Federation (CSF) and Amnesty International (AI) are doing charity work for the holiday season.

As the school year eases in, the Parent Teacher Student Organization (PTSO) has had to make important decisions that affect the whole school’s education programs. Grant requests for the 2008-2009 school year added to more than $47,000. While all grant requests were taken into consideration, the PTSO was only able to fund $29,000 toward staff and student grants, with some help from the school’s supplies fund.

In picking which programs to fund, PTSO members particularly focused on “seeing the number of students that will benefit from a specific grant, educational value for the students and what tools a teacher may use to evaluate effectiveness of the grant material,” according to PTSO co-president Shinku Sharma.

With the season in full swing, the speech and debate team competed in the two-day league tournament at Milpitas High School on Nov.15 and 16th. All Individual events took place on Saturday. The competition was stiff, but sophomore Soorya Rangan broke to semi-finals in Impromptu and Sophomore Keeti Shukla advanced to semi-finals in Foreign Extemporaneous. Sophomore Vance Lindholm took fifth place in National Extemporaneous speech.

The school has undergone some significant aesthetic changes, including renovation of the gym and football field, in the past few years.

Now those changes are continuing with more high-tech projection systems being installed in classrooms throughout campus and $75,000 worth of equipment being donated to the weight room.

The school acquired the new weight room equipment after new management of the Quito Shopping Center tripled 24 Hour Fitness’ lease, effectively forcing them out because they were looking for businesses that would attract customers to shop at multiple venues in one outing.

Many students came to school on Nov. 13 with arms embellished with pens and sharpies that spelled out a single word–love. These students were participating in a national day of awareness, To Write Love on Her Arms Day.

This symbolic event was hosted by the non-profit organization, To Write Love on Her Arms (TWLOHA), whose goal is to present people with hope and find help for those struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicidal thoughts. According to its website, TWLOHA’s vision is, “the possibility that your best days are ahead…that we're more loved than we'll ever know. The vision is hope, and hope is real. You are not alone, and this is not the end of your story.”