Opinion

To many students, Saratoga High School is an ugly blight on the gently rolling foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. But compared to what it used to be, the current incarnation of SHS is the Palace Hotel. We should be happy with what we have, never mind what other schools have, because we have what most want: a strong communal feeling among the students. More can be done, but we should just accept the fact that, while we don't have the most beautiful campus, we are one of the best schools in the nation.

A former student goes back to visit his school, bringing along 10 pipe bombs, a chain saw and a sword. It sounds like a scene out of a horror movie, but that's exactly what happened at Hillsdale High School in San Mateo last month. In the end, it took several teachers to tackle him and bring him under control.

Having to do school service for a semester or two to fill in schedule gaps may not seem like a big issue, but students, particularly the juniors and seniors who are mostly able to drive, wonder why they aren't allowed off campus instead.

Since Montana became the third state that ruled doctor-assisted suicide legal in the United States, the media has been all over the topic—is it ethical to legalize physician-assisted suicide (PAS)?

Physician-assisted suicide often occurs when a terminally ill patient requests the doctor to provide a lethal dose of a medication, which the patient later takes to commit suicide. Because the physician himself is indirectly involved with the suicide, this is not euthanasia and therefore cannot be considered a “mercy killing.”

A major factor that determines a student’s acceptance into a college is their SAT score. Most college admission officers use the SATs as the basis upon which to judge their applicants, as grades can be dependent on a student's school. As a result, students spend a large portion of their time studying and cramming for the test along in addition to their other load of homework. It is a test of a student’s knowledge, but it appears to be more and more an indication of the income of a student’s family.

The recent case of Jaycee Dugard has sparked alarm among parents of young children. Phillip Garrido, convicted of kidnapping Dugard and keeping her hostage for 18 years, was already a registered sex offender in the 1970s.

Summer is a time for students to take a break from school. However, with the No Child Left Behind Act and, more specifically to Saratoga, intense AP curriculums, more schools are taking precautions to keep their students from falling out of line. More and more teachers are assigning homework over the summer to help students retain their knowledge over the long months, but it may not be the best way to benefit kids.

These days, most teenagers can be spotted, earbuds attached, mouthing the lyrics to their favorite song—idolizing the singer, imitating the singer and, in some cases, becoming the singer to the surprise and fright of the surrounding passersby. Suddenly, her headphones emit an unintentional, high-pitched hiccup and cease to play, leaving our energetic teenager in mid-strum on her virtuoso air guitar performance.

Welcome to the world of illegal downloading.

Can you imagine life without cell-phones or the Internet? With the turn of the 21st century, new means of communication have revolutionized the way we interact with each other, from employees web-conferencing across the globe to the complex social networks developed over applications like Facebook.

Just like these tools have completely transformed our ability to communicate, online classes have the potential to harness the same technology and transform education.

It is one of the greatest academic ironies that one of the most popular sources of information today is also one of the most controversial. Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that contains 13 million articles in 200 languages, has been criticized by scholars who believe that the website's open editing system makes it unreliable and inaccurate. However, Wikipedia's popularity remains undiminished. It is the 7th most visited website on the web.