The Wide-Reaching Impact of SB8

by Abby Cohen

Last fall, America’s most restrictive abortion law, known as Senate Bill 8 or SB 8, went into effect in Texas. Over the past six months there have been nation-wide protests, people seeking abortions out of state, and the Supreme Court hearing two cases, one of them challenging the law. With the Supreme Court having a 6–3 conservative majority, the stakes for Roe v. Wade couldn’t be higher.

SB 8 prohibits most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, only making an exception for medical emergencies which do not specifically include rape, sexual abuse, incest, or the fetus having an untreatable and fatal condition. The law doesn’t define what would constitute a “medical emergency” during pregnancy, a gray area that can result in a wide variety of interpretations and ways it is enforced.

For the full story, see The Cougar on Medium.

Promising Basketball Season Interrupted by COVID Outbreak

By Nicolas Davalos and Daniel Peterson

The Albany High boys basketball team’s season had its share of success and struggle, and as playoffs begin, the Cougars ended the regular season playing, on average, an exhausting three games a week.

This number has increased exceptionally because of a coronavirus outbreak among the varsity team. The outbreak postponed games, practices, and all other team activities for about a month, and the team had to hustle to make all those games up.

Players note that COVID has impacted the team’s morale, playstyle, and conditioning among other things, and it plays an important role in the team’s late-season performance.

For the full article, see The Cougar on Medium.

Mask Up, Vax Up

Editorial and infographic by Natalia Toledo

While the holiday season has come to a close, the COVID surge has not. Cases are spiking, and due to omicron’s contagious design, the risk of contracting the virus has only increased. Like it or not, the world we live in now is our “new normal”. That is, a world where precautions must be adopted, and upheld, to protect the vulnerable. The coronavirus will not go away because we close our eyes and wish it to be. That’s just not how nature works.

There is a consensus among many experts that COVID-19 will come and go in seasons, just as we experience with the flu. That is why it is important that we learn how to manage it. So let’s emphasize the things that are working and debunk the myths around the obscurities. Say hello to the masks and the vaxes.

For the full editorial, see The Cougar on Medium.

Albany High School Offers Free School Lunch for All Students

Students wait in line to receive lunch at the new serving location in the gym lobby. This location currently provides breakfast foods during break and sandwiches and salads during lunch.

By Xinxin Duan

Following a new law passed in the spring of 2021, Albany High School has begun to provide free meals to all of its students.

According to Executive Chef Sabina Feinberg, the USDA requires that free meals be provided to students of all schools in the nation during the 2021-2022 school year due to the special conditions created by the COVID-19 pandemic, but schools in California will continue to do this in future school years. Mr. McNally explained that the new school meal program is a self-funded program, meaning that there is no extra cost for the Food Services department.

The implementation of the free meal program has caused the number of students getting school meals to rise significantly. According to Ms. Feinberg, the daily average of AHS students receiving school lunches increased from 139 students in the 2019-20 school year to 317 students this school year.

The main difficulty is “getting all students through,” said Mr. McNally. Ms. Feinberg said, “We are feeding more students than ever in the same space, with the same amount of staff, and with the same amount of storage space we had before.”

For the full story, see The Cougar on Medium.

Toxic TikTok Trends

By Izzy Smith, Devon Luce, and Swastik Siwakoti

You open TikTok and start scrolling through your “For You Page.” All you see are perfect girls with flawless hair, faces, and bodies. Before you know it, your thoughts are flooded with self-hatred and anxiety. These girls fit perfectly into the westernized idea of beauty, and you can’t help but compare yourself to how they look. This is something that many students experience on a daily basis, and they are slowly starting to realize how addictive and harmful TikTok can really be.

“There’s a lot of body checking on TikTok,” said senior Iman Khan. Body checking is the obsessive urge to seek information on your appearance, weight, size, often done through videos or images. Another user, senior Sophia Vitek, said, “Once you’re on TikTok, it’s really hard to get off of it, which is really toxic.”

With TikTok becoming more and more popular, there has been a prevalent rise in toxic trends, specifically ones that touch on fatphobia and eating disorders. 

For the full story, see The Cougar on Medium.

The California Recall: What Happened and What’s Next?

By Natalia Toledo

According to NPR, Governor Gavin Newsom beat the recall in a landslide vote of 63.8 percent no to 36.2 percent yes. For many, the burden of the recall election has eased. But for others, the pushback has only begun.

Recall elections are nothing new in California, and that was by design. According to the New York Times, “Since 1911, at least 179 recall attempts have been made against state officeholders.” However, most recall efforts don’t make it past the petition stage. A petition calling for a recall must be signed by 12 percent of registered voters who voted in the last gubernatorial election. Additionally, funds have to be set aside for the campaigns and elections, which comes at a multi-million dollar price tag. The last recall attempt that made it to the election phase was against Gray Davis, who was replaced by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

For the full story, see The Cougar on Medium.

"Gavin Newsom" by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Albany High Students Return to In-Person School

Students cram together in the halls in the rush towards lunchtime. During the first week of school, students were still figuring out where their classes were. “The halls get crazy in between classes,” said senior Carmela Gulisano. “It makes it hard to get to class on time when there are so many people.” Photo by Devon Luce.

By Isabel Hall and Nat James

On August 17th, 2021, with masks on and backpacks finally full after a year of no use, Albany High students returned to school in-person. Students were feeling apprehensive about the campus fully opening again, especially with the district disregarding social distancing.

The hallways and stairwells at Albany High are consistently packed, students shoulder to shoulder with each other as they move to and from classes.

“Being in person with full class sizes makes it not possible to social distance,” says English teacher David Blinn. “It definitely feels less safe than being online, but I understand why returning to school is so important.”

For the full story, see The Cougar on Medium.

2021 Senior Magazine Now Available

Under the leadership of editor-in-chief Mavi Hodoglugil and media editor Isabel Hall, The Cougar staff is proud to present this year's senior magazine to the Albany community. The journalism class also invited students to submit their art, photography, and written work for publication, and nearly 45 guest contributors are featured in this issue.

Physical copies of the magazine will be available at the graduation ceremony but are also available for pick up at the Albany High School’s main office, attendance office, bookroom, and library. The digital version is available at this link, and The Cougar’s forthcoming website on Medium will be updated with articles over the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned next year for new digital and social media content from The Cougar!

Albany High Students Will Return to Campus After A Year of Online Learning

By Maya Caparaz, Mariam Gohar, Julie Hansen, Emma Loenicker, and Brett Wong

Albany High School is amongst the many schools in the East Bay that are slowly beginning to bring students back to campus.

“Although not all students are returning to campus, all of us in the AUSD community have taken a major step forward,” Superintendent Frank Wells and school board president Sara Hinkley said in a March 24 statement.

After more than a year of online school, Alameda County has met requirements for reopening schools set by the California Department of Public Health and the Alameda County Office of Education. Under the current plan, AHS will paritally reopen on April 19, the beginning of the fourth quarter.

At the February 9 board meeting, AHS principal Darren McNally proposed the hybrid model, involving two hour-long academy periods per week.

“[The academy period is] meant to be this time to address these core needs that we’ve talked about: the social-emotional learning and the intervention,” Mr. McNally said at the board meeting.

With a unanimous vote, the school board approved the plan with a start date of March 29. Two weeks later, the student body was informed of the schedule changes via email.

Parents and children demonstrate on Solano Avenue on March 12 at a rally organized by Open Schools CA, advocating for a full-day reopening of AUSD schools. Photo by Maya Caparaz.

However, as a group of community members associated with Open Schools CA coalition advocated for “five full days”, the board quickly reconsidered the approved schedule.

“Our current plans were carefully planned but are now outdated,” Superintendent Wells said at the March 9 board meeting.

At the request of the school board, the district proposed a new plan for AHS which would entail two full days of in-person instruction with three asynchronous instruction days for students returning to the school building. Meanwhile, remote students would learn through simulcast, meaning they would interact with their teacher over Zoom as teachers instructed the in-person group simultaneously.

A majority of AHS students did not support the newest plan for reasons including health concerns, increased asynchronous time, and the perceived inequities of simulcasting. The student body raised their concerns at a forum held by student school board representatives Audrey Mallah and Léo Corzo-Clark on March 15.

“In this new plan, we will only have one 85 minute period of instruction per class per week,” sophomore Anika Venezia wrote in the chat at the student forum. “We will have to teach ourselves asynchronously for three days a week. These changes are by far more detrimental to our education than the original hybrid plan of 120 minutes of Zoom instruction per class per week.”

More than 800 students also expressed their feelings through a survey created by Mallah and Corzo-Clark. When asked “How comfortable would you be coming to campus for each of your classes, moving in between classes with different groups of students?,” 55.5 percent of surveyed students responded with clear reservation and concern.

Around 11 p.m. on March 16, after waiting for hours on the Board of Education webinar, several AHS students made public comments voicing their major concerns.

“I think it's important to listen to the students because we’re in the age [group] where we can make many of our own decisions” junior Jamie Loiseaux said.

Teachers and some parents echoed the students' concerns, while other parents worried that the academy plan was not enough to support those suffering from isolation and lack of in-person instruction.

When the time came to vote, the majority of the board voted to keep the previous hybrid plan and push back the start of the academy periods to April 19, the start of the fourth quarter. The Board made it clear that the school will have to report back with data on the students' wellbeing once the plan is in motion.

Student Musicians Perform Virtual Fall Concert

By Symphony Cheung, Amelia Grandrath, and Mia Sternad

Led by director Craig Bryant, orchestra and band members hosted a fall concert on October 20. All of the pieces were live streamed on Albany Music Fund’s Facebook page, and 140 viewers watched the live event. The stream was also recorded and can still be viewed on the page.

Band and orchestra have reoriented most of their plans for the school year. Both instrumental groups are holding virtual rehearsals, and students report it has been nothing less than complicated.

According to senior Eli Jordan, during [band/orchestra] rehearsals “we play along with Mr. Bryant for warmups while on mute, he will brief us on what to record for the day, and [then] we will have async[hronous] time to record our piece for the day.”

The new plan to play without an ensemble is very different from what these students are used to, but despite the difficulties in practicing, Albany High musicians are learning new skills in recording and mixing music.

“The kids are now like certified recording engineers,” Mr. Bryant said as he introduced the first song of the evening, “Wood Splitter Fanfare” performed by the string orchestra.

Senior Colin O’Brien, president of the student-led Instrumental Music Board, is optimistic about future plans for this year.

“We’re also trying to do some more music related assignments that don't involve playing together,” O’Brien said. “We’re in the process of starting a book in jazz band by Wynton Marsalis and have talked about learning more music theory or working on our own arrangements.”

This fall concert was different from any other concert in the school’s history, and Mr. Bryant is proud of what they were able to produce with how little they had to work with.

“The students have done a nice job, and I am happy with our progress,” he said.