Brown signed AB 131, also known as the California Dream Act, into law on Oct. 8, giving students who are not United States citizens access to public funding from the state, including scholarships and grants for college. The money will be available to eligible students on Jan. 1, 2013.

For Jessica, an undocumented student at Fremont Federation whose name has been changed for this story, the passing of this bill means more than just money.

“The Dream Act to me, means a whole different life,” said Jessica. “I can get money that I would need to get the good quality education that everyone deserves.”

Like other students who lack U.S. citizenship, Jessica has an emotional story as to why her family decided to come to America.

“My father always wanted a better life for his family,” Jessica said. “He would go back and forth to the United States for work. He saw himself struggling to maintain three children and a wife.”

Jessica was brought to the United States illegally from Mexico when she was only a few months old. Her family chose to come to the U.S. for a better life, especially to give Jessica and her siblings a better education.

Jessica is an honor roll student whom teachers praise for her hard work, pleasant attitude and excellent writing. But until the law passed, Jessica thought she would have to take a semester or a year off to save up money to pay for college.

She is a junior and now will be able to apply for Cal Grants and other funding when she is a senior. Her hope is to go to University of California, either Berkeley or Davis, and major in child development. For years, undocumented high school students in California have been unable to receive state scholarships or grants because of their citizenship status.

Californians passed Prop. 187 in 1994, banning the state from giving undocumented students aid. Not everyone is happy about the Dream Act’s passage.

A group led by California Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, R-Twin Peaks, has started collecting signatures to let voters decide if the law should be reversed, according to the Sacramento Bee.

“The so-called ‘Dream Act’ is an economic nightmare,” Donnelly wrote in a press release. “It will cost tens of millions in the first year alone.”

But at Fremont, many adults who work with undocumented students and watch them struggle, are thrilled that the state Dream Act passed.

“Many immigrant families value education, and this act [will be] supportive of what families want for their children,” said Nidya Baez, Fremont’s college and career counselor.

Barbie Penn, a program assistant with Mills Educational Talent Search, said the law should help many high school students. “If undocumented students are given access to financial aid, then I believe the students will be more motivated” in high school, said Penn.

Although students such as Jessica may be closer to reaching their dreams for college, one huge hurdle still exists — unless the federal government passes a similar law for undocumented students that includes a path to citizenship, they will finish their college degrees and still be unable to work legally in America.

We believe that Fremont is in dire need of being rebuilt. It is unfair that schools that did not need the renovations as badly have already been rebuilt.

Schools like Oakland High have been given tens of millions of dollars. Meanwhile, Fremont was only given $545,932, less than six percent of the $10 million from Measure B that was promised. The district complains that enrollment is dropping at Fremont, but they are not giving us the money to rebuild and modernize our buildings.

Oakland High was already in relatively good condition and has had high enrollment rates. Fremont’s portables, in turn, are unsanitary and hazardous to students’ health. Most of the portables have been infested with rodents and have severe termite damage.

The wood on the Media Academy portables is so rotten that during the summer, thieves were able to take the doors off their hinges, break into the portables and steal valuable equipment. The portables are so old and unsafe that many students feared the portables would collapse during the magnitude 4.0 earthquake on Oct. 20.

If the district gave us the funding that we needed, then we would be able to get rid of the unsafe portables and get stable buildings.

Students should feel safe being on their high school campus.

The Fremont football field is not the right size, so our football players cannot use it for home games. Instead, they have to travel to Curt Flood field. Many students don’t go to games because they are too far away. If our field was rebuilt, more students would attend the games and build school spirit.

Despite not having enough resources and new equipment, students at Fremont have worked hard and improved test scores on standardized tests. We believe they deserve to have a better, modernized campus with more resources to help them succeed.

This editorial represents the consensus view of Media Academy’s Green & Gold newspaper staff and not necessarily that of the Oaktown Teen Times.

Fremont cheerleaders lacked uniforms but not spirit at the school's only home football game on Oct. 14. The cheerleaders were told they had to raise $200 each to buy green and gold uniforms.

Instead of skirts and sweaters in the school colors, the cheerleaders wore black leggings and white T-shirts with the slogan of “Fremont Laney Camp 2008,” which Athletic Director Darlene Miller gave to the cheer team to wear.

“We got started late on fundraising,” said senior cheerleader Jorray Hart.

The cheerleaders were told that they had to raise $200 each to pay for their own uniforms.

They were trying to reach their deadline to purchase the uniforms for the homecoming game against Castlemont, but fell short. [In the end, that game was cancelled because the Oakland Athletic League ruled Fremont used ineligible football players during the season.]

Now, several weeks into basketball’s pre-season schedule, the cheerleaders have yet to get their uniforms, despite steady efforts to raise funds.

The cheerleaders have sold popcorn on their own and Lady Tiger T-shirts through the YMCA After School Program. One of the cheerleaders sold snacks at lunch to help raise her share of the uniform money.

Some cheerleaders wonder why the school doesn’t provide the uniforms, especially when it does for other athletes.

“It’s disrespectful to cheerleaders,” said freshman cheerleader Keyioni Moore. “The school should help us because we are the school and the school would be dead without cheerleaders.”

The cheerleading team has about nine active members, but up to a few dozen girls started practicing at the beginning of the year. It is unclear how many quit out of frustration of having no uniforms and only one home game.

At that home game, which took place Oct. 14, the cheerleaders kept the spirit going. They held up green and gold signs spelling out “F-R-E-M-O-N-T” and “T-I-G-E-R-S” and asked some fans to help hold them. They also made a sign that said “The Warriors” on butcher paper for the Tigers to run through and tear apart at the start of the second half.

Traditional cheerleading uniforms or not, the spirit was welcomed by football players.

“We need each other,” said quarterback Gregory Pierson.
“Cheerleaders are the drums of the band. We the band; they’re the drums.”

This was the second consecutive Silver Bowl victory led by quarterback Eddie Heard. The team finished the season 9-2.

Senior running back Harold Halcomb III ran for 162 yards and two touchdowns including the go-ahead touchdown in the fourth quarter, according to news reports.

After that play, Skyline attempted a lateral, which was fumbled and recovered by Mack’s Jason Brooks for a touchdown, stretching the lead to 25-13. A similar play led to a 40-yard run and touchdown by Lovell Samuels, making the score 33-13.

Coming off the field, the Warriors were all smiles. One said, “We got this game.”

But Skyline quarterback Jamal Mayo managed to run for his second touchdown to make the score 33-19. The game ended with another interception by Eddie Heard.

Several Mack grads who had played football rushed onto the field, including Denzale Johnson, now a freshman at the University of California, Berkeley. Johnson was part of last year’s squad, which finished the season undefeated 12-0.

“Feels good to watch Mack win. That’s what we’re here for,” said Johnson.

The Silver Bowl is the game played to crown the Oakland Section champion.

The coaching staff praised the Titans.

“Skyline has a great program, they came prepared,” said Coach Curtis McCauley. “Now we are going to enjoy the victory; come February, it’s back to the weight room.”

McClymonds has won four of the past six championship games and adds another Silver Bowl title to its collection of six, second behind Skyline, which holds 16 titles.

Meanwhile, football players at Fremont were protesting a decision by the OAL that ended their season prematurely and left them out of playoff contention.

Fremont was forced to forfeit wins against Skyline, Oakland Tech and Oakland High and cancel its game against Castlemont due to ineligible players.

Fremont contends that all OAL teams had similar ineligible players.

This article contains some information from MaxPreps and the Oakland

When I went there to interview and observe Occupy Oakland this fall, most of the people didn’t know exactly what they were fighting for.

They were just angry people. They wanted change, but they didn’t know exactly what they wanted to change or what they needed to do to change it.

Some protesters were there for reasons unrelated to the movement. I wonder if some people in the occupation simply set up so that they could steal from other protesters.

The City of Oakland was right to evict protesters from Frank Ogawa Plaza because they had just become a nuisance. The City was not denying them the right to protest; protesters were allowed to camp at nearby Snow Park for another week after the Plaza eviction, and protesters are still welcome to protest during the day at the Plaza.

The Occupy movement needs to organize itself. If they want to see real change, they need to appoint someone who can speak directly to Mayor Jean Quan to talk about the changes that need to be made.

And that was fitting for a showcase with the same theme.
Hundreds of students attended the three-hour event held Dec. 9 in the school theater.

Despite some technical problems, such as screeching microphones and music that occasionally stopped, the audience and performers remained enthusiastic.

According to Peter Ye, the emcee of the showcase and founder of the 50-member club, the theme of “B-U-TIFUL” was picked strategically.

In fact, he explained the choice to members selected for the club at their first meeting.

“That’s our theme because we know that there are plenty of people in the world struggling to accept themselves,” Le said. “The Glee Club wants everyone to know that who you are is beautiful, no matter what.”

Performances included an a capella rendition of “True Colors” and skits about students standing up against pressure to look a certain way.

To earn a spot in the showcase, students had to audition on Oct. 4 and 5 in front of judges: Glee Club President Le, Vice President Kerri Chao, Treasurer Rita Krouch, Secretary Xiaodi Li, Historian Limheng Sung and faculty sponsor Malia Lehman.

“It was nerve-wracking to audition in front of the judges and other applicants,” said junior Esther Ngo.

Le, also the club president, said he was inspired to start the club by the popular FOX Television show “Glee.”

Despite the enthusiasm for the club by members and fans, some Oakland High students, including junior Kevin Mai, look down on Glee Club and even predict that it will fail.

“Glee Club sucks,” said Mai.

However, most club members put that sort of criticism aside.

“I know Glee Club will make it,” Ngo said. “Watch and see.”

In an effort to raise funds, the club entered “Glee Give a Note,” a contest sponsored by FOX that will award $50,000 to schools with the most online votes. As part of the contest, the Glee Club posted a video online in which members spoke about the lack of music classes at Oakland High.

According to the contest website, the school received 2,395 votes before the contest closed Nov. 7. Winners were scheduled to be named Dec. 15.

Meanwhile, the club has already won the admiration of Principal Alicia Romero — she recently hired a music teacher, Jonathan Ulrich, and is re-arranging schedules for students who want to take music.

He was not incarcerated in a real prison in 1971, but one set up by researchers at Stanford University.

Led by psychologist Philip G. Zimbardo, the study was designed to explore the way people react when given power or when deprived of power by society.

The experiment is now world famous and is often mentioned in sociology and psychology textbooks.

Joanna Acentares, a psychologist at Fremont’s Tiger Clinic, was in college when she first heard about the Stanford prison experiment.

“At first I was blown away,” said Acentares. “I was shocked but interested to see how people reacted under different conditions given to you by society.”

At the time of the experiment, Yacco was a community college student.
To qualify, interested participants had to fill out a questionnaire and a psychological profile. Yacco, now a broadcast journalism teacher, was one of the 24 students selected for the experiment.

Zimbardo randomly assigned the prisoner and guard roles to the students, who did not know they had been chosen due to similar psychological profiles.

For the first day of the experiment, Yacco drove to a Palo Alto home, where he was arrested by a policeman, taken to the Palo Alto police station, then taken to the makeshift prison.

“They blindfolded me and drove me off,” said Yacco. “I didn’t know where I was going.”

It was part of the experiment that made the experience more realistic, Yacco explained.

Later, Yacco learned the experiment was held in a Stanford basement. He said it did not look like a real prison.

“On the first day, they took all of our clothes from us,” said Yacco.

Yacco and the other 24 prisoners were then given smocks to wear and caps to cover their hair. They were sprayed to get rid of potential lice and germs. Each prisoner had a chain and a lock attached to each of his legs and was given a number. Yacco was prisoner 1037.

“There were three people in each cell, which was really a small room,” Yacco said. “We had cots but no toilet.”

Soon after the experiment began, one prisoner began to disobey orders.

“He said ‘This is an experiment,’ which was against the rules,” said Yacco. “He started a rebellion against the guards.”

Things escalated from there, Yacco said. Soon the guards started punishing the prisoners who rebelled, taking away their cots and waking them in the middle of the night to exercise.

Though Yacco was placed in solitary confinement for rebelling, some prisoners refused to rebel. “I was in protests and marches [at the time] and I thought our generation was more liberal and open to challenging authority,” said Yacco.

After three days, the prisoner who had started the rebellion was released. He promised to return and break everyone out of prison. As the experiment progressed, the guards became more hostile.

“One of the guards was sadistic,” said Yacco. “The rest went along with it but didn’t generate what he did.”

When another prisoner was released, the guards had the rest of the prisoners chant, “Prisoner 819 is a bad prisoner.”

The prisoners didn’t know it at the time, but 819 was in another room where he could hear their chant and began to cry.

“He really thought we thought he was a bad prisoner,” said Yacco. “I was saying something I didn’t believe in and I hurt another person.”
Yacco decided to leave the study early.

“I was turning 20 the next week and I realized I didn’t want to spend my birthday in the experiment,” said Yacco.

Yacco went to a simulated parole hearing, where he presented his case. The next day, one day before the experiment officially ended, the parole board released him.

Some of the prisoners who had been let go had had mental breakdowns during the experiment, Yacco said.

“The parole board felt I was going to be the next one, but I disagree,” said Yacco.

In the end, Yacco said he thinks the experiment proved people act the way society expects them to act. “I even see that with students here,” said Yacco. “They have a lot of potential but do tend to fall
into the role society assigns them.”

Acentares sees the experiment as a cautionary tale. “If we don’t pay attention [to the roles society gives us], we fall into a trap where we do what society tells us to do.”

And on Nov. 8, a producer from “Made” came to Fremont Federation of High Schools to interview 19 students who want to be featured as they are made into someone else.

The auditions were open to all Fremont schools, but all the students who auditioned were from Media Academy.

“They are looking for someone fresh, unique and different with an uncommon dream that will look good on television,” said Media Academy director Michael Jackson, who contacted MTV to set up the interviews.

This is not the first time famous people have come to Fremont. In the past, Fremont has hosted music stars Rihanna and Dr. Dre, activist Dolores Huerta, astronaut Alan Shepard and former CBS news anchor Dan Rather.

But MTV had never been to Fremont.

“It was not a public interview like ‘American Idol’ where you make a fool of yourself in front of everyone,” Jackson said. “They were five-minute interviews with one guy [from MTV].”

Junior Katelyn Bauzon auditioned.

“I want to be made into a skateboarder,” said Bauzon. “It’s different and out of my element.”

Junior Juan Aguilar told MTV he wants to be made into a soccer coach.

“I look at myself as being a soccer coach in the future,” said Aguilar, who asked to be taken to a professional soccer practice.

A Fremont student on “Made” could have wider positive effects, some say.

“It would give Fremont a good image,” said Aguilar.
Bauzon agrees. “Hopefully, it will get this school heard.”

Will Fremont be heard? Stay tuned.

The result: a massive rise in class sizes, with some so large they are breaking the teachers union contract — and exhausting some students’ patience.

“The oxygen isn’t fresh and delicious,” said senior Chrystal Nguyen, who began the year in overcrowded Advanced Placement Statistics and Honors Physiology classrooms. More seriously, she said, it has been difficult to concentrate in such packed classes.

In the beginning of the school year, Nguyen’s class had 39 students, according to Patrick Lecourt, her physiology teacher — nine more than what the union contract permits for a lab science class. Her statistics class had 38 students, according to Mohamed Bailey, the statistics teacher.

Laura Kim Yee, a senior in that same AP Stats class, described the number of students as “high enough for students to be sitting on the top of the back counters … and it’s difficult to receive individual attention from the teacher.”

Administrators noted that every year has some chaotic first days.

“It’s normal for classes to be overcrowded in the beginning of the school year. It’s unavoidable,” said Principal Troy Johnston.

However, this year has been fundamentally different, teachers say, and there may simply not be enough teachers for the school’s current population.

“This problem is not really our administration. The problem is the state and district budgeting system,” said Vincent Tolliver, a music teacher and a teachers union representative. Skyline, he thinks, has reached the limits of what it can do with current resources.

The teacher contract provides both maximum class sizes and deadlines for when that has to happen — the 15th school day. However, by the end of the first marking period — the 30th school day — this “balancing” still had not been completed.

Beth Napier, for example, said one of her chemistry classes still had 43 students after six weeks, even though lab science classes are only supposed to have 31, according to the contract rules.

“Students sit in the back of the classroom [on lab tables], and I’m constantly trying to squeeze through the crowd. Students are packed in like sardines,” she said.

Napier added that the overcrowding has imposed serious limitations on her ability to teach her subject.

“[Students] are horsing around and not listening while I’m teaching,” she said. “I’ve been afraid to do labs because the lab safety rules are ignored.”

As of Oct. 14, Napier said she had 189 students in total, even though the union contract limits a lab science teacher to having just 155.

Tolliver said he and the union filed a formal grievance with the district over the issue in early October. The grievance also included similar issues at the district’s other two large comprehensive high schools, Oakland Tech and Oakland High.

Since then, money was found to hire two more math teachers and pay some science teachers to teach a sixth section. However, even as late as early December, some classes at the school were still overenrolled.

While the administration continues to tinker with schedules and the union grievance gets filed, some see the problems as linked to the larger economic and political picture. Napier urges students and parents to demand the school district address the issue.

“It’s really them who can make a difference,” she said.

Brown signed AB 131, also known as the California Dream Act, into law on Oct. 8, giving students who are not United States citizens access to public funding from the state, including scholarships and grants for college. The money will be available to eligible students on Jan. 1, 2013.

For Jessica, an undocumented student at Fremont Federation whose name has been changed for this story, the passing of this bill means more than just money.

“The Dream Act to me, means a whole different life,” said Jessica. “I can get money that I would need to get the good quality education that everyone deserves.”

Like other students who lack U.S. citizenship, Jessica has an emotional story as to why her family decided to come to America.

“My father always wanted a better life for his family,” Jessica said.
“He would go back and forth to the United States for work. He saw himself struggling to maintain three children and a wife.”

Jessica was brought to the United States illegally from Mexico when she was only a few months old. Her family chose to come to the U.S. for a better life, especially to give Jessica and her siblings a better education.

Jessica is an honor roll student whom teachers praise for her hard work, pleasant attitude and excellent writing.

But until the law passed, Jessica thought she would have to take a semester or a year off to save up money to pay for college. She is a junior and now will be able to apply for Cal Grants and other funding when she is a senior. Her hope is to go to University of California, either Berkeley or Davis, and major in child development.

For years, undocumented high school students in California have been unable to receive state scholarships or grants because of their citizenship status. Californians passed Prop. 187 in 1994, banning the state from giving undocumented students aid.

Not everyone is happy about the Dream Act’s passage.

A group led by California Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, R-Twin Peaks, has started collecting signatures to let voters decide if the law should be reversed, according to the Sacramento Bee.

“The so-called ‘Dream Act’ is an economic nightmare,” Donnelly wrote in a press release. “It will cost tens of millions in the first year alone.”

But at Fremont, many adults who work with undocumented students and watch them struggle, are thrilled that the state Dream Act passed.

“Many immigrant families value education, and this act [will be] supportive of what families want for their children,” said Nidya Baez, Fremont’s college and career counselor.

Barbie Penn, a program assistant with Mills Educational Talent Search, said the law should help many high school students.

“If undocumented students are given access to financial aid, then I believe the students will be more motivated” in high school, said Penn.

Although students such as Jessica may be closer to reaching their dreams for college, one huge hurdle still exists — unless the federal government passes a similar law for undocumented students that includes a path to citizenship, they will finish their college degrees and still be unable to work legally in America.