Month: December 2018

By Devonna Dang

Computer Science Team traveled to NYU (New York University) to compete in a cybersecurity competition, CSAW (Cyber Security Awareness Worldwide) from Nov. 8 to Nov. 11. Two students from the team, President Anne Ouyang; senior Anh Thu Pham, Advisor Stewart Kuang will be attending the Final in-person round after qualifying as a top all-girls team.

According to Anne, hundreds to thousands of people attend the event. All finalist teams received a scholarship to NYU of $28 thousand and first place received double of the amount, $56 thousand.

Unfortunately this year, the Computer Science team didn’t place. The winners were announced at the award ceremony and a first, second, third place team is recognized for each region. First place was 1064CBread from Dos Pueblos High School resided in Santa Barbara, Calif., second place was n0de from Montgomery Blair High School resided in Rockville, Maryland, and third place was let-down from West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North resided in Plainsboro, New Jersey.

“It’s a competition for everyone, including college students, professionals and there’s a special high school division,” said Anne Ouyang.

The high school division is named the RED (Red Team Competition) and is comprised of 11 US high school teams: 8 teams derived from 4 US regions of the top 2 scoring teams with no more than one team per high school, 2 teams from the top scoring all-female team and 1 team from the top scoring New York City team.

At CSAW Finals, the teams were given a brief story-line. They began with a single piece of evidence, which was a website with a login page and the other lead to a google drive with the company’s products, and needed to utilize forensic analysis to uncover further key evidence.

“They gave us a packet with leads to the questions that we had to answer and type a report on,” said Anh Thu.

Both physical and digital evidence is encompassed. Afterwards, they were required to submit a report with their findings and conclusions which will be then evaluated and scored by a range of credible industry judges.

“The highlight of the event for me was after the actual RED Team competition. We had enough free time in the night to explore and go to Manhattan and it stopped raining just before we headed out to Times Square,” said AnhThu

The competition had been redesigned as a two-part investigation for RED. The first round is the online Qualification Round which focuses on reconnaissance, penetration testing and skill-building. The second round is the in-person Finals, where they had to infiltrate and analyze findings of an operation and successfully abscond.

“(High School) students will need to apply skills related to forensics, cryptography, reverse engineering, exploitation and social engineering,” according to the NYU Tandon School of Engineering’s website.

This event was entry-level and geared towards students who had the intent of studying or working with cybersecurity, which protects computer systems from theft and hardware, software, or electronic data damage. The challenges hold the purpose to showcase rudimentary concepts and challenge students to enhance their skills.

“(It) requires players to integrate concepts develop skills, and learn to hack as they go. Challenges mimic real-world scenarios modeling various computer security problems,” according to the NYU Tandon School of Engineering’s website.

In addition, it provides an opportunity for students to improve their cyber security skills or to simply gain experience. For the students with no prior interest or experience in cyber security and digital forensics, RED gives assistance to proliferate a greater recognition of educational possibility and profession paths in the field.

“(CSAW’s) purpose is to promote awareness and interest in cyber security at a high school level,” said Anne Ouyang.

With participation in RED comes along a wide array of benefits: scholarships, prizes, travel awards, pre-college experiences, the experience of participating in an international competition with thousands of students from around the world and the opportunity to meet industry experts and learn about internships.

The CSAW RED Finals this year was held at four global academic centers: CSAW Europe at Grenoble INP-Esisar, CSAW MENA at the Higher School of Communications of Tunis, CSAW Mexico at University Americana Mexico City and CSAW US-Canada at NYU Tandon School of Engineering.

The competition was sponsored by Applied Computer Security Associations so the trip to NYU was already planned for by the Computer Science Team.

By: Janelle Perez

Bring Change to Mind attended an annual summit on Nov. 3 held by the Bring Change to Mind organization and their sponsors, headspace and the Hudson’s Bay Company Foundation.

The summit took place in San Francisco at the Twitter headquarters, where 180 schools from all over the Bay Area came together to talk about ending the stigma behind mental health.

Piedmont Hills joined Independence High School and represented the East Side Union High School District.

“Since ¼ people are affected by mental illness at some point in their life, I want to help others recognize the importance of mental health,” says Bring Change to Mind President Trinh Ho. The summit provides a safe and open environment to all students interested in attending, even those not in the club.

Students did a series of mini-seminars about mental health-related topics along with activities that calm the mind and body, such as yoga and hula hooping. The event also provided therapy dogs, which students were allowed to pet and interact with. Students were also given t-shirts that read ‘The future is stigma free.’ Name tags were provided so students could write their preferred pronoun.

“I think that allowing people to express themselves and be open about who they are, especially in any type of, environment is great,” said Trinh. “It allows people know they are valid and are loved.”

One of the main topics discussed at the summit were Mental Health Rules, such as how someone should react towards a person who is dealing with mental health issues. Issues that are typically avoided were brought up in discussion in an effort to end the stigma against mental health. Attendees also talked about their own schools and the type of support system the students have access to.

“The summit was very exciting, new (to me) and very safe and comfortable,” stated senior Paola Rios, who was a first time attendee.

This environment where students feel safe, comfortable, supported and loved is something that Bring Change to Mind members hope to bring back to their schools. They hope to help contribute to ending the stigma behind mental health and help make school a much safer place.

Midterm Election

By Terry Tang

Midterm Elections

PHHS was recognized on Nov. 5 along with 12 other San Jose high schools for its voter registration efforts by the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors. According to KPIX speaker Len Ramirez, together, the schools registered at least 1000 new voters.

“The problem that we are trying to solve is really getting young people to cast their ballot. They are marching and protesting, but not voting,” said Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez on KPIX news.

Government teacher Lynne Murray spearheaded the voting registration drive on campus, encouraging students, even those too young to vote, to become politically aware and active through mock elections and voting pre-registration. Students as young as 16 were allowed to pre-register to vote, in the hopes that they will vote in future elections, particularly the upcoming 2020 election.

“Voting is one of the responsibilities of being a citizen,” said government teacher Lynne Murray.

These high school voter registration drives were a part of a nationwide effort to increase voter participation in the midterm elections, resulting in a record voter turnout. According to the United States Election Project, nearly 48% of eligible voters cast ballots in these midterms, compared to almost 39% in the 2014 election, making it the first midterm in history to exceed over 100 million votes. The Atlantic stated that more than 3.3 million voters ages 18 to 29 voted via early ballot, a 188% increase from 2014.

According to Vox, Democrats took control of Congress by 28 Republican-held seats for a net gain of 26 seats. In the Senate before the Midterm Election, there were 51 Republicans and 49 Democrats which meant that Democrats only needed to flip two seats to gain majority in Senate. So far, the Senate elections show that 51 Republicans and 47 Democrats with two undecided.

The Midterm Elections were very close, especially in majority red states where Democrats were trying to flip their election. The New York Times showed that within the nine red states, five Democrats won their Senate elections in majority Republican people states. Most of the Red State Democrat Senate elections were very close, most of them in the margin of 4 percent or lower. For example, Jon Tester is an incumbent that was running for reelection at the Senate. He won by 3.1 percent according to the New York Times. He was an open-minded Democrat and was willing to work with President Trump. On the other hand, Republicans won the Senate election by less than 1% in Florida according to the New York Times. Republican Florida Governor Rick Scott beat Democrat Bill Nelson by a mere 0.2 percent.

Democrats disagree on whether Nancy Pelosi should be re-elected as Speaker of the House again. CBS News claims that about eight Democrats believe that Nancy Pelosi should be replaced despite her being one of the top level Democrats and all the accomplishments like making minimum wage higher while being Speaker of the House. President Trump also believes that Nancy Pelosi should be Speaker of the House again and is willing to get Republicans to vote for her. He says that she is a fighter and deserves the office. Pelosi disagrees saying that she does not deserve the office, but one should get it by doing hard work.

“In all fairness, Nancy Pelosi deserves to be chosen Speaker of the House by the Democrats,” tweeted President Trump.

Since the Democrats control House of Representatives and the Republicans have the Senate, the government is divided. Democrats and Republicans have different ideas on how to run the government so there will most likely be conflict which is called gridlock. Gridlock prevents the government from working correctly and often no work is done. In order for the government to function again, Democrats and Republicans would have to set aside their different beliefs to satisfy America’s citizens’ needs and pass productive legislature.

by Alana Silva and Lawrence Pei

Last Wednesday through last Saturday, the Drama Dept. performed its annual play “Radium Girls” in the L-Building. The play is a dramatic retelling of the young women who worked at the U.S. Radium Corp in the 1920-30s applying radioactive paint to the dials of clocks, instrument gauges and wristwatches for the United States Radium Company using the newly discovered element Radium. That is, until girls at the factory started dying of radiation poisoning and turned to the owners of the company to take responsibility for their illnesses and impending deaths.

According to Drama teacher and Play Director Anna Woods, she decided to produce this play because she thought it was a very important story to tell.

“It’s a bit of history that nobody knows about but I think the idea of corporate greed, and corruption and the lack of proper treatment of workers is something that happens all the time. The idea of the commercialization of science and of discovery and how people jump on fads and trends without knowing what they’re getting into is something that definitely happens today, so I feel the story is topical and relevant,” said Ms. Woods.

This year, the Fall Play casted 32 characters compared to the 22 characters from last year’s “I Don’t Have a Clue.”

“We have a lot of new actors, people who are taking the stage for the first time, so the show allows a lot of people to get stage experience. We have a lot of freshmen and sophomores on stage. and of course our juniors and seniors are getting some of the bigger parts because they have a little more experience,” explained Ms. Woods

For this year’s play, the Drama dept. decided to transition to a more dramatic play in “Radium Girls” than in previous years when the focused mostly on comedy

“We haven’t done a dramatic play in a while, it’s been a lot of comedy, so that is something new.” said Jack Wong, who played Dr. Knef who is a dentist attempting to blackmail the US Radium Corp. to give him money in return to disclose the results of the dying girls.

Because of this transition, it caused many actors to have to expand their skill set to better the production as a whole.

“I had to learn to speak slower and louder while acting on stage as well as in scenes where I’m angry at other characters,” said lead actor Mason Sandoval, who plays the President of the US Radium Corporation.

For some actors, the most rewarding aspect was to show the audience aspects of American history that many were previously oblivious about.

“By performing this play, I believe that I was able to tell the story about these women and the hardship they went through,” said lead actress Rachel Nguyen, who played Grace Flyer who is one of the sick workers working for the US Radium Corp who decides to sue them over her condition.

This year’s production was based on a true story, so many of the actors sought to familiarize themselves with the historical context and circumstances behind the play.

“Because of the background of this year’s play, I had to study the script a lot more, dig into the background of the time in which these events were occurring as well as to find similar characters to mine and to draw inspiration from them,” stated actor Andrew Wang, who played Jack Youngblood who is the reporter disclosing the story.

Viewing the play as a whole, Ms. Woods was very satisfied with this year’s group and how they did both in the amount of talent they had as well as the way they rehearsed.

“I think one of the strengths right now is that we have actors that are able to be emotional and able to be very deliberate in their acting and to be able to step into the lives of these historical characters.” stated Ms. Woods