ASB opts for gender neutral Homecoming Court

By Ami Ishikawa and Alyson Jeong

The Fullerton ASB has decided this year to crown Homecoming Royalty instead of a Homecoming Queen and King. In other words, Homecoming Court voting will result in two students being crowned at each grade level whether they identify as male, female or non-binary.

Senior Royalty will be crowned during halftime at Friday’s Blackout-and-Bling themed football game against Buena Park. Homecoming Royalty for juniors, sophomores and freshmen will be announced during Friday’s double assembly. School officials have scheduled a double assembly rather than a single assembly so the event can be hosted in the gym and still meet COVID protocols. 

The Hollywood Red Carpet themed Homecoming Dance will be hosted in the quad at 7 p.m. on Oct. 16. Students must have their school ID and a face mask to enter the dance. 

Monday, Oct. 11 and Thursday, Oct. 14 are the final days to purchase dance tickets in person. For in-person sales, students can pay with cash or a credit card (with a 3% fee) in Room 65 at break or lunch. Students are encouraged to purchase tickets online through the Tribe Store. Tickets this week are $55 with IFL card and $60 without IFL card.

Students who purchased the White and Red package at registration can receive a complimentary ticket to the dance. Students who are unsure if they or their parents purchased the bundle at registration can go to the ASB link.

Unlike previous years, students will not be permitted to invite guests from other schools to the dance. According to principal Laura Rubio, the no-guest-pass rule is primarily for safety.

“We are still very concerned with COVID and it is hard enough to contact trace our own kids, let alone bringing other kids from other campuses, districts, and cities into our mix,” Rubio said. “I feel very lucky that we can still have homecoming rallies and dances and I want to keep it that way.”

ASB is hosting spirit days leading up to Friday’s Homecoming Game. Monday is Anything But a Backpack Day. Tuesday is Early 2000’s Day. Wednesday is Pajama Day. Thursday is Sports Day. Friday is Class Colors Day: black for seniors; blue for juniors; yellow for sophomores; green for freshmen.

JROTC

Students change low grades to ‘Pass’ on transcripts

By Amanda Toledo, Reporter

As the weight of online learning took its toll on students’ ability to learn last year, distance learning also took a major toll on students’ grades. However, about 100 FUHS students chose to change some of their letter grades on their transcripts to Pass or No Pass by taking advantage of a state law enacted specifically to help students who struggled during distance learning.

According to counselor David McIntosh, most of the requests involved changing D grades to Pass and changing F grades to No Pass. A few students changed C grades to Pass. Neither the “Pass” nor “No Pass” marks are factored into a student’s GPA.

“Most of the [students] are interested in going straight to universities and the F and D grades were hurting their chances because these grades were hurting their GPA,” McIntosh said. “Most universities were accepting a Pass grade as completing a requirement, whereas a D grade meant the class would have to be repeated.”

Counselor Erin McCarthy said the law required that parents fill out an application to change their students’ grades. State officials gave counselors very little time to implement the law. 

“Counselors were given a very short window of time to hold these meetings and get the paperwork signed during an already very busy time of year for us,” McCarthy said. “It was rolled out right before school started in the middle of orientation and massive amounts of schedule changes.”

Senior Taylor Frank’s personal experience with the change being enacted aided Frank to have the opportunity to change their grades to a pass and also helped them with not retaking the class again that made their transcripts look adequate.

Senior Taylor Frank finished Precalculus with a D second semester. Students can’t apply to four-year colleges with a D on their transcripts. Instead of retaking the math class, she was able to change her grade to Pass.

“I started researching colleges,” Frank said. “Changing my math grade to pass/fail didn’t hurt my GPA. It’s still a 3.8, and grade wise that helps for colleges.”

McCarthy said the policy could be applied to either semester or both semesters but that the policy was only in place for last year’s grades.

“I believe colleges will look at the 2020-2021 school year for what it was and not place a ton of emphasis on this particular school year when evaluating students,” McCarthy said. “Everyone had the same opportunity to change their grades if they felt it could improve their chances of getting into college.”

McCarthy says the new law helped certain students who struggled last year feel better about school. 

“Hopefully the law helps them feel that they haven’t ruined their transcripts or chances for college,” she said. “I think with the struggles students faced with distance learning last year, my own children included, this new law served a useful purpose.”