Senior Spotlight: Alexander Ian Konow

By Varun Roperia

  Alex the Gentle Giant walks through the halls of ESHS…and one can track his progress as his head floats above the crowd. His sometimes staid demeanor is often broken by a burst of laughter, wise crack, or hilarious accent, and Alex manages to brighten many a day with his breaks from monotony.
July 3, 1991 marked the momentous occasion of the birth of Alexander Ian Konow to James and Petra Konow at UCLA Medical Center. Originally living in an apartment in West LA, he moved to his current abode in Westchester at the tender age of 2, and he attended elementary school at Westchester Lutheran School. Alex’s debut in El Segundo began with his attendance at ESMS, and he has been in the district ever since.
Fondly reflecting on his childhood, a rich and varied swath of experiences is revealed…one reason being that having visited 32 foreign countries to date makes for interesting stories. That’s right, Alex has traveled quite a bit, and over the past 17 years visited the nations of Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, Japan, Turkey, Germany, Spain, Italy, Holland, Austria, Greece, Macedonia, Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Slovakia, Hungary, Malta, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, Albania, Ukraine, Poland, and Belarus. He plans on continuing this pattern and will visit Egypt and Jordan this summer.
A favorite childhood memory comes from one of these trips, when Alex was visiting Germany. At the age of five, he was in fact attending school for a short while in Bonn, Germany. He recalls in particular a loudmouthed, mean teacher whom he “absolutely hated,” and much to “my joy I managed to contract a strain of the flu that kept me at home for a month.” Clearly, his sometimes twisted yet cheery sense of humor has been a long time in the making. Another, more traumatic incident involves his cat named Mickey. After a very long and happy life in the Konow household, Mickey was found by Alex, upon his awakening, in a pool of her own vomit, twitching and in death throes.
Not surprisingly, Alex cites his family and friends as important figures in his life. Both his parents are full professors at LMU; His dad teaches economics and is chair of the economics department, and also recently became a part time professor at a university in Bergen, Norway, while his mother teaches German Language and Literature and is the director of European Studies. Not coincidentally, Alex is thus fluent in German, and in addition to this very adept, perhaps fluent in Spanish. He gives a shout to his friends Danny Gladstone, Varun Roperia, CJ Mahoney, and Ian Maloney, as well as his girlfriend Lindsey Saldin, each of whom means the world to him.
His influences and role models are numerous. “Aside from the great Varun, of course, one of my role models is a Tibetan monk I read about recently. He was held by the Chinese government, and tortured for several months, yet upon his release he harbored no ill will against his captors. His profound emotional character is incomprehensible, and something I truly admire.”  Some facts about Alex:  He enjoys playing the piano very much, and practices for two hours each day; he has an iPhone full of classical music, and Chopin is his favorite composer.  His favorite X-Man is Ice Man, because “freezing stuff and surfing on ice anywhere is basically just awesome.” One of his favorite quotes pertains to a conversation Winston Churchill once had: (Woman to Winston) “If you were my husband, I would poison your coffee” (Winston to Woman) “If you were my wife, I would drink it.”
One example of the eclectic quirks born from the mind of Alexander includes the plan on moving to Germany and owning a castle. The German government will allow any citizen to live in a castle and own it as their property provided they have the resources to take care of the grounds, and will pay for maintenance and renovations, as well as allowing inspectors to ensure everything is being maintained. Therefore, the only natural response to this fact is to make tons of money as a doctor, then move to Germany and be lord of a castle, which is exactly what Alex, or Markgraf (Marquis) Alex as he will be called, and his friend Varun, who will be known as Kurfurst (Count) Varun,  plan on doing.
Alex has been involved in many school activities, including Interact Club, where he was Vice President for a year, Habitat for Humanity, and AP Bio Club. He has taken AP Bio, Calc, and Lit…as well as Economics, Political Behavior, Physics, and US History at SMC/El Camino College. In terms of the future, he will be attending Santa Clara University, where he received a tuition remission by virtue of his parents teaching at a Jesuit Institution. He plans to major in Biology and minor in Philosophy and Music, with the goal of becoming a anesthesiologist. He plans on studying abroad in Leipzig, Germany for a year while at Santa Clara; after leaving he hopes to join the Peace Corps, and then to attend Columbia University for medical school, because “I really like New York…and that’s where Spider Man is from!”
Overall, Alex Ian Konow is quite the character. His infamous accents, including “Memito” the bolivian child of the Altiplano, his Cora Chong sound-alike, and his “Kaiser Von German” bring many to tears laughing.  He is a man of many talents, and if you wish to know more about him, go up and strike a conversation…you might even get a straight answer.

By Jocelyn Paz and Alex Miwa

The Swine Flew Over the Season

By Cora Chong

Mid-April, 2009, exposed a fearful public enemy to the world. Of pandemic proportions, few suspected the culprit to be a pig. Yes, a pig…or more accurately, several pigs.
Much like last year, the outbreak of influenza virus threw the world into a health-awareness frenzy that would last for several months. But the major difference from last year is that this time around, more inhabitants of Mexico and the United States have been afflicted, and the culprit this time is indeed swine, rather than our feathered friends whom caused such a flurry last year. Contrary to popular belief, the disease isn't contracted by eating pork or by rubbing against pigs. Rather, it is caused by the new strain of influenza virus that pigs happen to exhibit. To combat the scare of transmission through eating pork, the swine flu was later renamed to be "H1N1 flu" after the surface proteins of the virus. However, there are still a number of people who believe that the flu is transmissible via pork meat.   
The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the "swine" flu to be at phase 5-6, the zenith of transmission, the pandemic status of epic proportions. Or, more plainly, the status at which most people become stricken with stress and anxiety. Six confirmed deaths have occurred in the United States since the outbreak in April, and strenuous measures have been taken to ensure sanitation (and sanity?) is in check. Already, many schools across the nation have closed due to the flu, with 16 closures in California alone. For the many hopeful students at ESHS, a school closing remains uncertain. The likelihood of exposure to H1N1 flu in El Segundo is moderately high, since many parents of students work at the airport and interact with multinational groups.

But with all the anxiety, hand-washing, and lemon-scented surface wipes being passed out, the H1N1 flu is really...just another flu to add to the flu season. A greater proportion of people die each year the regular flu pandemic than the H1N1 flu, and yet the fear of this flu is thousands of times more severe than the fear of a regular flu. The outbreak is much more mild than previous outbreaks of H1N1 (flu) viruses, so little is to be worried. In addition, the six deaths mentioned earlier were confirmed to be caused by pneumonia, not the H1N1 flu directly.
            
So, hopeful students waiting for the school to be closed, not much is to be expected. But hope is rarely a bad idea.

ESHS Filming Ordinance

By Chase Bougeon

Public education is built upon the noble ideal of bestowing a free education upon our nation’s youth with the hopes that they will help bring about a better, brighter tomorrow – unfortunately, this idea is fueled by cold, hard cash. It’s no secret to anyone that schools run off money. Take away the money, and you take away education.
Last year the finest minds in El Segundo brainstormed an idea involving limiting the amount of filming (filming = cash) that could take place at El Segundo High School because nearby neighbors complained of the noise pollution, air pollution, and traffic that the filming caused. Some raised questions, as if they have yet to realize that they live in Los Angeles, a city noted for its famous air pollution, its freeways that are more like parking lots durning much of the day, and that right next to one of the busiest airports in the world, where loud airplanes can be heard taking off and landing all times of the day. To cap it off, it was apparent that they did not know that Hollywood is nearby and that they make films throughout the Los Angeles area.
To be fair, these neighbors do have personal rights like the right to not have fumes from diesel generators (which generate electricity for the film crews) fumigating their home or being awoken at 2 AM by film crews packing up and leaving. The school and film crews have an obligation to be respectful to their neighbors.
The ordinance that the city came up with community members from both sides (school and neighborhood) was by all means successful for the neighbors. The schools filming days was limited to 20 days a year, all filming would have to stop at 10 PM, efforts were made to move film trucks off of the streets and diesel generators away from homes.
For the school, it meant that there potential to make an upwards of $120K or more from filming in a school year had cut $700K. The ordinance also meant that even when filming equipment was set up on school property but no filming was going on (which meant that neighbors weren’t being disturbed at all), it still counted against the school and one of their limited 20 days of filming. To make matters worse, ESUSD may have to cut $2 million next year.
This limiting ordinance, coupled with the budget cuts led to the city hall meeting on Tuesday May 5th where members from the school came to ask the council to revise the ordinance. Geoff Yantz looked at the problem from a financial standpoint and made the suggestion of increasing the number of filming days to 30. Jayne Pimlot discussed how it would be impossible for the PTA to generate as much money as filming does (a typical day of filming makes at least 6,000 dollars).  Edie Rice shared her observations that the administrators do a good job about making that the filming is unobtrusive as possible to the students. Mike Rice said it well when he discussed the community pride that comes with filming and how the money generated by the filming outweighs the inconveniences.
David Burns, the husband of our counselor, Stephanie Burns, put the matter in another perspective when he said how it was paradoxical that El Segundo is the “Most Business Friendly City” but we are turning away the different filming opportunities. He went on to say that the filming that we turn away is “stolen” by other schools and if we continue to turn away filming opportunities, other schools in the future could get the majority of filming. Also, he mentioned how the needs of the minority were less than the needs of the majority and how it wasn’t fair that a handful of people could limit the needs of the community
To balance the succession of arguments from those supporting school-filming, Dorra Polk, took the podium and explained the inconveniences of filming upon the neighbors. When there is filming, for the neighbors of the school it means a loss of parking, air pollution from the generator fumes, sight and noise pollution, and disrespect of personal privacy. Another neighbor, went up and explained how the filming really ruins the weekends for the residents around the school. He reminded the community to “remember the little guy” and suggested that the school and community work together to solve this issue.
After some drama between the mayor and two council members, Councilman Bill Fisher introduced a motion that was finally passed to reconvene the ordinance committees to find a better solution that fairly balances the needs of the school and the needs of the community. Fisher appeared to be the most education-friendly member of the council.  All in all, the school needs the filming for the money which pays for programs, equipment  and classes while the community needs to have its rights to privacy and property protected.  We need good government to come up with a good solution.

Internet Filtering at Our School: Two Sides of the Issue

By Jack Li

Most students at ESHS have encountered the ubiquitous blocked websites when surfing the web on the school computer network, whether discreetly trying to get onto MySpace during class or while doing innocent research. The network managing program, ominously dubbed “Lightspeed Total Traffic Control,” seems to be like an overprotective mother, blocking anything that may have the slightest hint of being over G rated and therefore able to damage the minds of sensitive high school students. Although the obvious sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube are blocked, many students often complain about blocked sites that seem innocent or needed for research purposes. However, there is a solution in certain websites called “proxies” (which many students have already discovered). Proxies are internet servers which allow a user to access a blocked website through their server, bypassing the internet filter. Many students use these sites to access the blocked sites that they require, while avoiding the overly aggressive internet filtering. Senior Arno Roessler gave his opinion on this matter:
Q: What do you think of sites such as MySpace, YouTube, and others being blocked?
A: I can understand MySpace being blocked, but some sites that are blocked are pretty outrageous because they have educational purposes…I remember at one point gmail was blocked.
Q: So you think some of these sites are blocked too generally and have an educational purpose?
A: Yes, I think the school overreacts to some of these…or is being overly protective.
Q: Have you heard of students using proxies to get by these blocks?
A: Yes, I have.
Q: What do you think of this practice?
A: I think proxies can be useful in some circumstances.

However, that is merely the student’s view of the school’s internet filtering. To the teacher, it is a completely different issue. The internet filtering represents a palladium of safety from inappropriate sites, harassment, etc. It means that students are deterred from being distracted while they are supposed to be using the computer for research. The filter saves teachers a huge amount of time managing and apprehending students who are visiting inappropriate sites. So as the internet filtering may seem a curse to students, it may be a blessing to teachers. El Segundo High's principal, Mr. Garza, agreed:

Q: Why would you say sites such as MySpace and YouTube are blocked?
A: In the past, we have had instances of students harassing other students or viewing inappropriate material. We have to have a learning environment safe from that type of harassment.
Q: For how long has the site blocking been in place?
A: About 5-6 years.
Q: What would you say about those that claim that some of the blocked sites have a legitimate educational use?
A: Well, I would need particular sites to really say, but sites such as MySpace really create a hassle that we can’t police. I don’t care about what you do at home, but while you’re at school, we have an obligation to keep you protected.
Q: Some students have also complained that too many harmless sites are blocked or that sites are blocked too generally. What would you say to this?
A: Well, the filter hits on certain words in the site that may lead it to think the site is inappropriate. If there is a legitimate reason, then we can remove the block on a certain site. I’m sure that students will usually be able to find the information they are looking for another way.
Q: W hat do you think of students using proxies to get around the blocks?
A: We don’t approve of this action. Proxies allow students to access inappropriate sites which opens the school up to all sorts of issues. In fact, just the other day, we caught and punished a student who had looked up an inappropriate site on a proxy and left it open when he left the computer.
Q: Do you think there is a point to continuing to block these sites if students can always get around the filter with proxies?
A: Well, we continually update the filter so it can continue to be effective.

The moral of the story: Unfortunately, in the opinion of some of the less scrupulous students, the internet filtering is here to stay. The administration does not approve of proxies and the like, so be careful of what you do on the school network.