The Mirror | October 2020 | Van Nuys High School | Los Angeles, California USA

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4| OCTOBER 2020 | | C U R R E N T E V E N T S | theMIRROR CDC | JAMES GATHANY TESTING This Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) scientist was preparing to test a patient’s sample for SARS-CoV-2, using the CDC 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time Reverse Transcriptase (RT)–PCR Diagnostic Panel. LAUSD launches covid testing By ANI TUTUNJYAN THE MIRROR EDITOR-IN-CHIEF It remains unclear when students will return to campuses at Los Angeles Unified schools, but the district wants to be prepared when that does happen. LAUSD has begun launching its own covid-19 testing program. LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner believes this program is key to getting students back into classrooms. “The moral imperative is to help [...] all students return to schools in the safest way possible,” Superintendent Beutner said in a recent briefing. A test run has been underway with staff, their children participating in the childcare program and students attending school-based daycare as part of the first phase of testing. Tau Langi, a cafeteria worker at James Monroe High School, first received the test two weeks ago and now receives them periodically once a week. “It only took some-hours to get my results,” she said. “I got tested in the morning and received my results sometime in the afternoon of the same day.” “The testing centers make me and my coworkers feel a lot safer about coming to work. Especially with some cases being asymptomatic, you never know if the people around you have contracted covid-19 or not,” Langi added. She believes that every student and employee should be tested before returning to campuses. “There are parents that are against vaccines or tests and treatments but we’ve never encountered covid-19 before so a required test for all staff and students is the best option if we want things to go back to the way they were.” The second phase of testing will include all staff who are currently working from home. All students and staff will undergo two baseline tests: one sometime in October before schools reopen, and a second right after. Once students and staff are back in schools, they will partake in periodic covid-19 testing. Additionally, household members who are symptomatic or may have been exposed to a student or employee who tests positive will be offered testing. Individuals will be notified via email and/or phone call when it is time to schedule their baseline test appointment. Testing appointments will be made online through SCREEN CAPTURE | KTLA5 PILOTING A RETURN Superintendent Beutner has called for covid-19 testing to return students to LAUSD campuses. LAUSD’s website. The entire process is expected to take only 10 minutes, with results being provided within 24 to 48 hours. Testing is being provided to all at no cost. The District is providing nasal swab tests as their primary testing method, but a saliva test is also available to children or adults if requested. Parental consent must be given before testing is performed. LAUSD believes that testing of all students and staff is necessary in order to safely reopen campuses. Test results will be shared with public health authorities in accordance with the law, maintaining privacy. A big component of the new testing program is the Daily Pass, a Microsoft digital application, which will be used by all students, employees and visitors to complete a required daily health check for admission to a campus. It will monitor for physical wellness and potential exposure to the virus. The app will also report any positive results to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health and assist in contact tracing. Testing for the whole year will cost the district about $300 per student, with each individual test coming out to about $30. Testing is currently being provided at 41 sites, each of which is located at a school within each Local District’s Community of Schools. As of last week, more than 25,000 tests have been conducted among staff who are currently working on campuses. LAUSD has over 600,000 students and nearly 75,000 teachers and employees working across more than 1,000 schools. Testing will eventually increase to 40,000 tests per day once the timing for students’ return to classrooms is clear. “I believe that it [covid-19 testing] is one of many steps towards the reopening of LAUSD schools,” junior Erick Casco said. “Of course public health should be the top priority when reopening schools. Covid-19 is a problem that won’t go away that easily and with people out in public they will always be faced with the risk of contracting covid-19 so to maintain public health standards, all staff and students should get periodically tested when we do return.” Facebook political ads censored before election CSARINA JARENCIO THE MIRROR STAFF In an attempt to limit voter misinformation and interference on its platform in the upcoming November Election, Facebook has announced a moratorium on certain types of content. The company will ban new political and issue-based advertising in the week prior to the election and indefinitely after the polls close on Election Day to keep political candidates from using the platform to manipulate the election’s outcome and its aftermath. Facebook will remove posts that seek to intimidate voters, including encouragement of poll watching. The company will also place a voting information center at the top of its News Feed through Election Day. The hub will provide accurate, upto-date information on how, when and where to register to vote. The social media platform has widened its removal of posts that aim to suppress voters. Posts that cause confusion around who is eligible to vote, based on misstatements such as what documents are required to receive a ballot, will also be deleted. Facebook has been striving to avoid another 2016 election catastrophe, when the platform was used by Russian operatives to spread disinformation through questionable political ads. Along with the 57 percent of misleading posts shared, over 3,500 ads on Facebook that targeted American voters were Kremlin-backed political ads that were primarily pro-Trump. Under the direction of CEO Mark Zuckerberg, one of the world’s richest men, Facebook has invested billions of dollars to hire new employees for the company’s security divisions, whose job is to identify and clamp down on interference and misinformation before it widely spreads over the platform. According to Zuckerberg, over the last four years Facebook has removed over 100 networks worldwide that were trying to influence elections. However, Zuckerberg said most threats that may undermine the November election are domestic. Despite his contention that misinformation was mainly from domestic sources, the company said it will not police speech from politicians and other leading figures for truthfulness. As the election approaches, Facebook teams have been training for months to walk through different contingency plans for how to handle the situation. Critics feel that Facebook’s changes may have come too late claiming that it does not provide a permanent solution to the spreading of misinformation on the platform. “Facebook is in a tough spot. They don’t want to be seen as fact checkers or the truth police. Yet you can’t deny the power of false messaging on social media,” social science teacher Robert Crosby said. “I believe they could do more to make it harder to post outright lies or doctored media.” SCREEN CAPTURE | TWITTER DELETED Trump violated Twitter’s terms of service.
theMIRROR | P E R S P E C T I V E | | OCTOBER 2020 |5 QUARANTINE HAIR Students used their time away from prying eyes to try new hairstyles. COURTESY | CASSANDRA LIM COURTESY | HEIDY ROSALES COURTESY | ANTHONY TURNER The cuts and colors of quarantine By ITZEL GALLARDO & GWEN LANGI THE MIRROR STAFF Whether it’s uneven bangs or a bad fade, our hair can make or break our day. We spend more time perfecting our hair than we would like to admit but we’ve all experienced a bad day and blamed it on our hair — “I’m having a bad hair day.” It’s understandable why hair has so much power over our appearance: it can make strong fashion statements that other features can’t. Not everyone is skilled at doing makeup nor does every student have the money to always keep up with the latest fashion trends. Luckily we do have hair to dye, cut and style as much as we please. Changing your appearance can be a scary thing to do with the constant questioning of whether the results will be as successful as you hope or a total fail. But thanks to stay-at-home orders, we had the chance to recover from hairstyle decisions we’d possibly regret or discover hair blessings we may have otherwise never known. Whether it was a new touch of color or a new length, students took advantage of changing their hair while in quarantine. Quarantine left the majority of us cooped up in our homes with our primary source of entertainment being social media where inspiration for different styles was in every corner of the internet. Big or small, we applaud students who were brave enough to test the waters. Here are some students who took the chance to change up their look. Cassandra Lim | SENIOR What changes did you make to your hair and why? In the first two months of quarantine, I dyed my blonde highlights to blue. After two weeks or so I toned my blue highlights back to blonde. Then in July, I bleached one strand of hair twice and dyed it purple. After that, I decided to bleach the whole bottom half of my hair twice and toned it as blonde as possible. Since half of my head was blonde I decided to dye the whole thing purple once more. Did quarantine play any role in your decision? Quarantine influenced me to change my hair. I was tired of the same routine and decided I needed a change every couple of months. The fact that no one would see my hair was a bonus and encouraged me, even more, to go crazier every time. Where did you get your inspiration to change your hair? Most of my inspiration came from Tik- Tok. I would see girls on my “For You” page (a feed of posts customized for you based on the content you interact with the most) changing their hair with different colors and different styles and I was inspired. Are you satisfied with your change? Are you interested in continuing to experiment with your hair? After every change, I get a moment of satisfaction that lasts a couple of weeks but another urge to change it up again. I am interested in continuing to experiment with my hair. I already plan to dye my hair pink or silver in a couple of days. Heidy Rosales | JUNIOR What changes did you make to your hair and why? I did plenty of stuff to my hair. I cut it more than four times. I bleached my hair blonde then pink then blonde and then it went orange. I’m the type of person who likes changing looks every day. Did quarantine play any role in your decision? The reason why was because I had nothing to do throughout quarantine but damage my hair. Where did you get your inspiration to change your hair? I would get my inspirations from Tik- Tok’s and Instagram’s explore pages. Are you satisfied with your change? Are you interested in continuing to experiment with your hair? I’m satisfied with my hair right now, but later on I’m pretty sure it will change. Anthony Turner | SENIOR What changes did you make to your hair and why? I cut off all my hair and bleached the rest. I don’t know why. I just felt like I needed a change. I didn’t care about the same stuff I used to so I decided to cut it off. Did quarantine play any role in your decision? At first the fact that I was quarantined played a part but overtime I just didn’t care. I just like the fact that my hair is gone and my style changed. Where did you get your inspiration to change your hair? The movie “Waves,” Frank Ocean and TikTok. Are you satisfied with your change? Are you interested in continuing to experiment with your hair? No, I don’t think I’m satisfied. I feel like something’s missing. I’ve had this hairstyle for a couple of months now but I feel like I can do so much more. Crazy coronavirus coifs HAIR SHUTTERSTOCK | ANGELICA CORNELIUSSEN
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The Mirror | October 2020 | Van Nuys High School | Los Angeles, California USA

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