Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Photograph by George Sakkestad

Sophomore Tony Berry returned to school sporting a new "fro," which friend Spencer Hawkins, another sophomore, admires. When our photographer caught up with Berry the next day to check photo identifications, he found Berry with a slicked-down head of hair. The new "do" didn't fit under his football helmet.

LGHS students return to discover rules

By Jeff Kearns

Every year since 1887, the students have come back to Los Gatos High School. But this year, they can't bring their baseball caps, skateboards or pagers.

The new administration is cracking down, sort of, and some students are not happy. Many of the school's top administrators, including principal Ted Simonson, retired last year, and the new brass, including principal Trudy McCulloch, are doing things just a bit differently.

"Now you can't wear hats in class at all; you have to take them off," said Blake SanFilippo, a hatless junior. "It's mandatory now because of the new administration. But look at this hair," he said, running his fingers through his blond bowl-cut. "I gotta cover up this mop."

The pager ban is easier to evade: students set them to vibrate.

"I don't like the new rules. You have to have one of these to walk around the hall," said senior T.J. Bancroft during one class period, holding up his day-glo pink hall pass for emphasis.

There were other problems, as the returning students saw it. "All the bells are always screwed up," said junior Bobby Young, citing a one- to two-minute wait for the bell at the end of class. "It's inconvenient. Some teachers won't even let you out until the bell rings."

Young was also upset about the new crackdown on skateboards, even though he doesn't actually own one. "It's dumb for people not to be able to bring a skateboard to school. You can't lock up a skateboard, and it doesn't fit in your locker," he said.

Assistant principal Kathleen Eaton, who handles discipline, said the first day went smoothly, although there were some skateboards on campus.

But while there were no major disasters, for some freshmen even simple things turned into minor disasters.

"All the seniors pointed me the wrong way," said freshman Sarah Cochran. "They came up to me and asked where I was going, then they led me in the wrong direction."

Her friend Dezi Melke also had trouble.

"I walked into science and it wasn't the right period, and then I couldn't find my English class," said Melke, who is also a freshman. "There's a lot of stairs and ramps, and they all look the same. This morning I had to take out a map of the school."

Josh Adams, who knows his way around school pretty well because he's a sophomore, said that he doesn't mind helping the freshmen around. "I helped this one girl find her way back to class," he says. "She was pretty hot."

For newcomers like Melke who can't rely on old-timers like Adams, a pile of photocopied maps of the school sat on a wooden chair in the main hallway.

But given the scary prospect of starting out in a foreign environment, most of the new kids said that it wasn't as bad as they had imagined.

"It's not as scary as I thought," Liz Puckett said about her first day, which included an off-campus sojourn to a coffee shop at lunchtime. "I just thought I'd get bugged a lot 'cause we're little fresh-meat. That's what they call us."

Thomas Viramontes, for one, was happy to have his first year behind him. "I think being a sophomore is better, because you have the advantage of taking the elevator to the rooftop pool."

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