By: Gabriella Bell

As the Highland Park 2024-25 school year commences after a long awaited break, several of our most beloved culture clubs are returning to our school. Some of which include the Black Student Union (BSU), the South-East Asian Association (SEAA), the Muslim Student Association (MSA), and many more!

Today we’ll be discussing Unión Latina (ULA) and some of their future plans, possible ideas, and what they’re most known for. These sneak peaks are being given to us directly from Kenia Saravia-Marques, our very own ULA president!!

Unión Latina has had several notable events such as our annual Fiesta Latina, the Día de los Muertos events, and our collaborations for Agriculture (Ag) Day! This year, President Saravia-Marques is teasing the possibilities of newly thought out ideas and events.

While ULA will continue the tradition of the Día de los Muertos event in November, she also expressed the desire to host a spirit week as a way to celebrate and express the individuality of different backgrounds for Hispanic Heritage Month beginning on September 15, 2024.

Another idea includes more frequent involvement with the school store this year; she also demonstrated an eagerness to collaborate with a handful of our other culture clubs such as BSU and SEAA for possible game nights, movie nights, or any group building activities between the members of their clubs.

While she has many of these amazing ideas, one of her most elaborate ideas mentions the possibility of Unión Latina hosting a school dance through a partnership with Highland’s Student Council within the month of March prior to the launch of Fiesta Latina in April 2025. One of the main ideas for this dance is for attendees to be exposed to a more diverse selection and genres of music, rather than just stereotypically used songs in Spanish played at school events such as, “Gasolina”, “Suavemente”, and “Corazón Sin Cara”.

Although most of these thoughts are still in the works currently, one thing that is confirmed for Unión Latina, is their attendance at Highland’s tailgating on Saturday, September 21st (10am-12pm)! They will be fundraising for the club with the intention to plan, announce, and host future events. Their menu this year consists of chocoflan ($4), donated by club member Lorena Castro-Cruz, tres leches ($5) and Jarritos ($2), donated by board member, Bianca Torres, conchas ($4), donated by Vice President Jozzban Orellana-Guiterrez, horchata ($3), donated by President Kenia Saravia-Marques, chicharrones ($3), donated by Administrator Alysha Kellner, and bottled water ($1).

If you want a place to learn about the culture of Latin American countries, to express your culture and your individuality, or to help plan events and be more involved within Highland, Unión Latina is the club! Club meetings are held each week on Wednesdays from 3:10pm to 4:30pm in Sra. Kellner’s room, 3311. Everyone is welcome to attend, come show your support!

By: Trump Vang

Recently, our Highland Robotics Team, Team 2823, or “The Automatons”, competed at the Lake Superior Regional up in Duluth. We’ve competed in this competition before, placing 5th last year. Though this time, in Duluth, our team managed to place 3rd!  At this competition, there were dozens of teams from schools all across the midwest, competing for the title of regional winners. This title allows for a team to move up into the next level of competition, or more known as “Worlds” or “Champs” due to the variety of teams that compete.

The way that Robotics competitions work is that there is a first set of matches, known as Qualification Matches. There, teams will compete in an alliance consisting of two other robots. This alliance will go against another alliance in the competition, often fighting to complete certain objectives to earn points. During these matches, teams can earn ranking points, which are used to determine the rankings of teams in this stage.

At the end of the qualification matches, the top 8 teams are recognized and made as alliance captains. From here, they’ll have the opportunity to choose two other teams to join their alliance. From this point forward, the matches are known as playoffs to define their finality. These alliances will compete against one another in a double elimination style bracket, until only two alliances are left at the finals.

Due to the hard work of our students, we were able to become an alliance captain, and get third in the competition. Though the process of getting to that point was not easy for our team. There were constant issues within our first few qualification matches that prohibited our robot from working. From lengthy testing and fixing these problems, our robot was able to function and properly compete. From that point on, the team was able to keep their winning streak until the last qualification match, where we lost due to a singular point.

In the playoffs, our team was able to stand back up, winning a few matches, but losing to the #1 seed in the competition. At this point, our team had to win every match to keep moving on, especially as it was a double elimination style bracket. These matches were close, though the semi final match would be the closest in our careers.

There’s often a phenomenon in our team known as “The Semi Final’s Curse”. It’s where our team will make it to the semi finals just to lose in that very game. Although it’s just a belief, it hung over us during this match. It was intense on stage, as they revealed the winner, though as soon as they did, we all were ecstatic. Making up for that last qualification match, we were able to win by one singular point, placing  ourselves 3rd at the Duluth Robotics Competition. This placement would allow our team to compete on the State level for Robotics. Although we would lose the next match, we were fueled by the prospect that the future had, especially with our win.

After the losing match, our team would be recognized for the “Autonomous Award”, which is an award that defines the team that had the best Autonomous (preset code that allows the robot to do certain things). Thanks to the efforts of our programmers, we were able to win that award through the sheer efficiency and consistency of our autonomous system.

This year at Duluth was a great one for the Automatons. We competed, managing to get 3rd, as well as winning an award for our outstanding programming and autonomous. Through the efforts of everyone, we were able to shine this year at Duluth, and we plan to keep doing so at our next competitions: 10,000 Lakes & State.

By: Tasha Cudinski

FFA stands for Future Farmers of America. FFA is a national agriculture organization founded in 1928. There are FFA chapters in schools across America and even a few chapters in Puerto Rico.

FFA has many contests relating to agriculture that FFA members are free to compete in. Most contests have three levels, regional, state, and nationals; contestants start by competing at regional level with other nearby chapters and then move on to state and eventually regionals if you place high enough.

Each FFA chapter has a leadership team made up of students in FFA. In order to be eligible for an FFA leadership position you have to be enrolled in at least one semester of an agriculture class per year. The job of the leadership team is to establish order, plan club activities and organize events such as agriculture day or ag day for short. In the case of a single chapter the leaders are chosen by the teacher(s) in charge, but for state or national leaders there is a choosing committee who decides which candidates would be best for the role.

Highland Park Senior High has an FFA chapter, which meets once a month on Wednesday. Anyone is free to show up to meetings and you do not have to join a competition to attend the monthly meetings. While FFA has competitions and our school does participate in them, the club meetings have fun activities like painting, and cookie decorating. FFA meetings are also used to give members, who are interested in competing, the chance to learn more about what competitions are available, and what times and locations they are taking place at.

For more information, please visit:

• https://www.ffa.org

By: Trump Vang

Between April 23rd – 25th of 2023, FFA members had the opportunity of attending the Annual MN FFA State Convention. Here, members can engage in a multitude of activities ranging from sessions to workshops provided by the MN State FFA Association. The convention lasts 3 days in particular, holding different events each day.

The State Convention:

On Sunday, April 23rd, members qualifying for specific competitions known as Leadership Development Events (LDE’s) would compete. The following LDE’s are as listed below:

• Conduct of Chapter Meetings
• Creed Speaking
• Farm Bureau Discussion Meet
• Extemporaneous Speaking
• Parliamentary Procedure
• Prepared Public Speaking
• Best Informed Greenhand

Following these competitions, the first general session would be held at the Williams Arena. Essentially, these general sessions are to inform members about other outstanding members and chapters (schools with the organization) of FFA. They also present information about retiring officers, keynote speakers and talent acts.

The second day of the convention (April 24th) allows members to participate more within agriculture related activities and job fairs. Along with those activities, the rest of the competitions, being mainly Career Development Events (CDE’s), are held on this day. They are as listed below:

• Dairy Evaluation
• Farm Business Management
• Fish and Wildlife
• Floriculture
• Horse Evaluation
• Livestock Evaluation
• Milk Quality and Products
• Poultry Evaluation
• Nursery Landscape
• Soils
• Vet Science
• Crops
• Forestry
• Meats Evaluation and Technology
• Companion Animal Science
• Marketing Plan
• Employment Skills (LDE)
• Ag Issues (LDE)

All events are held on the State Fairgrounds, the St. Paul University of Minnesota campus or the Minneapolis University of Minnesota campus. If a member is free during this time, they may attend a wide array of activities.

During the early afternoon, the second general session will be held, followed by the third general session later within the evening. Both sessions covered talent acts, winning Agriscience projects, as well as retiring addresses for some officers. Members who had received their State Degree would also be recognized for their efforts at the end of the third general session.

There are leadership workshops on the State Fairgrounds that strive to help people grow in leadership and other communicative skills. Otherwise members can visit the colosseum on the State Fair grounds to enjoy Ag related activities or interact with other Ag organizations, colleges or jobs.

On the third and the last day of convention, the last two sessions are held for members to watch. During these sessions, members are recognized for their efforts through their Supervised Agricultural Experiences, or their competitions they’ve been competing for.

At the end of the 5th general session, new FFA members are elected to hold the positions of those who have retired. There are six current positions being held at the Minnesota FFA State Organization, being as follows: Sentinel, Reporter, Treasurer, Secretary, Vice President and President.

As of this year, the new elected positions are shown below:

• President – Katelyn Ketchum
• Vice President – Tyler Ratka
• Secretary – Alison Murrell
• Reporter – Miriana Eiden
• Treasurer – Mason Grams
• Sentinel – Alison Murrel

All In For All

Each year, FFA has a theme surrounding its convention, for example last year’s theme was “THRIVE”, expressing the want for growth within agricultural experiences, career opportunities and personal values. This year’s theme was “ALL IN FOR ALL”.

This theme exhibited diversity within FFA, and presented it with equal rights for all and throughout. Through the activities and sessions, these values were heavily expressed, ensuring that FFA was a safe place for everyone regardless of their backgrounds.

Highland Park FFA

Highland Park attended the state convention, with a varied number of members from 20 – 35 students attending the sessions and activities presented. There were many achievements made for our FFA Chapter this year.

Our FFA Chapter was presented with an award for being, a “Model of Innovation” for our work with diversifying FFA chapters through joint meetings with other clubs within Highland Park. Along with this recognition, we gained many other individual awards for those competing this year. There were many firsts on the competition scale for Highland Park Senior High’s FFA Members.

This year, we had a variety of students competing in 9 different competitions, which are as listed below with placements*:

• Ag Communications – 3rd placing team, 2nd and 4th placing individual.
• Best Informed Greenhand – 10th placing team in state
• Creed Speaking – Silver Ranked individual
• Employment Skills – 6th placing individual
• Floriculture – 15th placing team
• Milk Quality – 4th placing team, 5th placing individual
• Prepared Public Speaking – 2nd Individual in State
• Soils – 8th placing in State
• Vet Science – Gold Ranked Team

*There were many competitors competing within these competitions. There were nearly 40 teams at some competitions, and 180 competitors individually.

Overall, it was a great year of competition for Highland Park FFA through its CDE’s and LDE’s. This year at the state convention were many member’s firsts within the field, and stands as their first experience at a session with state officers. It stood as an experience for all members to be a part of the MN State FFA Convention whilst being “All in for All”.