Click on the purple bolded text for clips from the interviews.
With all the stress and fear of judgment present throughout high school, there aren’t many outlets for students to express themselves on relevant issues they are passionate about. At MVHS, however, there’s an exception. A publication created and advised for approximately 10 years by FUHSD board member Hung Wei, Verdadera is MVHS’ very own student-run magazine that comes out with issues around every month and a half.
“The goal of Verdadera is to spread the word about things that people don’t usually necessarily talk about, or that you wouldn’t normally ask someone,” co-editor in chief junior Adriana Getman said. “It’s kind of like a platform for people to express their opinions without fear of retribution for that.”
The magazine encourages an open line of communication between parents, students and teachers by promising students anonymity in their responses and authenticity in the opinions featured in the issue—in other words, no bias is exhibited by the staff and every credible opinion gets heard.
“Our plan is to get [the publication] out there,” said technology head senior Saagar Godithi, who helps to manage the website. “Last year, we started making issues regularly and people actually started giving us a lot of good feedback about it and wanted to hear more, but we haven’t been able to get as many copies out to the students.”
This year, Godithi aims to increase the magazine’s exposure by effectively informing students about when issues are coming out. Meanwhile, head of design junior Cheri Zhou plans to incorporate more design elements into the magazine, as well as prepare the design team so that they will be experienced enough as officers for next year.
“I want Verdadera to be a very widespread publication,” Zhou said. “I want people to know about it, I want people to look forward to it, I want people to read it every month, because we… put a lot of work into it and try to make it the best we can.”
Verdadera released its first issue of the year titled “Secrets” on Sept. 23, where anonymous, unfiltered confessions and thoughts on how secrets have impacted them were submitted by students. The issue required two two-hour long staff meetings, as well as a seven-hour work period among the head editors to compile and edit the issue. With the amount of time and effort put into each issue, as well as the ambition and goals shared by the team this year, Verdadera hopes to achieve its vision and reach out to as much of the student body as possible.
“I want people to know about Verdadera and really recognize it and identify with it,” Getman said. “I think we’re not really at that stage yet, and I think I […] and the team in general could play a really big role in that and try and make it so the student body at [MVHS] is really aware of Verdadera and its message.”
