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The student news site of The Harker School.

Harker Aquila

The student news site of The Harker School.

Harker Aquila

The student news site of The Harker School.

Harker Aquila

The girls varsity volleyball team runs out flanked by the cheerleaders. Smoke billowed behind them and the crowd went wild as they exited from the locker rooms a few minutes before the starting whistle.

Live coverage: Harker confronts Branham High School in Northern California’s first outdoor volleyball game

All content in this coverage was reported within the duration of the Homecoming game on Davis Field on Oct. 4, 2025. Final score — Eagles 3, Bruins 1 (25-23, 25-21, 17-25, 25-15) 8:51 p.m. “The crowd...

The varsity girls volleyball team celebrates a point scored in their last match against Branham High School on Aug. 28. The two teams will face off again on Davis Field this Saturday in lieu of the homecoming football game.

Tradition transformed: Varsity girls volleyball headlines homecoming

by Eva Cheng and Lily Shi October 2, 2025

For the first time in school history, the varsity girls volleyball team will compete in the homecoming game against Branham High School on Davis Field on Saturday at 6:30 p.m. The match will take the place...

The varsity football team takes the field before their home season opener against BASIS on Sept. 11. Injury concerns due to small roster size pushed Harker to cancel the traditional homecoming football game.

Football game cancellation breaks homecoming tradition

by Lily Peng and Wenjie Zou September 30, 2025

Harker cancelled the homecoming football game for the first time in school history, citing safety risks of playing with a short roster. They will instead hold a varsity girls volleyball match against Branham...

Sophomores Aileen Jiang, Liana Barooah and Dyuthi Vallamsetty talk about the workshops they attended. Workshops included topics such as developing character-driven ledes and working in sports broadcasting.

Journalism staff explores, connects at JEA NorCal Media Day

by William Jiang, Chelsea Xie, and Sam Li September 27, 2025

SAN FRANCISCO — Nineteen Harker journalism students, Director of Journalism Whitney Huang and TALON Yearbook Adviser Stephen Baxter attended the Journalism Education Association NorCal (JEANC) Media...

Dodgeball Club co-founders Sanjith Senthil (11), Haofang Zhu (11) and Kevin He (11) hold up dodgeballs on Davis Field. They founded the club to give students an opportunity to be physically active while having fun.

Your guide to 10 new clubs at this year’s Club Fair

by Leah Krupnik and Heather Wang September 15, 2025

With nearly 100 student organizations, this year’s Club Fair provides students the opportunity to explore diverse topics and interests from music to arts to puzzles and games. Amidst the tried and true...

Saxophonist Kirsten Edkins showcases her expertise during the song "Angelica." Each musician shined during this song with solo moments.

Kirsten Edkins Quintet brings jazz to life in Concert Series

by Chelsea Xie and Cynthia Xie September 12, 2025

“When life gives you speed bumps, you can choose to either slow down, or speed up and take the bump like a ride. Wuhoo!” The Kirsten Edkins Quintet performed original jazz music at 7 p.m. in the...

11 new teachers joined the upper school community this year, ranging in subjects from organic chemistry to Japanese.

New faces, fresh perspectives

by Sam Li and Eva Cheng September 7, 2025

The upper school welcomed 11 teachers this year across departments like science, history, English, languages, mathematics, music and journalism. With a diverse set of backgrounds, the new faculty bring...

Right side hitter Nat Tan (12) jumps to tip the ball. Her tips allowed Harker to have an early lead in the first set.

Varsity girls volleyball defeat Branham 3-2 in historic season opener

by Lily Peng, Sports and Photo Editor September 4, 2025

Varsity girls volleyball opened their season with a tight 5-set win in an away game against Branham High School 25-22, 21-25, 25-21, 24-26 and 15-10 on Aug. 28. “This was our first time beating Branham...

Senior Tiffany Zhu gazes at a Pop Mart blind box as other customers around her glance at nearby products. Pop Mart’s revenue rose to $1.9 billion in 2024, thanks to the popularity of the Labubu toy in the “Monsters” line.

Pop Mart encourages consumerism through social media trends and cute designs

by Lindsay Li, Multimedia Editor August 31, 2025

Pop Mart’s strangely endearing creations push teenagers and adults alike to spend thousands on everything from miniature figurines to phone cases in the past year and a half. Between resellers and passionate...

About 10% of students at the Upper School recieve financial aid, but the school's policy prohibits students and families from discussing the amount or terms of their awards. While administrators emphasize privacy and fairness, some argue the policy silences conversations about socioeconomic diversity. (Illustration by Elizabeth Zhang)

Navigating conversations about wealth, financial aid and socioeconomic diversity at Harker

by Mendy Mao and Leah Krupnik August 30, 2025

This year's upper school tuition for Harker students is $64,800. Behind this number lies an often overlooked reality: around 10% of all students K-12 receive some form of financial aid. With strict rules...

OpenAI’s latest flagship model was expected to offer a major break-
through, though the model’s rollout was messy and performance improvements   are largely incremental. (Photoillustration by Ashley Mo and Charlie Wang)

ChatGPT-5 delivers practical progress but falls short of expectations

by Claire Tian and Caden Ruan August 29, 2025

AI frontrunner OpenAI released its new flagship large language model GPT-5 on Aug. 7 and generated a mixed reception from users. ChatGPT-5 improves upon previous OpenAI models in benchmarks, including...

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