The North Park Student Newspaper Since 2023
Ishaan and Krittika: Did they help the club or make it worse?
SOUTH STAR
Goransh Gujral
6/11/20264 min read
The North Star is a prominent club in our school’s history, reporting events and sharing memories with launches full of different kinds of articles every few months. The structure of the club calls for two Managing Editors each year who oversee the entire club, make sure it runs smoothly, and work with writers, photographers, and everyone in between to make sure there is something for everyone to read. For the 2025/2026 school year, the positions were filled by Ishaan Sooch and Krittika Bhateja. They were selected by the teacher sponsors because of their promising resumes, but did they live up to their expectations? To evaluate their performance, we will look at their writing, editing, and managing skills, and the quality and quantity of their content. At the end, each Managing Editor will get their own score (out of ten).
Let’s start with Krittika. Coming in at a tall 6 '4’’, you can find two pieces of work from Krittika on the website; one teacher profile on Mr. Alves and a Dueling Editorial arguing why a four day school week would benefit everyone.
In her profile on Mr. Alves, Krittika already shows off her in-built dictionary with fancy words like “cultivating” and “enthusiastic”. The article is formatted properly and there is proper use of grammar. She was able to properly grasp Mr. Alves’s passion for teaching and a good chunk of his life story and how he ended at North Park, and made the article easy to follow and fun to read, for which I give her a 9/10.
Next up is the dueling editorial. For this one, the quality of her points will be taken into consideration. Her first point argues that the 4 day school week would “lead to improved performance in both students and teachers.” She claims that less days would create more incentive for students to show up. On paper, this is a good point which needs evidence to prove. The lack of evidence fails to solidify her point in the way she would need to win that point. Moving on, her next point states that “a longer weekend would allow students and teachers to recover from the demands of school and this could help in reducing their anxiety and stress.” This is another good point on paper but fails to hit the mark, again, as her only evidence is circumstantial and maybe a little far-fetched. She mentions how this proposed school week would allow teachers and students to create a proper work-life balance, be able to spend more time with their family, and more time to catch up on extra work. Her final point claimed that this proposed school week would allow students to pursue extracurriculars with their free time, again without proper evidence. In all honesty, her arguments were good; she had good points but failed to properly prove them with evidence that actually backs up her claims. So, her scores for this article are 8/10 for her writing but a 5/10 for her argumentation.
Moving on to her leadership, she can be strict when she has to, which is important for a good president(or managing editor.) In club meetings, she gives off a very relaxed persona and is involved with everything and everyone. I would give her leadership a 10/10. The quality of her work averages down to a 7.3/10 and with her leadership score, Krittika gets a final grade of 8/10.
Next up, we have Ishaan Sooch. Standing at 4 '11'’, Ishaan has a cumulative number of eight articles on the new website. This includes two general news articles, one sports article, one teacher profile, one club profile, and three opinion editorials. Obviously, Ishaan is locked in so we will not be going through everything. To keep it balanced, we will analyze Ishaan’s teacher profile on Mrs. Bourgon and his most recent opinion editorial; “Is University still the right path.”
Starting off with his teaching profile, he was able to capture Ms. Bourgon’s lifestyle perfectly, down to her interests and personality; with simple words one might add. He could perhaps add more detail about her life like what kind of books she likes to read or what movies and tv shows strike her fancy. But who has that much time when they’re writing so many articles. The final score for this article is an 8/10.
Ishaan’s most recent opinion editorial is titled “Is University still on the right path?” From what I can see, he covers one point. His point talks about how University is no longer a guaranteed pathway for success. He successfully uses number statistics to show how Universities have a high cost of living with not a good enough “return on investment”. He continues to show that the skilled trades have more reliability. His final remarks show an ambiguous conclusion. Of course it is hard to say in this case what the one right answer is, since there is none, but one must take a stance when giving an opinion. So, his final score for this article is a solid 9.5/10.
In the final part of Ishaan’s score, we rate his leadership. Much like Krittika, Ishaan has a relaxed persona in club meetings. He makes sure work is done and he is doing his work too. He participates in the fun and lets things slide. This earns him a 10/10. Averaging his scores, Ishaan gets a 9.2/10 final score.
So, to wrap up, Ishaan beats Krittika by 1.2 points. In my personal opinion though, these numbers are just representations of their work and a little portion of them. They are by far one of the most laid-back managing editors in my three years of club participation; in a good way.