Not many BHS students today know the history of room 770—that behind the staff room in the 700 building’s second floor, there hides a newspaper office with issues dating all the way back to 1937. To think that tiny office riddled with dead fly carcasses and dusty papers used to be home to our very own Catamount class. For decades, students in the Catamount class would spend hours after school in that little room, writing, drawing, and editing away to deliver Bothell High fresh entertainment and news, until 2022, when the class disappeared, entrusting the fate of the newspaper to a mere after-school club. What happened that could have caused this dramatic shift? Was it the pandemic? Was it censorship of journalism? We did a little bit of snooping around, so here are the facts:
Before 2022, students on the paper staff wrote phenomenal articles ranging from humorous comics to hard-hitting pieces about the world we live in. We interviewed a few alumni to gather details about the Catamount when it was offered as a class here, all of whom felt the class itself was vital to a functioning newspaper. According to Malavika Santhosh (‘22), an editor-in-chief for the Catamount, “It was more than just like a hobby or a passion […] because you can’t exactly choose who you’re [writing] with. All of us were just people who signed up for the class. And so [we were all] very different and wanted to write about different things. But we all would come together.” For most of the Catamount’s history, the newspaper also acted as a binding agent between the Bothell community and the school. According to another alum we interviewed, who was in the Catamount class in the 2010s, Taneum Fotheringill (‘14), students from the newspaper staff would reach out to local organizations and businesses, most notably Uncle Peteza’s, to advertise for them in our paper. Additionally, throughout the 2010s, the paper published articles on significant topics like Islamophobia in our community, the new Gay Straight Alliance club, and even a notable BHS football incident regarding a harmful team culture in 2019. These were all stories that the Catamount found imperative to speak on and were able to speak on, due to their ample time in class. Without the support of a classroom, getting these hard-hitting pieces out to our community at BHS is difficult, to say the least.
There are a couple of theories about what exactly contributed to the end of the Catamount class, in addition to the very logical explanation. For transparency’s sake, let’s go over all of them. The ASB and our newspaper have had their differences in the past, as two of the biggest news sources for Bothell students, but these differences intensified right before the pandemic. In early 2019, Catamount student Michael Marquess (‘20) wrote an opinion article criticizing TOLO. He compared the attendance of the dance to the “[…] scalp of a balding man, where ragged patches of hair remained stubbornly rooted in place,” even going so far as to remark that “The ASB has done something truly incredible, they have created the first truly introspective school dance in history. It begs us to study ourselves from the dark, empty spots on the dance floor.” For the ASB students who had worked tirelessly to plan and put on the dance, this critique felt unfair in the face of their efforts, despite representing a valid student perspective. Although the continued debate between the two student communities is left mainly up to interpretation, it is clear that similar events created tensions between two major facets of the school over time.
Additionally, while many of you are already aware of this, in 2019, the Seattle Times covered a story from Bothell High regarding allegations about a practice on the BHS football team that a reporter called the “rape squad,” as it was termed by students prior. Well, the Seattle Times did its piece, and many at BHS did not think they had the full story. The Catamount also covered it, with the help of an anonymous source from the football team, despite discouragement from adults at the school and district level. To be clear, these events took place around a year and a half prior to the school removing the class, so it’s unlikely that this played a huge role in the decision, but there exists speculation that the disapproval from the district influenced the conclusion to remove the Catamount class.
When interviewing Jacob Crouch, the Catamount advisor from 2010-2021, we asked him for the real reason behind the class becoming a club, which he was happy to provide. According to Mr. Crouch, “[…] hard decisions had to be made, both at the school and at the district level” during the pandemic. Because state funding is insufficient and there aren’t enough teachers, we’ve had to sacrifice a vital part of the Bothell community. Malavika also echoed this sentiment, stating that “Because of COVID, […] there was a gap, and people just didn’t know we existed […] anymore.” Although this reasoning isn’t as absorbing, it provides the most logical explanation as to why the Catamount was no longer able to exist as a class.
Despite seemingly continuous losses to the course catalog, the Catamount class deserves another chance to thrive. It allowed students to contribute more fully to the school paper and accommodated potential conflicts with other responsibilities, as iterated by Mr. Crouch, who explained that for busy students, students who played sports, participated in theatre, or took difficult classes, “there was a time during the school day that they could come together and work on the school newspaper.” Alumni Taneum further described the importance of the class itself, as it “shows […] that the school community really values the paper and the students working on it.” And since we’ve had a full five years to recover from the pandemic, we think it’s now time to start the conversation about bringing the Catamount back between 8:15 and 3:15, perhaps not with a fully-fledged plan, but with the intention to inspire the future writers, editors, and reporters here at Bothell High School to advocate for one.
