Amily Zhang

Dozens of students roam around in the library Tuesday morning after a lockdown canceled the American Mathematics Competition at Palo Alto High School. A retake is unlikely after a lockdown announcement sprung the school into a lockdown. Freshman Brian Chung said he put in a lot of effort leading up to the exam and felt upset with the disruption. “I feel really pissed,” Chung said. “I worked really hard for it the whole year. I can’t believe it got canceled.”

Over 100 students taking the American Mathematics Competition 10B and 12B face an unlikely retake with their test after a lockdown during testing this morning canceled the test at the Palo Alto High School library.Randolph Mercado, math teacher and Paly’s AMC administrator, said he reached out to the MAA to inquire about what will happen with the test.

“I called their helpline and they could only tell the information to their headquarters and technical team to see what we can do, but otherwise, we just have to wait and see what they say,” Mercado said.

After a few hours, Mercado said that there is nothing the MAA can do at the moment and a retake is not an option. He is still communicating with them to see what can happen with the in-progress work or scores.

Samhita Konduri, senior and president of the Paly Math Club, said that this interruption has affected many seniors’ last chance with the AMC.

“This really sucks, because I didn’t even take the AMC 12A, so this was my only shot at the AMC,” Konduri said. “Now it’s canceled, and we’re not really sure if they’re going to have a makeup exam, when it’s gonna be, whether it’s going to be harder. More likely than not, we’re just going to be moving forward with this, which really sucks because this was our last year with the AMC.”

According to Mercado, a disruption like this might be the first of its kind.

“When I called they said that this is the first time that they’ve ever heard of something like this happening,” Mercado said. “I’m sure things that cause commotion have happened, but I don’t know if anything like this has happened in the history of the AMC.”

Freshman Krittika Chandra said she felt disappointed when the test was canceled, along with other students.

“It was pretty sad because a lot of people care a lot about this test,” Chandra said. “I felt like it was really bad luck that it had to happen at the same time.”

The interruption lasted less than twenty minutes, but students were not prompted to resume testing and instructed to stay within the library for the rest of the period.

The AMC is a math competition for students K-12, with over 300,000 students taking it in over 30 countries worldwide. According to the Mathematical Association of America website, which hosts the AMC annually, it’s not just a competition, it’s a “national effort to strengthen the mathematical capabilities of our next generation of innovators.”