Academy Elects Alice Ju as StuCo ‘13-‘14 President

Upper Alice Ju was elected as next year’s Student Council (StuCo) president, marking the first time an Asian female has been elected for the position and the second time a female has been chosen in Academy history. Lowers Emily Lemmerman and Benj Cohen will accompany her on the executive board as vice president and secretary, respectively.In the Tuesday election, 552 students cast their ballots, yielding a 52.4 percent voter turnout, according to current StuCo president Max Freedman.Ju has played a major role in StuCo for the past three years, serving as grade representative and as secretary on the executive board. In addi- tion to StuCo, Ju has acquired leadership skills through various activities such as Mock Trial and Debate Team. “She comes to the presidency possessing leadership qualities that include knowing how to delegate, a commitment to collaboration, persistence, a strong work ethic and an ability to communicate persuasively,” Student Council’s faculty advisor Bethany O’Grady said.Newly elected secretary Benjamin Cohen also commended Ju. “Alice has a strong personality and is a great leader,” Cohen said. “She is ex- tremely driven to accomplish Student Council’s goals. She is a doer—not one to wait around for others to take action, which is a necessary quality of a president.”Ju’s previous experience will serve to her advantage next year as president. “The fact that Alice has been on Executive Board for a year and has been with me every step of the way means that she has the contacts and knows how to start right away rather than spend time learning how to operate Council before focusing on campaign priorities,” Freedman said.With this new position of leadership at the Academy, Ju intends to deal with and solve many issues students have been facing over the last few years. Her primary concerns include changes to the current visita- tions policy, advisory system, Disciplinary Committee and dining hall. “[These goals] are immensely ambitious,” Freedman said. “But I think if anybody can tackle them, that somebody is Alice.”These problems were addressed specifically during her Assembly speech, where she rallied the attention of the entire student body with her opinion of what must be changed, her solutions and her sense of humor. Freedman described her presence on stage as “dynamite,” and Cohen praised Ju’s “passion for Student Council, portrayed through her conviction and a brilliantly crafted speech.”Ju has already begun to tackle the v’s policy on the basis that the current approach is not working as well as it should be, a stance shared by many faculty members and deans. “Our number-one priority is to find a compromise that is amenable to the entire community: deans, teachers and students,” Ju said. “The next step is finding a reasonable solution.”Ideas for this solution consist of extending Saturday visitation hours by changing them from 8 p.m. to 7 p.m., offering visitations until check-in on school nights for upperclassmen and providing parental permission slips, limited to either upperclassmen or seniors, to close their doors dur- ing the visitation period. Ju has been looking into other schools’ policies for support, where some of these ideas have already been implemented on campus.“We are not advocating a complete overhaul of visitations, and we’re making an effort to talk to as many people as possible to understand the complexities of the matter,” Ju said. “We want to approach the problem like adults and find a small step on which all of us can compromise.”As for changes to the dining hall, Ju hopes to cater more to the stu- dent body in the form of direct feedback. “In the past years, we’ve had small meetings with the dining hall staff,” Ju said. “I want to make those meetings available to the whole school. I also want to explore the idea of using student response surveys to rate the dining hall menu, especially before and after they introduce new options.”Ju’s proposal will provide the dining hall staff with information to pinpoint what students like and dislike. “[The Dining Services team is] very open to concrete feedback,” Freedman said. “If there is something they are doing well, they like to hear that, but if there is a specific fix students would like, then they are always open to that as well, but they really need specifics rather than general complaining.”In order to prevent the school from turning into a “giant rumor mill” with each Disciplinary Committee case, Ju feels that “DC should be more transparent and provide advisors with ‘briefing sheets’ that state what they can or cannot tell students about each case.”She continued, “The information provided would just outline the basics of each case without giving confidential information. I’ve heard from faculty that they are unsure about what they are allowed to disclose to students, and most (but not all) usually do not say anything. As a school, we cannot learn from our mistakes if we do not know what our mistakes are.”In terms of the school’s current advisor system, Ju feels that advisors sometimes lack in interacting with students and in offering advice. “One idea is that new teachers who don’t have as much experience at Exeter could ‘share’ advisees with an older, more experienced teacher,” Ju said. “Students could also pick their advisors for the remainder of their time at Exeter at the end of prep year.”In addition to these solutions, Ju plans to work with the adminis- tration’s current plans of creating a potential “advisor block,” similar to Meetings. “Her initiative to approve advising will likely meet with success; I know that both the trustees and the faculty are on board with improving the advising program,” Freedman said. “Student input will be valuable in that reform process.”Besides Ju’s four main goals she hopes to achieve during her year as StuCo president, she also wants to tackle Student Council on a more general scale. “I want to make sure Student Council is doing all that it can and should do, Ju said. “Every Tuesday, about 50 kids from all grades and dorms come to Council because they care about the school. In past years, we haven’t pushed StuCo to its full potential.”“I want to make sure every member is on a committee in which they can do what they wanted to when they decided to run for StuCo, whether that means planning events on Recreation Committee or improving dining hall food on Services. I’m counting on my fellow Exonians both in and out of Student Council to work hard to improve the school for the better,” Ju said. “This way, we can do many things at once, from writing long-term policy change proposals to planning events the upcoming weekend.”Freedman said he was thrilled for Alice and wished her the best in the upcoming year. “I anticipate that not only will Alice have a measure of success in every policy she tackles, but that Exeter will go on to re- member her as one of our best.”