StuCo Hosts First Meeting, Discusses Goals for the Year

Kicking off the 2015-2016 school year, the Executive Board of Student Council (StuCo) hosted the Council’s first meeting Tuesday night. StuCo President and senior Rebecca Ju projected the board’s primary focuses for the coming year and invited all members to share their ideas on how to address such topics.

Among the focuses were health and wellness, school spirit, advising and the sexual assault case involving St. Paul’s students.

Some members of StuCo felt the Lamont Health and Wellness Center should have more of a presence on campus and that students should be given more information regarding what the health and wellness department offers. One Council member said there was a disconnect between the Health Center and international students’ parents, as the health center sends out their information in English, which many parents outside of the United States do not understand. According to the student, this keeps parents from knowing about important health-related issues.

“It’s a little different than last year in the sense that I feel like our chemistry is a little better, which I think if we do well with, it might be an advantage.”

School spirit was also highlighted during the one-hour meeting. One StuCo member proposed that Exeter host a homecoming dance after the Exeter/Andover games, similar to many other high schools across the United States. Other students suggested better public relation (PR) support for sporting events to increase attendance.

In addition, the assembly deliberated over the implementation and effectiveness of the new advisory block system, which has been in place for the last two years.

Over the summer, the Executive Board—Ju, vice president and senior Jun Park and secretary and upper Joel Lotzkar—talked extensively about their goals and plans for the coming year. In addition to the issues they presented during the meeting on Tuesday, which include a strong focus on improving mental health and strengthening academic support on campus, the board wants to help improve transparency within the discipline system. StuCo will possibly host an assembly explaining the Discipline Committee’s process to the student body, according to Park.  Ju said the board would like to “restructure” StuCo as well in order to make it more organized and more effective. The first step is encouraging more lowerclassmen members to share their ideas during Tuesday meetings and to participate more in individual committees. The board will do so by ensuring that committee heads have more of “the resources and direction they need to effectively lead and utilize their teams,” Ju said.

Park said they also encouraged committee heads not to sit only in the first two rows of the forum; since those two rows traditionally “drive” the discussion, spreading committee heads across the room will hopefully balance out the power dynamic.

A new addition to this year’s StuCo is the Assembly Committee, dedicated to collecting students’ input on assemblies. Park worked last year with former StuCo president, alumnus Benjamin Cohen, to create the committee in response to the fact that the faculty’s Assembly committee began to lessen student imput. The committee was formally initiated this year. Ju, Park and Lotzkar said they were excited for the upcoming year. They had a meeting last week with the committee heads to tell them their plans for reorganizing StuCo. The meeting went well and “ran smoothly” according to Lotzkar, who said it provided a good time for the committee heads and Executive Board to get to know each other. Ju agreed, adding that she believes the committee heads are a “great group of leaders” and she “got the sense that they really care about StuCo.” While Park agreed, he worried that the difference in dynamic of this year’s group of heads and board members could be either an advantage or disadvantage to the group. He attributed future success to the group’s ability to harness their camaraderie.

“I think it’s a little different than last year in the sense that I feel like our chemistry is a little better, which I think if we do well with, it might be an advantage,” he said. “[However], if we don’t, it might be a little bit of too much fun.” Park concluded, “but I think if we foster it right, we’re going to do a good job.”