StuCo Reflects on Council’s Past Year

At the beginning of the 2015-2016 school year, Student Council (StuCo) president and senior Rebecca Ju focused her campaign on the topic of mental health and wellness at Exeter. She also planned to continue previous work StuCo had started, such as expanding Spring Fling.

Ju said that she didn’t have any concrete goals or expectations at the start of her tenure. “I wanted any changes I made throughout the year to be ones that came from the student body, not just solely from Exec Board,” she said.

Vice president and senior Jun Park had similar thoughts. “This year, the executive board wanted to give more ownership to council,” he said. “All three of us ran with our own agendas. And I believe that we accomplished our goals. We raised mental health awareness on campus, continued our efforts to increase student input for the assembly process and put on well-attended events for the students.”

Ju hoped to make positive changes surrounding mental health, which largely involved the school’s culture and environment’s influence on the matter going into the school year. “In the beginning of the year, I think StuCo along with other groups on campus began a dialogue on the issue, which was definitely something Exec Board supported. However, when we brought what we thought were key issues on campus to council, people voted that [visitations] policy was the most urgent issue,” Ju said.

Since this transition StuCo has taken, the board has put their resources into addressing the visitations policy to provide a safe and inclusive atmosphere for students on campus.

“In the past people have complained about not having great events, so our goal this year was to make weekends on campus as fun as possible.”

Park explained that when giving council the opportunity to choose what they wanted to do polls determined that StuCo should be focusing on visitations. “Eventually, many members of council wanted to tackle the visitations policy, and that’s what we focused on for the rest of the year. I hope that council will continue our efforts next year,” Park said. Faculty members such as English instructors Ellee Dean and Alex Myers were notable figures in the new proposals as “they’ve put in a lot of thought into the current and modified policies and have been an incredibly important part of this push,” according to Ju.

Ju emphasized that StuCo’s advisers have worked tirelessly to help advocate these plans. “[Teaching intern Colleen] Brockmyre is new this year, but she has put so much time and effort into helping us. She’s always coming up with new ideas for everything from policy changes to [recreational] events,” and went on to note, “[Health instructor] Cahalane has been a StuCo adviser for years, and her experience has really been invaluable. She always has an answer for any question we have, and she’s put in so much extra effort into every project we’ve taken on,” Ju said.

Ju described the advisers to the council as “incredible” as she has doubts on where they would be without them. Ju added that administration has been very open to ideas and StuCo feedback throughout the school year, often asking for student input. Principal MacFarlane has also taken time to check in with the board as she adjusted to her new position.

StuCo was also responsible for the events such as Spring Fling, Karaoke night, outdoor movies, s’more nights and pep rallies that their  recreation committee spent time organizing. Upper Bella Edo, a head for the recreation committee, said, “In the past people have complained about not having great events, so our goal this year was to make weekends on campus as fun as possible.”

Upper Nada Zohayr served as one of the dining hall committee heads. Her job was to gather the consensus of what the student body sought from the school’s dining services, and then she forward that information to the dining hall staff. For example, she helped introduce Taco Tuesday this year, as well as helped examine the school’s efficiency with waste disposal. Zohayr said, “Our expectation every year is that we have improved the dining hall service in some way by the end of the year,” which she believes has happened this year.

StuCo’s assembly committee, headed by senior Darius Shi, was a new, experimental group this year. Shi explained that the committee’s main goal was to connect members of StuCo to assembly planning meetings that faculty members hold on a regular basis. “I guess the expectation is for us to learn about the process of selecting assemblies, gather students’ ideas for future assemblies and think about possible changes of the assembly structure in the future,” Shi said.

StuCo’s three assemblies this year centered around wellness at Exeter, the mock presidential election and Student Council elections. Shi believed that the discussion panel tested this year was not successful due to assembly’s limited length and the presence of many teachers on stage, which may have restricted students.

The second assembly was planned last-minute to fill the spot of an assembly speaker who had an accident and had to cancel. Shi was satisfied with StuCo’s ability to pull the event together last minute, saying that “[i]t went really well. Several committee heads took responsibility and acted out Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump and Marco Rubio on stage. It was very funny and very well received.”

In addition to being a relevant topic during the primary season, he said, “It was a good lighthearted assembly in winter term,” a time typically known for its darkness.

The third assembly was held according to tradition, a venue for hearing the annual presidential candidate’s bids for the next year’s executive board. Shi commented that the event’s format followed previous years and in his opinion, worked quite well.

Having fully served her tenure as StuCo President, Ju left her graduating class with these last remarks, “Thank you all for an incredible Exeter experience. I wouldn’t be the person I am without my time with all of you, whether in the dorm, around the table, or in clubs. Good luck in college or wherever you end up over the next few years!”