“Ameliorating the established model of the Student Council and improving student life and convenience” are the two major goals of the Student Council this year, according to Student Body President Abby Lu ’22.
Amidst the pandemic, the Council has had the opportunity to take a step back from its typical agenda of constantly brainstorming and passing proposals to reassess how the group can best communicate the needs of the student body to the Administration. “The Council has been focused mainly on assessing the efficacy of our proposal generation system,” said sixth-form representative Audrey Kaye ’22. “We’ve discussed how issues arise when trying to get passed proposals enacted by [the Administration], and some ideas would be more effective as initiatives rather than formal proposals.”
In addition to the restructuring of Council meetings and the proposal process, there has been a concentrated effort to bring in “outside experts” to sit in on Council meetings. So far, Council members have invited Dean of Students Mr. Mike Velez ’00 and Director of Health and Wellness Services Ms. Alexandra Copeland to attend their Tuesday evening meetings. Fifth-form class president Ava Maha ’23 said, “We are trying to reach out to the people who are the heads of influential programs and bring them to our meetings to get their real-time feedback.” She continued, detailing two initiatives she is currently working on, “I’m advocating for full council meetings with the Administration and the deans’ group at least once a term. Also, we are trying to organize a letter written by the entire Student Council to be sent out to the student body at the end of every term, outlining what we’ve done and what we plan to do.”
While fundamental changes are being made to the Council, elected members are staying in touch with the current needs of the community. Fourth-form class president Amanda Benneh ’24 recently launched an initiative to allow fourth and fifth-form students to receive new Choate ID photos and cards.
Kaye is also spearheading an initiative that she has been passionate about for months. “Writing and pushing initiatives, especially ones that address serious and pervasive systemic injustice at Choate, requires incredible tenacity.” They continued, “I have one proposal designed to create a standardized misconduct reporting portal that I drafted in July — it’s almost February and I’m still trying to get administrators to enact it.”
As a whole, the Council is focused on enacting initiatives to better student wellness, such as reinstating the Lifelong Wellness curriculum for third and fourth formers by the 2022-2023 school year. “Recognizing the collective trauma suffered by our community during last year’s pandemic and rise of racial hate crimes, most of our proposals this year focused on promoting student wellness,” Lu said.
