Jet Semrick: The Lone Student Body Exec

When senior Jet Semrick entered the running for student body president, he didn’t realize he would also take on the responsibility of vice president, secretary, and treasurer after winning in an uncontested race.

In years past, there have been three or four Student Council executives, but this year Semrick is the only student on the exec board. Despite this, he has not faced any major challenges in planning MORP, the StuCo retreat, or the can drive.

Semrick believes that his workload has been distributed by enlisting more StuCo officers to help make decisions. Also, digitizing files helped him to become more organized and efficient.

The class officers and representatives help him with the usual brainstorming of ideas for the dances and fundraisers. They have also taken on smaller tasks such as coming in after school to organize and distribute the freshmen class shirts, which Jet would have otherwise completed on his own.

Student Council sponsors, Brenda Fishman and Hannah Pence, also try to help Semrick with the more tedious assignments such as getting permits and contacting administrators.

“Mrs. Fishman and Mrs. Pence have a lot of the framework of how things were done in the past since they have 20 years of StuCo experience,” Semrick said. “It’s really my job to look at that framework and see what changes we need to make it timely.”

Through assistance from Fishman, Pence, StuCo officers, representatives, and committees, Semrick and the rest of StuCo has managed to plan MORP and start planning the can drive, at the same pace as previous years.

He spends his fourth hour in the student council room for student leadership class with Fishman and Pence planning weekly StuCo meetings and coordinating with administration to approve ideas for dances and fundraisers.

Semrick also spends at least two days a week after school in the StuCo room organizing committees, the elections, and planning events.

“The time commitment of a leadership class and committing to hours outside of school probably caused some kids to not run,” Jet said. “Like instead of taking physics I’m taking student leadership to be student body president.”

Semrick also presumes the students in the class of 2020 on student council did not know juniors could be on the executive board and the deadline of turning in parent-signed permission slips was overlooked by students.

Senior Tom Joyce planned on running against Semrick for student body president, but turned in his permission slip a few hours late. Fishman told him he would not be able to run, as he did not meet the deadline.

“Initially when I was told my campaign was disqualified, I was pretty upset because I spent $25 and poured time into campaign posters before the decision was final,” Joyce said. “However, I now have an appreciation for deadlines and it’s an important rule to enforce.”

This unwavering deadline has caused many students to not be allowed to run for student council. But, Semrick believes it is still important to not extend the deadline for untimely students.

“We have to realize that there are deadlines,” Semrick said. “If you make an exception in one place then it just spills over. Although we want more StuCo participants, it’s still important to not manipulate the rules.”

In hopes of getting more students involved, the 2017-2018 StuCo adapted the constitution last year to state that students who did not win the election could choose the next lowest office to make sure positions were filled. Unfortunately this modification did not increase participation for the exec board, as Semrick was the only student to run.

Although only having one student on the executive board has not affected this year’s schedule in any drastic ways, Fishman still believes it is important for more kids to get involved.

“Student council is like the lifeblood of the school,” Fishman said. “We hope that kids will want to come to our events we sponsor. We have had tremendous success with the can drive, trivia contest, and dances. And kids that don’t like formals will go to MORP. As many people as we can get to help plan these events is appreciated.”