StuCo Gals: This upcoming school year the Student Council Executive Board will be all girls after a long time of having male-dominated groups

For the first time in 10 years, East will have an all-female Student Council Executive Board for the 2024-25 school year.

The board consists of future senior and president Ingrid Blacketer, future junior and vice president Paige Bean, future junior and secretary Claire Polanco and future junior and treasurer Fina Kessler.

“We see each other once a week every week,” Blacketer said. “We set up together, we volunteer together and we volunteered at the can drive together. So we’ve always been in the same room [and] we’ve known each other for over a year now.”

The exec board each year works in tandem with the StuCo members of the individual grades. They cooperate to plan events like dances and charity drives.

“As far as other girls in my grade, we’re all pretty much in the same friend group, actually, which is a lot of fun, and makes it a lot easier to plan,” Blacketer said. “So we’re communicating regularly and everything.”

The current exec board along with Paige and Ingrid have been in the StuCo leadership class together for the past year, and have seen each other’s personalities and strengths. For example, Blacketer is known for being organized and on top of work. They are able to work together seamlessly when planning events like can drives, dances and pep assemblies, according to Blacketer. 

“I think it’ll be really cool,” Bean said. “Claire and I are best friends and I’m close with Ingrid. Claire and Fina are best friends, so I think it’d be good to see all of us work together because I think we’ll be a good team.”

Junior StuCo representative Anna Ravis hopes that an all-female exec board will encourage more underclassmen girls to run for positions on StuCo. This school year East has a good split between boys and girls for the class representatives, but the exec board tends to consist of all or mostly boys, according to StuCo sponsor and US history teacher Brenda Fishman.

This school year, the members of the exec board were all male except for secretary and senior Nora Hill.

“Sometimes the girls are a little easier to settle in and get to work right away whereas the boys have to kind of let off steam for a few minutes, and then they get to work,” Fishman said. “A couple of them have been in the leadership class so they know the routine, and I think they do a great job.”

Next year, the girls plan to run StuCo a little more seriously than this year while still having plenty of fun, according to Blacketer. Blacketer hopes to carry on the legacy of current senior president Jack Kessler by delivering student of the week goodie bags with a peppy and fun attitude. They are hoping to increase student engagement and will base events and themes on student input through listening to student ideas at meetings.

“The number-one thing recently and past couple years is student involvement because student involvement has been going down a little bit,” Blacketer said.

Blacketer has started brainstorming ideas that she hopes will be brought into next year’s schedule and hopes the new team will be able to see her vision. She also wants to incorporate traditions next year as president, like sending cheesy thumbs-up selfies to the StuCo GroupMe after their weekly Wednesday morning meetings, to increase the excitement within StuCo.

“I just [want to] have confidence in myself,” Blacketer said. “I’m a very shy person until you get to know me. And so [I want to] get out of my shell and not be scared and, speak up, talk out or talk to people and everything. That’ll be one of my struggles, but I think hopefully I’ll be able to live up to [Kessler’s] standards.” 

StuCo members with experience like Blacketer and Ravis expect the increase in student engagement to lead to more students participating in school events.

“I think that maybe we’ll get some more attendees to the dances,” Ravis said. “There’ll be a little bit more advertising for them and encouraging more people to go as well as just more decorations and more events to hype people up for the dances and encourage them to go.”

Fishman is retiring after this school year and is sad to go after making so many strong connections with StuCo students.

“I like to think I could do this for 10 more years because the kids are perfect,” Fishman said. “And I love this year’s group of students, so I think it’s good for all of us to go together.”