Author Spotlight
Aanya Bansal
East hosted its first annual Kansas State High School Activities Association Student Council Regional Conference on Sept. 18. Over 30 schools and 670 middle and high school students attended the conference which provided a space for StuCo members from across the state to exchange ideas with fellow student government enthusiasts.
Mostly planned by StuCo sponsor and history teacher Brenda Fishman, the hippie-themed conference — involving colorful tablecloths, napkins and T-shirts — lasted four hours and took place in the main gym, auditorium and commons.
“We had to figure out all the registration, what activities to do and what food we were going to get,” senior and Student Body President Jack Kessler said. “The majority of that credit goes to Ms. Fishman who spent a lot of time coordinating with KSHSAA, doing all the registration and directing all the StuCo members who came in on their own time to set up decorations.”
Freshman Class President Braxton Jeffrey was assigned to direct incoming buses and vans to the Mission Road Bible Church down the street from East. The normal parking lots was filled with student and teacher cars because all non-StuCo students were attending classes as usual.
“I was holding the ‘park here’ sign playing ‘Pump Up The Jam,’ and I was just dancing the whole time for 45 minutes,” Jeffrey said.
Other StuCo members were stationed outside the gym entrance with the cheerleaders and band to greet the visitors. Blue Valley Northwest senior and Student Body President Saraphina Wambi was impressed with East’s warm welcome.
“It was cool to see how interested East’s student government was to just say ‘Hi’ to us right off the bat,” Wambi said.
The StuCo Execs and Sophomore President Paige Bean called local grocery stores asking if they would donate food to East for the conference, but Bean was the only one that managed to get a response. She called the Price Chopper on 95th and Mission, and they told her they’d donate 30 bananas. However when Bean went to collect the bananas the night before the conference, they had way more than that ready for pick up.
“I guess they wrote down the 600 students that were coming and somewhere in between it got lost in communication, and I ended up with 600 bananas,” Bean said.
When the conference ended, StuCo members took the hundreds of leftover bananas to the teachers lounge. Students were encouraged to stop by and take some home.
“There were enough bananas leftover to feed the rest of East,” Sophomore Treasurer Luke Taylor said.
The conference also included guest speaker Ben Grannis who spoke about his biking trip across the country.
“He talked for a long time about himself and his story,” Jeffrey said. “I don’t understand how that related to student council. But he was a motivational speaker that had been to a bunch of schools to talk about his journey which was great.”
Following the guest speaker, the Lancer Dancers performed a dance routine in the main gym. While dancing, senior and Lancer Dancer Marin McElhinney was startled by the awkwardness of performing in front of non-East students. Normally greeted by roaring applause, the silence was surprising.
“I’ve never heard a gym so dead silent with that many people,” McElhinney said. “But it was still really fun to perform for other people besides just East students.”
A highlight for Taylor was the Recreation Education Attitude Leadership Money and Service discussion sheet which listed ideas like dress-up days, staff appreciation and volunteering. Some schools presented the idea of boosting game attendance by announcing a fan of the week while others focused on cultural awareness by organizing culture committees.
Taylor was interested in meeting students from a range of 3A to 6A schools and noticed that at smaller 3A schools student councils were able to plan more personal activities like staff award dinners where StuCo members dress up and wait on tables filled with teachers.
“So many great ideas were flowing,” Taylor said. “It was just a fun time to see everyone from different schools who was a part of something we all cared about.
During East StuCo’s next weekly Wednesday morning meeting, members discussed their conference takeaways and shared ideas like teacher banquets, spirit points for individual grades and reducing ticket prices for dances.
“Every StuCo kid participated,” Fishman said. “We had everybody assigned to do something before they got here. We had every kid assigned to be a group leader to lead small groups, and everyone showed up. It was amazing. Perfect attendance by StuCo.”
Leave a Reply