Student Council Preview — A look at the upcoming class elections and events

Student Council elections will be held Oct. 7 and 8 to elect new class representatives after the committee chairs were chosen on Sept. 28. After the election, StuCo will start off the year with an online spirit week.

Due to COVID-19, StuCo won’t be able to host the same activities and events as normal, so the Execs and sponsors decided it would be best to cut down the number of students involved so that people didn’t feel that they had no job.

With these drawbacks, they are removing the four class officers for each grade, leaving only the five representatives per grade. There will only be two of the normal five committee chairs — the Charity Chair spot is held by junior TongTong Yi and the Public Relations Chair spot is held by senior Megan Biles. According to Student Body President senior Sophie Rice, these are the current positions in StuCo, but they might change later in the year depending on the activities and events they’re allowed to host, if the pandemic and social distancing orders lift.

“Everything is definitely flexible to change and if the Executive Board and the sponsors all see that there’s a need for these positions — so if we’re able to host prom and have all these dances next year — then we’re definitely going to open StuCo back up,” Rice said. “We want to be at full numbers right now, just the situation isn’t allowing for it.”

StuCo posted the lists of candidates that are running for the five representatives in each grade on their Instagram account — @smestuco — on Wednesday, Sept. 30. The candidates each had to sign up on a Google Form and create a flyer saying why students should vote for them for class representative.

Since the Homecoming Court elections went smoothly, the representative elections are going to be done in a similar way. The elections will be Wednesday and Thursday of next week, and students will vote on a Google Form that will most likely be sent out through Canvas. The form will contain the list of candidates running for the positions and each student will vote for five of the people in their grade.

StuCo plans on announcing the representatives next Friday. At that point, StuCo will have all of their needed positions filled.

Rice says that StuCo will still have weekly Wednesday meetings, but they’ll be done virtually through Webex as of now for everyone’s safety. The meetings will be around 30 to 45 minutes, but they’ll have them after school or in the evening rather than before school, as done in years prior.

So far, StuCo plans on doing a spirit week the week before the Homecoming football game — Oct. 12 through 16 — and they are helping with Homecoming Court. StuCo also hopes to do some fun activities such as an online bingo night to keep the school engaged and united.

“For this virtual format, [we want to] keep the student body engaged, keep having incentives to keep the students wanting to come back to school,” Rice said. “Just like, ‘Oh, I can see all of my friends,’ ‘See all of these crazy outfits we’re wearing for spirit week,’ ‘This is a community even though I’m not seeing people in person, I know that there is glue that holds us together,’ and I’d like to think that StuCo is kind of that behind the scenes — glue that can help keep the student body together — cause it’s definitely a change.”

Although several of the typical StuCo-hosted events were canceled this semester — such as Homecoming and Lancer Day — Rice is hopeful that some of their other events will still be able to happen such as the Mr. Cansas Pageant, Prom and possibly a spring Lancer Day.

Even though this school year will lack several of the typical traditions, it’s given StuCo an opportunity to be creative in coming up with new ways to have fun and unite the school.

“I’m very excited for this school year,” Rice said. “It’s been interesting already these past six months, and I think that East is a pretty strong community and we’re all going to get through it together.”