A few weeks ago, the student body voted on who they think would best fit the roles of president, vice president, secretary, treasurer, and in the case of the upcoming sophomores, public relations officer. In a recent interview, the newly elected officials revealed what their true intentions for running for office were, along with what their job entails, and even a sneak peek into them as a person, instead of just our leaders. We’ll be focusing on the incoming sophomore class’s elected officials in this article, but if you’d like to learn more about the incoming freshman class’s officials, my fellow journalist Liah Campbell has an article where she interviews the ASB supervisor Mrs. Hereth, as well as the incoming freshman student council.
If you haven’t heard already, the sophomore student body officials are as follows:
Lauren ‘Lolo’ Stein as President
Elliot Rich as Vice President
Harshita ‘Hershey’ Sinha as Secretary
Gabriel ‘Gabe’ Conrad as Treasurer
Ava Pearson as Public Relations Officer
Congratulations to them all for winning, they’ll be great leaders for the next chapter of our lives.
Why did you decide to run for this position?
The first stepping stone to be in a position of power is to apply. To truly get to know our student council, it’s crucial that we understand their motives for why they applied. In order for the student body to put their trust in our leadership, we need to know them beyond their names and faces. For our upcoming sophomore President Lolo Stein, she shares an endearing story about how she applied last minute after some encouragement from her mom.
“My mom was asking me to do it, and she was like, ‘you should do it, you’d be really good at it’ because I like leadership stuff and I had two years of leadership experience.” She goes on to explain how she “applied the last day you could apply, in second period,” and describes the reassurance she felt as she typed into application, saying that she “felt like it was right” and “felt like I could be a good president.”
This change of heart seemed to be a common occurrence for this year’s student council, as our Treasurer Gabe Conrad said something similar, recounting how he ‘wasn’t really planning to become treasurer, I just got the email and thought it would be cool to try.”
For our Vice President Elliot Rich, he speaks about wanting to “impact what goes on in the school, and I also really want to know what goes on behind the scenes.”
Public Relations Officer Ava Pearson touches on coming out of her shell a bit by running for her position, saying she ‘used to be really introverted’ and that this is her way to “express myself more and put myself out there,” by using digital design, something she is both experienced at and loves.
Last, but definitely not least, our very own secretary for both this year and next, Hershey Sinha, expresses that for her, this job is “something that will teach me to be good with management for my future job,” which is undeniable proof of the dedication put forth by everyone on our council. Later on in our interview, Sinha also discussed how important it was to her to have a person of color on the front lines.
“I am the only colored student on next years council, and it was really important for me that I was on this council to be able to bring, because when you’re on a council, when you’re on any sort of panel, you bring your own identity and the people behind you and those ideas forth, and it was important to me that people of color were represented in councils and higher classes, and people in not sort of power, but who are behind the scenes.”
While each of these leaders had their own personal reasons for wanting to run, the commonality between them all was their want to make a positive impact on our school community.
What does being in your position entail?
In order for a council to run smoothly, everyone needs to have jobs that they specialize in to be able to get all the work done that needs to be done. Our president voices how she wants to make an increase in the amount of student events, referencing the ‘Cookies & Cram’ events we hold here at Cavelero, saying how she thinks the “students would benefit from more stuff like that.” She also speaks about how what she really wants is to “make what the students want happen, and I’ll do this through meetings and communicating with the rest of the council.”
Along with new people in our council’s positions, this year’s sophomore election also came with a new title: public relations officer. Pearson expresses her very genuine passion for digital design, and says that that was a big factor in deciding to run for this position. As a PR officer, Pearson runs the school’s social media account, and reaches “out to organizations to create fundraisers for our school, and I just make our promotions and everything for our events.” She goes on to further explain how she wants to make an impact on the school, and that’s “why I chose to be a public relations officer, that stuck out to me out of all of them,” due to her love for digital design.
Handling funds is a vital job. As the treasurer, Conrad vocalizes what he does in his role, which is to “track the funds that go between, in and out of the sports, and all the clubs.” Later on in the interview, it’s spoken about how he works with the finance office to manage the funds for clubs and sports, and even though the process is mostly a job for him, it still has to be talked through and agreed upon by all members of the student council.
Sinha, who is our sophomore Secretary as well as this year’s freshman Secretary, speaks about how the experience of being a class secretary has helped extensively since she’s learned “how to run the meeting and how to track all budget changes and how to track what new ideas we have coming up for ASB,” all of which are in her job description.
Rich, our beloved sophomore Vice President says “I’m basically the backup, so if Hershey isn’t here, I gotta take notes. If Whitney isn’t here, I gotta, like, run the meetings, say like ‘meeting starts at blah blah blah,’ and then if Rhys isn’t here I handle treasury duties,” referring to this year’s current President Whitney Bird and our current Treasurer Rhys Burin.
What are you most excited for in the upcoming school year?
Understandably, the customary reply to this question was always along the lines of meeting new people, and working together with the upperclassmen.“I’m most excited to participate in the school events, like assemblies and the sports games because I feel like the pep assemblies will be much louder, much better there,” says Stein. Our future Vice President goes on to say “I’m also looking forward to harder classes that are more of a challenge with more room to grow,” which was responded with a chorused response of agreements by his future fellow student council members. To sum up what was spoken about during this segment of the conversation, as simply as Sinha said it, they’re all excited for “the new opportunities that Lake Stevens High School opens up to us.”
