On Thursday, February 17, the School announced that Ava Maha ’23 and Lex Njomin ’23 had been elected as the Student Council (STUCO) President and Student Council Vice President for the 2022-2023 school year.
Having served on the Council as Fourth-form and Fifth-form Class President, Maha welcomes this new challenge. As the Student Council President, Maha, unlike her past experiences on the Council, isn’t able to vote in meetings. She explains that “[The Student Council President position is] really about fostering a council environment so that all the form representatives and presidents have the cohesion and organization to be able to make these proposals and to bolster the rest of the council to vote in ways that are effective.”
Maha is looking forward to continuing her efforts on initiatives currently in the works. She is hopeful about her marijuana and drug reform proposal that she started last summer. The proposal hopes to redefine the major school rules regarding drug use, suggesting changing the consequence of first-time marijuana use or possession from a one strike policy to suspension or probation and “No-Use” monitoring.
She said, “I think that restructuring the Council is something that we’re working on to make it more communicative with the upper-levels of administration, and then also smaller fun things like making Super Bowl weekend a no-homework weekend and keeping the dining hall open for 30 minutes longer during breakfast so that day students and later risers can get food.”
Njomin is also eager to step into his new role as Vice President. He said that he is “looking forward to hearing more from my peers who perceive issues in the school that I don’t.” He continued, “As much as we’d like to, the school is too big for the council, Ava, and me to see everything. I hope that more people will be comfortable approaching me so that we can work together and improve the school as one.”
He is ready to get to work on formalizing mental health days and keeping the community in the loop regarding the work of the Student Council.
Maha and Njomin will assume their new positions at the start of the spring term, aiming, as Maha said, “to pass something down to future leaders and future students that we’re proud of and that can keep them moving forward.”
