Last year, when the idea of a Leadership class where class officers and commissioners would come together during school hours was first proposed, students responded with mixed feelings.
“I felt like if you were on a commission, like I was, you didn’t need to take a class the whole year because we only spend a few months preparing for events,” said junior Elicia Ye, a member of the dance commission. For the juniors and seniors especially, who could have taken an AP class instead, it was hard to sacrifice a period, Ye admits.
After the year, Ye and others grew comfortable with the idea. “In the end we all wanted to make a difference in our class by being part of a commission or Leadership, and it was worth giving up a period for,” she said.
Initially, widespread uncertainty prevailed about the logistics — where would the class be held, how lenient the class would be, how many students could join.
However, once the year started, the different commissions were able to work more closely and cohesively together under the guidance of activities director Matt Torrens.
“We knew there would be a problem because people would have to change their schedule around, but overall the class was really beneficial since we interacted more with each other,” ASB Head Commissioner senior Eileen Toh said. “Leadership has become a huge family and our work has improved because we are able to build off each other’s ideas.”
With the developments in ASB and class office elections, students and administration are seeking to adjust and improve the class based on other schools’ examples and the problems they ran into this year in time to update potential student officers and commissioners for the upcoming school year.
The administration has decided that the class will “stay relatively the same, with a few changes,” according to ASB vice president senior Spring Ma.
The rally commission will not be part of the Leadership class next year, and the outreach commission will expand with a new outreach head commissioner, a new technology head commissioner and the rally head commissioner, in order to “promote overall cohesiveness in the Leadership class,” according to Ma.
Coming into the class will be a group of newly elected ASB officers. Junior Nathon Chin, previously the ASB board representative, was elected as the ASB president for the 2017-2018; previous ASB treasurer junior Roland Shen was elected as vice president, former sophomore class president Cameron Lin was elected as ASB treasurer and former sophomore class treasurer Roshan Verma was elected as ASB secretary.
As for class office elections, each grade voted for their own candidates on April 27 and results were announced the next day. For the current juniors in the class of 2018, Robert Scott was elected as president, Colina Guan as vice president, Amith Galivanche as treasurer, Neil Rao as secretary and Lillian Zeng and Jacqueline Schwartz as class representatives.
In the Class of 2019, Ashley Feng was elected as president, Nevin Prasad as vice president, Samyu Iyer as treasurer, Enzo Coglitore as secretary and Hanlin Sun and Usman Khan as class representatives.
For the Class of 2020 Prosper Chiu was elected as president, Emma Hsu as vice president, George Bian as treasurer, Katie Lam as secretary and Tyler Ouchida and Alex Lee as class representatives.
Another change is that instead of class officers being able to appoint as many class representatives as they see fit as in the previous years, each grade will be limited to two elected representatives and two representatives nominated by the class president.
The incoming Class of 2021 class office, except class representatives who will be nominated at the beginning of freshman year, will vote at Redwood Middle School at the end of their eighth grade year. In a new decision, freshman class officers will rotate through each of the commissions after Homecoming to experience Leadership as a whole.