ASB: New blood to refresh team dynamics, decreased class office demand more accountability

In a slew of social media posts before the Feb. 14-15 elections for the 2019-2020 ASB positions, candidates made their pitches in videos of speeches and campaign sketches, featuring dogs, spins on popular shows like “The Bachelor” and action movie trailers.

After the buzz of the elections settled over the weekend, the ASB election results were announced on Facebook on Feb. 16. The elected officers are juniors president George Bian, vice president Jolyn Tran, treasurer Rohan Rao and sophomores secretary Arnav Mangal and board representative Lauren Tan. The club commissioners will be sophomore Erica Lee and junior Prosper Chiu.

Incoming ASB members, though experienced as members of the Leadership class, will have to adapt to their increased responsibilities.

“I’m super excited because I think I can do a lot more now,” Tran said. “As ASB secretary this year, I couldn’t really input my own ideas in discussions; it was more like taking notes and listening to others and trying to get everything down.”

Filling the shoes of their predecessors will also present a

“huge responsibility,” Lee said. “I have seen [current club commissioners] Samyu and Cameron in the activities office all the time, and they're always organizing and getting all of the papers together.”

More experienced members of ASB, such as current school board representative Chiu, have set high expectations for themselves as they fill in their new roles.

“I learned a lot from students on ASB last year,” Chiu said. “This next year, I hope I can follow their example and act as a mentor for the new juniors on the committee.”

Although ASB makes some “big picture” decisions for the student body such as club and commission interviews and helping to organize club and commision events Tan believes that a lot of work is done behind the scenes when they interact with administrators, teachers, the school board and district administrators such as the superintendent.

Also, on a day-to-day basis, Tran believes that the new committee will seek to reduce the clique-like culture within the class, where officers would mostly interact with the same group of people.

“The dynamic between the new ASB committee is definitely different from this year’s because we’re all very different people,” Tran said. “We’re all kind of diverse, and we all represent the school in one way.”

The new blood in ASB will affect changes in the group’s social and working dynamics.  

“We have people that come from all different kinds of social groups from this school, and that plays to our advantage because with a more diverse school government we can better represent the school population,” Bian said.

 

Class officers elected

The 2022 class officers will consist of president Alex Yang, vice president Derek Hsu, treasurer Nandini Desai and class representative Apurva Chakravarthy.

Hsu hopes that class office will “continue to do more effective fundraisers since freshman year was a lot of trial and error,” and that he can “take as much of a leadership role as vice president.”

The class of 2021 officers will be president Cynthia Zhang, vice president Katie Chen, treasurer Cameron King and class representatives Aliza Zaman and Dylan Li.

Zhang, who is currently the sophomore class representative,  welcomes her new position with “open arms” and passion.

“President is definitely a step up because even though we generally do the same sort of work, the president is always doing more and taking more initiative,” Zhang said. “With that responsibility and higher position, I want to create an open mindset and an equal say for people.”

The 2020 office will consist of president Claire Smerdon, vice president Alex Lee, treasurer Emma Hsu and appointed representatives Bryan Chu and Nicole Wong.

For 2019-2020, class office size will be reduced to the president, vice president, treasurer and one to two class representatives, depending on class. He said the duties of secretary and treasurer have been combined.

According to Bian, the current ASB proposed this change and a majority of the Leadership class voted for its implementation, with the objective of motivating students to focus on their tasks by making their positions more critical and disprove the stereotype that leadership students accomplish little the Leadership class.

The decreased number of positions will demand a higher quality of work from each member of the class office teams.

“All the events that we host will probably feel more rushed, but I think that will be an incentive to be more productive,” Zhang said. “That was what I was hoping for next year — that everyone would have the incentive to work and be productive next year, and everyone who was elected is really excited and passionate."