Aster and Meris are our student body presidents. Throughout their time at PCS, both have had active roles in our school community. In Aster’s time at PCS, he has helped out at many events, and has previously held the position of dance executive. With them at the head of our student government, things are looking bright for this coming year! The following is a transcript from my separate interviews with them. It has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What made you want to be a student body president?
M: I’ve been doing student government since 9th grade. I was a senator for two years and a community executive for one year, and I just had so much fun just being with my peers and planning events that everyone’s gonna enjoy. So for my last year, I decided to try the bigger role of being student body president. I thought it would be a fun change of pace.
A: So I joined student government in the middle of junior year and I spent a lot of time helping out at a bunch of the events. And I kind of realized that even though I hadn’t done it before, I actually really enjoyed a lot of the events and stuff. Even though I really enjoyed the roles I had with being a dance executive, I kinda liked the broader role that a student president had. It gives me more opportunity, it gives me more things to do. I kinda like being busy so I just felt like trying to do it.
Q: Throughout the week, what are your jobs as presidents?
M: We run biweekly meetings, so we have on Wednesdays after school until five where it’s the whole club meeting, and then during seminar we have the meeting for just the executives, meaning the dance, spirit, and community executives. We have meetings with administrators about different things. We go to board meetings once a month to hear about what’s going on in the school, get to know what’s happening, what we need to do. Before the meetings we’ll ask people what they want us to share with the board.
A: Well, Meris and I make the meeting plans for what we want to talk about during student government, and if people have any questions about stuff. One of the cool, fun things about it is getting to point people in the right direction. There’s a lot of various little projects like meeting up with a teacher or faculty member to bring something up. Monthly, we have the board meetings which Merris and I both go to, and were both the student representatives, so anything we or the students feel is important to share, we write up a little presentation to present to the board members. It’s mostly writing emails, making sure there is good communication, it changes from week to week.
Q: How would you say this has changed your daily routine?
A: I spend a lot more time at school, I get here pretty early, I usually get here at 7:15 on a normal day. I live really close which makes it convenient for me to just be here and get most of my work done here.
M: Well the meetings twice a week take up my seminar and one after school day. I do work outside of those, which takes a couple hours a week for sure, sending emails and other stuff.
Q: What are you looking forward to this year in terms of leadership? What are you nervous for?
A: I’m looking forward to having an opportunity to do the things that people want to see. I’ve gotten random suggestions for small things that people want. Like, people want to bring back the homeroom announcements, not like the morning announcements, but having a time on video to highlight sports and other stuff. I’m also excited to change the stuff that people don’t like, or just try to push for it. I want to be a representative and a voice to what the kids here want and what they’re trying to get from the board and faculty members. At least to the best of my ability.
M: I’m really excited to help facilitate all the events being put on this year, I know that they have a lot of fun stuff planned. But as much as I’m excited for all things that are happening, I’m also nervous since it’s just so much stuff and I know people have other things going on too, and I’m just hoping that nothing goes wrong, but honestly it will. Things always go wrong, but i think everything will be ok.
Q: All in all, do you think this job has been a worthwhile experience?
A: Oh yea, I’m excited, I’m having fun. A leadership experience like this is always a good time for me. I feel like my time is well spent and I like the people I get to work with too. Like feeling like I’m heard and feeling like I can get other people and their ideas heard. It’s something I’m very happy to be doing.
M: I personally absolutely think it’s a worthwhile experience. I’ve just been having so much fun with student government these past few years. I just really love being around people that care about the same things as I do.
