This school year, Aragon’s Grand Student Council (GSC) decided to change its meeting dates to every third Monday in the Student Lunchroom (SLR) each during fifth period. This has brought up some questions of conflict between these meetings and class time and other changes the GSC has made.
When first starting the GSC meetings, Leadership hoped to better improve the school and listen to the concerns prompted by the student body. Melissa Perino, Leadership and English teacher, says, “It is supposed to be a global representation of the student body.”
ASB secretary and junior Nicoletta Della Bordella explains, “We wanted to involve the clubs in more Leadership activities and have them be a part of the Halloween Carnival and give them more information about the food fairs and upcoming events and ideas for video announcements.”
However, when GSC were only at lunch, there wasn’t enough time to cover all topics. Perino says, “The problem was that we were running out of time, so by the time we got through school-wide Leadership announcements, there was no time for open forum, and that was really the point and the value of the GSC meetings.”
Senior and ASB President Anahita Ghajarrahimi leads these fifth period meetings and supports the change. She explains that the changes were made in order to improve how meetings were conducted. She says “Since it was not enough time to accurately and easily go through all the material [and] make sure that everyone could understand each other and give feedback, we decided to change it to having it during a class period instead of lunch, which would add another twenty minutes.”
Although this time benefits the GSC and clubs, it does interrupt class.
Ghajarrahimi says, “We are asking for only one club representative to come to the GSC meetings, so that means if you have four officers, then more or less you’re only missing two fifth periods a year. It’s very doable, and you let your teacher know before hand.”
Kelvin Yang, junior and president of Key Club, offers a different perspective on this subject. He says, “The meetings are nice in that they are a lot longer this year, but we do miss class and I feel like not all the time is used as efficiently as it could be.”
Yang proposes that teachers be notified in advance about the students who are attending the GSC meetings. He adds, “[We should] let Leadership know who will be attending so they can tell the teacher because I know some teachers don’t like when students leave for GSC meetings, but if they don’t, then another student misses a lot of class throughout the year to make up for their absence.”
However, there are consequences for those who do not send representatives to the GSC meetings. Perino says, “After the first missed GSC meeting, a notice is sent reminding you that you need to attend the GSC meetings, and after two [missed] GSC meetings the club is deactivated.”
Ghajarrahimi is happy with the turnout for the September meeting. She says, “I felt like more people showed up on time and were ready to participate in this meeting versus it being at lunch because at that time people are getting their lunch and straggling in; it also just felt more like a class structure, which was more successful.”
Ghajarrahimi says, “It was really interesting to hear the feedback of the clubs .. not just in the form of live announcements or online, but actual face-to-face … It connected us more because we were able to discuss topics as a group.”
