The freshman class council results were announced on Sept. 19. The winners were Kaitlyn Duong for president, Hunter Black for vice president, Lucy Yin for secretary and Arnav Kothari for treasurer.
The election process began on Sept. 7 when candidates applied. They then announced their candidacy on Sept. 11 and campaigned until the candidate convention on Sept. 14.
“We held a candidate convention during flex [time], which was mandatory,” Aragon Student Body president Bianca Araneta said. “There, all of the freshmen listened to the candidates give their speech and also answer a question relating to class council. We held the candidate convention because we thought that it would be more informative to the students and it would help them in voting.”
The freshmen voted on Sept. 15, a day after the candidate convention. In the past, students physically casted votes during lunch or voted online throughout the day. Currently, history and health classes have a section of time that is specifically allocated for voting purposes.
“In the past years, we saw that less than half of the student body would vote,” said Araneta, a senior. “[However, this year] over 80 percent of the freshman class voted.”
There were 12 candidates: three ran for president, two for vice president, two for secretary and five for treasurer.
Responsibilities for each role differs. The president generates ideas for and helps organize class fundraisers, the vice president functions as an assistant to the president and other officers, the secretary manages logistics and the treasurer keeps track of class funds.
The candidates were as follows: Aaron Kang, Kaitlyn Duong and Alexander Liu ran for president, Hunter Black and Claire Phillips ran for vice president, Lindsey Chan, Shelby Cherkas, Arnav Kothari, Joshua Sefanov and Mikayla Wong ran for treasurer and Lucy Yin and Isabella Krzesniak ran for secretary.
Unlike other class council elections, candidates for the freshman class council have not interacted with their classes as much yet. However, candidates still expressed enthusiasm.
“Even though I don’t know the entire freshman class, I certainly hope to get to know most of them this year,” said Kang. “As class president, it’s important to be connected to my classmates.”
Candidates explained their rationale for running.
“I feel that by being in office, I will be able to prove to my fellow classmates why they should be as spirited about Aragon as I am and that I will be able to make all my peers as passionate about our school,” Phillips said.
“I want to make sure that every single person has a voice,” Wong said, “and I want to represent them. I decided to run for treasurer because I wanted to make sure that the money was all spent correctly and always put into the right place.”
Regardless of whether they won or lost, many of the candidates said that they were glad to have participated.
“I would never regret running for office no matter what happens,” Chan said. “I got the chance to get to know new people and talk to people that I probably wouldn’t have ever talked to.”
