By Tiffany Palapo & Grace Magliocco
Our newly elected student government for the 2024-2025 school year has promised many things to come, but have they followed through? Will there be changes regarding Life Lab? Is the courtyard gonna see color? Is the student center actually gonna get revamped? If so, when can we expect to see these new additions enacted? We spoke to three members of the current student council about their agenda for the school, and got similar answers from each person, showing that these plans have been thought out and discussed.
Firstly, we met with Billie Allee. As Senior Director of Programming, Allee spoke about many aspects of her role, including distributing school merch. Billie states that she and the Junior Director of Programming, Ciela, hope to have at least one merch sale during the school year and on top of that create a new original design to release. Another goal Billie shared is to organize more events for the student body, such as the beloved Scaregrams. Every Halloween, students can purchase a bag of candy specific to a classmate, and then the student government bursts into classrooms during the school day to hand out the candy to whoever it’s addressed to. Special traditions and events like these can be looked forward to celebrating throughout this year.
After Billie, we interviewed the Director of Community, Leela Ting. Her primary role is to foster school spirit within the LREI community. One way Leela does this is with Furwin, a stuffed toy she named that hides around the school. This is a special tradition for the Director of Community, as they get a new stuffed animal for the school year, and come up with a name for it. She also runs the LREI student government Instagram (@lreistudentgov), where she plans to post more this year. Furthermore, during morning meetings, it is her role to get everyone excited for the week, especially during Monday morning meetings. To help with this, she comes up with creative and fun ways to engage the students such as teacher trivia, two truths and a lie, grade vs grade games, and other fun ways to start the day. Leela hopes to organize more events to engage students and create a closer community. She shared some goals of organizing more potlucks for the affinity groups, updating the student center, and maybe having students paint a mural in the courtyard to add color.
Next, Suko Bey, the Director of Student Life and Student Body President is the voice of the students, advocating for the needs and wants of the student body. A great way she communicates with the students is through Town Hall meetings, which she hopes to hold more of during the school year. Students go to learn about the student government’s plans and share new ideas of their own to improve the school. An idea that was previously brought up in one of these meetings that is still being worked on is modifying Life Lab for the 9th and 10th grades. The Student Government plans to make more engaging and enjoyable classes for students during this period. Additionally, Suko and other members are currently working on getting a set budget for revamping the Student Center to make it a more inviting community area. We heard word of a foosball table, better seating, and a working TV (with a remote that actually has batteries). Other conversations with the members we interviewed consisted of planting flowers and painting a mural in the courtyard for more color in the spring, and a secret plan that is going to be shared with the school soon. This surprise has apparently been in the works for a while now, and should soon be released. Students, start to get excited for all the exciting plans this school year!
As announced very recently, on the week of the 23rd, the student government has arranged a homecoming week for the entire school. Homecoming week will consist of the typical homecoming games, in which the girls’ varsity soccer, girls’ varsity volleyball, and boys’ varsity soccer teams will be competing against other schools in the ISAL league. They’ve planned a tailgate that comes in the form of snacks before the game, pompoms, festivities, posters, etc. Homecoming week will be like a mini spirit week as the members have decided to have themed days during all five days of the week. The student body of LREI is looking forward to these future festivities and all the other plans that the student government has in store for ‘24-’25.