The IHS Student Council is a student-run organization that coordinates and unifies the entire IHS student body. Every two weeks, approximately 60 student representatives meet to discuss relevant issues concerning the IHS community. By having representatives report back to their classes, friends, and community, we as an organization work together to serve the school.
Over the past months, the Student Council and its four subcommittees have worked very hard. The officers have coordinated themselves to work effectively together and to better reach out to students. The community outreach committee, one of the four committees in the Student Council, has worked to get the IHS student body more involved in the Ithacan community by arranging a clothing drive in the spring. Students and staff who want to help with this are welcome to contact the officers or Mr. Mellander.
The Public Outreach committee has recently sent out a survey that received great feedback. From the data we collected, the committee is looking into organizing school spirit days and community service opportunities for those interested; the survey also gave Student Council a better understanding of what we need to do to effectively to improve student life at IHS. Currently, the Public Outreach committee is running a Twitter account, @councilihs, that everyone should follow in order to stay up to date with what’s going on and share ideas with us.
The fundraising committee recently held a bake-sale fundraiser outside of Activities on February 25. Fundraisers are crucial to the success of Student Council because we give out tons of money in fund requests. Fund requests, which are frequently mentioned on the morning announcements, are opportunities to receive money from Student Council to pay for some sort of activity or supplies that will benefit a club or group of students—application forms can be found in the main office. Our money ultimately goes back to the students who apply to get funding for their projects. For example,both IHS Model UN the Science Department received funds from Student Council, allowing them to attend many competitions that they could not otherwise and arrange the “Talks with a Scientist” lectures happening this spring, respectively.
Lastly, the School-Works Committee, our most influential committee, has started and completed many fantastic and extensive projects. For example, the committee worked to add stalls to the boys’ bathrooms to improve privacy, as well as implement traffic tape around and on stairways to improve hallway circulation throughout the day. Recently, plans have been made to attempt to install schedule scanners to decrease the waiting time students have to get into the library.
The hard work done by Student Council is concentrated on the well-being of all students at IHS. The council hopes that it has been doing its job of representing the student body in order to tackle issues and engage everyone in the school environment. Please don’t hesitate to ask questions or address concerns.