Class Officer and BoE Rep Election Results and Term Goals

   Last semester’s class officer and Board of Education (BoE) representative elections predominately saw the victories of incumbent candidates. The class officers continue to focus on funding social events such as proms, while the Board of Education representatives still strive to raise student voices and poll for student opinion. 

    Treasurer Josephine Holt ’27 is the only new officer joining the class of 2027’s roster; President Cornelia Ye ’27, Vice President Yen Tran ’27, and Tenzin Mondak ’27 were all reelected, having brought boundless energy and enthusiasm for their jobs. “In all three years that I have campaigned for this position, I have consistently placed an emphasis on the opinions of the class, not just the officers,” said Vice President Tran. Tran assures her class that this will happen by asking for their opinion via Google form surveys. Tran mentions that in addition to organizing and funding events, she will strive to make sure her class’s voices are heard. President Ye supports this idea, saying that “collaboration will be a major theme of officer meetings this year,” and hopes that other students will participate.

    But the focus of their term, after all, will be fun experiences. “We have a number of events we’re looking forward to hosting this year, including Senior Sunrise, Winter Formal, Casino Night, Senior Prom, the Senior Trip, and Senior Sunset,” stated President Ye. The President has collected a massive amount of funding but wants her classmates to know that there’s more work to be done. “I guess my first plug for the year is to encourage any seniors, who haven’t already, to buy their senior merchandise. It’s not too late!” 

    The class of 2028 saw all officers reelected, with Terence Rohan’28 as president, Eafan Chen ’28 as vice president, Ciren Zhouma ’28 as secretary, and Aiden Xie ’28 as treasurer.

    “I am super grateful and excited for being elected for another year as Class of 2028 [vice president]. In this coming school year I hope to continue our fundraising efforts to help pay for an amazing prom, Winter Formal, and any other fun social events for our grade. Now that my fellow officers and I have collected a year of experience in our positions, I hope we can push for more socials beyond the ones we did last year,” said Vice President Chen. Treasurer Xie wants to work more with other clubs and host more fundraisers to increase funding for events such as the dance. President Terence Rohan agrees with Chen’s sentiment to increase social events, and intends to gear them towards the purpose of increasing the class’s unity.

    For the class of 2029, David Yonker ’29 beat out incumbent Evangeline Burrows ’29 for the role of president, while Oliver Thoemmes ’29 was elected as the vice president in favor of incumbent Mila Oshoe ’29.

    Vice President Thoemmes aims to increase the diversity of funding methods by including trivia nights and raffles, and Secretary Cecilia He ’29 also hopes to diversify funding streams. Both He and treasurer Charlotte McClintic ’29 retained their roles.

    McClintic wants to use bake sales, socials, and possibly movie nights to fund events for her class. “This year, I will work hard to make sure we have an excessive amount of funding for our junior and senior proms, and will organize many fun and effective fundraisers,” she said. 

    A problem with many of the events organized by this group in the previous school year was that few people attended because awareness was so low. The movie night was attended by so few people that the previous president had to give away concessions for free.

    President Yonker aims to increase participation and awareness in these events through the use of the class of 2029’s Instagram account. He also wants to coordinate events around club and sport schedules so more people will be able to attend. “Above all, my final goal as class president is to make sophomore year a year to remember! To do this I’ll need everyone’s help, whether it’s volunteering at fundraisers, contacting me with any improvement suggestions or simply attending events and showing why the class of 2029 is the best class yet!” Yonker said. 

    The student representatives to the BoE were all reelected, despite some valiant efforts by sophomores and juniors to claim a seat. Judah Kischnick ’27 brings his skills with debate acquired as former secretary and now president of Model United Nations club, as well as his experience with student outreach as vice president of student council.

     “This year, I hope to continue my previous projects, carrying on with student [representative] election policy development as well as cell phone policy updates. I also intend to work on two-way communication between students and board [representatives],” Kischnick said. Kischnick also wants to continue his surveys on the cell phone and election policy to attain meaningful data points.

    ZiQin Yang ’27 is going into his second year as a BoE representative , and that is the biggest draw he offers for his job. “I worked on helping improve communication between students, teachers, and the Board of Education. I helped collect student and teacher opinions and shared their feedback with the Board so their perspectives could be included in discussions,” he said. Yang hopes to continue giving students a stronger voice in school policy and make them seen and heard by the BoE. Like Kischnick, he also used and plans to use surveys to find out student opinion on crucial topics such as the phone ban.

      Lily Cowder ’27 cites her experience in fine arts, sports, and the sciences as a well-rounded background that makes her fit for the job. In addition to previously being a board representative, she served as the vice president of orchestra last year. During her last term, she helped the Ithaca Teachers Association (ITA) protest district administration’s policies and get them a seat at the negotiating table. She wants to continue making it easier for student voices to be heard by the board and other admin during this school year.

    Jingying Xu ’27 is unique in that she won her election as a candidate of few words, using primarily emojis in her campaign statement. Her background more than speaks for how capable she is: as captain of Code Red Robotics, she raised fifty thousand dollars for the club. Xu wants to start biweekly meeting updates to start more consistent communication between representatives and the student body.

    With officers like these, anyone would be surprised if the events and meetings planned by these groups faltered. Of course, they’ll need students to help spread the word and hold them accountable every step of the way. Let’s pray collaboration does in fact turn out to be a major keynote of the officer’s terms these upcoming semesters.