Written by: Anuva Ganapathi
As students start to readjust to school life after two months of summer vacation, the Student Executive Council (SEC) has already been working for weeks to set up events and goals for the upcoming school year.
The SEC team attended a retreat during the summer where they began planning new objectives and ideas. The main job of the SEC is to provide a voice for the students, put on events for the school, monitor the budget for the student body and solicit information and opinions from the students.
Student spirit is a large part of all school events. To that end, SEC is always trying to get more students involved. “As a student body, Gunn generally has awesome school spirit,” senior Student Body Vice President Laura Tao said. “We always want more peo- ple at events though, and the biggest factor in increasing attendance at school events is effective publicity.”
SEC has hired a new dance DJ, and it seems like a successful move so far, as the first dance had an increase of 200 students compared to last year’s first dance, accord-
“We are implementing a new event- based team system, whereby each specific event has a team built around it, with the relevant team leader.”
—senior Student Body President Harrison Waschura
ing to Tao. Tao is also working on a fresh- man tailgate for before football games. “It will hopefully be a fun way to get freshmen pumped for football,” Tao said. “Our Special Events Commissioner Eileen Xu is looking forward to creating some engaging monthly events,” senior Student Body President Har- rison Waschura said.
In order to be more efficient, SEC is restructuring its ways of planning events. “Instead of forming many committees, as has been done in the past, we are implementing a new event-based team system, whereby each specific event has a team built around it, with the relevant team leader,” Waschura said. “We hope this will be a more efficient way of organizing and will cater to the specific needs of events.”
Another area SEC hopes to make some changes to is Link Crew. “My biggest goal for Link Crew this year is to have all the leaders keep in touch with their freshmen throughout the year,” Tao, who is in charge of Link Crew, said. “The Link leaders will be meeting with the freshmen more often this year, so I hope to foster more communication through Titan 101 meetings. ”
SEC also values communication with the student body and its members are constantly trying to improve means of communication. “Students can bring up any ideas; we have a Facebook page, a Formspring account, and people can always e-mail in suggestions to any SEC member,” Tao said.
All class presidents have also made Face- book groups that they use to communicate with their class. “ We have a very strong class council that helps spread the word about what I am doing as president and such,” Senior Class President Nitika Johri said. “Otherwise, most communication—surveys, feedback, polls, info, etc.—is via our class group on Facebook.”
In addition, members of SEC have their own personal goals that they would like to work towards, such as bring their class together. “One of my main goals is to unify our grade, and to allow everyone to be a par- ticipant of the class,” Junior Class President Sara Ameri said. “In the past, people have expressed that they felt left out from activi- ties.” SEC leaders to gain greater influence amongst students by fulfilling these goals.
