Student Council and Judicial Committee Roundup: A Look at What's In Store
By Livy Loving '11
News Reporter
The Student Council acts as an aid in voicing the views of the student body to the administration.
“The Student Council’s responsibility is essentially to act as a mediator between the administration and the students,” said Jin Ha ’08, President of the Student Council. “The Student Council has the opportunity to get the school to participate in a focused goal or commitment throughout the year.”
The Judicial Committee listens to different accounts of Honor Code violations and major discipline incidents. According to Yidi Ge ’08, a representative on the Judicial Committee, members of the JC are interested in having “the student learn a lesson afterwards. We want to prevent students from getting into disciplinary trouble simply because they didn’t understand the rules.”
A Focus on Conservation and Community
This year, the Student Council is acting on its previous effort to maintain school-wide conservation, and to a narrower extent, the conservation of water.
“We’ll be focusing on water conservation and one of the things we’ll be starting to discourage is the use of bottled water,” said Lauren Provini ’08, a representative on the Student Council. “
“We want to show how beneficial it is going back to drinking tap water,” added School President Jin Ha ’08.
In addition, students have expressed increasing concern with sit-down lunches, and took action with the March to Arch last spring. “We know that there is still concern out there,” said Lauren Provini ’08. “The March to Arch was a symbolic beginning of expressing concern about sit-down lunches.” However, regarding the administration’s flexibility in abolishing sit-down lunches, Jin Ha ’08, believes “The administration is pretty stern on that.”
“One thing that we want to work on is the communication between the students and the Student Council,” said Provini ’08. “We are focusing on building a community within our individual grades.” The sixth form has done this with a ‘class committee’ meeting each week, creating an open forum for sixth form students to approach their Student Council members with ideas. The class committee then “acts as a support team for organizing committee events”, said Provini.
Some students have expressed criticism about the Student Council’s dealing with events in the past, such as sit-down lunch, while others believe that they are doing a good job. “I think they represent the student body well, and they’re our peers, so they see things from our point of view,” said Tiffany Chan ’11.
Emphasis on Learning from Mistakes
“We want the Judicial Committee to be a learning experience for that student so he or she will not commit the same offense in the future,” said Yidi Ge ’08.
The Judicial Committee also acts as a negotiator between the student body and the administration, as the panel is made up of a variety of different students who judge cases that the administration also sees. “I believe it is important to let students assess their peers,” said Ge. “Sometimes the perspectives of students are understood better by having peers judge their actions rather than the faculty.”
“I like it, because we can really connect with the Judicial Committee instead of having the administration judge us,” said Jon Maddalone ’10.
Pursuing Change
When a student feels that an issue needs to be brought to the administration, that student will make a proposal to his respective form representative on the Student Council, who will then take the issue to the school president, who brings it to Mr. Ford.
“There was a proposal regarding the canceling of Saturday classes and just having Wednesday classes after Special Programs,” commented Ha ’08. Proposals like these are important in shaping the outcome of popular concerns within the student body. “There is also an issue, which is the dress code at dinnertime,” said Ha. “This year, we might pursue it again to strike a deal with the administration. A lot of students think that dinner dress code is inconvenient for them.”
Besides these issues, the Student Council is also working mainly on making Choate a “greener” (or “bluer”) school. “The theme overall is building on conservation, but focusing more on the issue of water – the importance and conservation of water,” said Ha . These goals should begin to take shape over the rest of the upcoming year. As to the Student Council’s next issue, “Just stay tuned,” Ha said.
