Freshmen Council
Freshmen Council has been set in place in order for the new students at Athens Drive to gain representation in their new school. Student Council is an elected governing body of a high school or college. Freshmen Council acts as an entry level organization to student council and is dedicated to supporting the freshmen class as well as encouraging members to acquire leadership skills through a better understanding of their school and generally tries to raise student awareness.
Cooper Sykes and Katie Vick, freshmen, are co-presidents of the freshmen council for the 2016-2017 school year. The presidents of the council act as a resource and provide information deemed necessary by the council as a whole. They are the spokespeople of freshmen council and their job is to preside over the meetings that are held. Student council elections were held held during the beginning of the school year, the process of which consisted of filling out applications and compiling endorsements from their friends and peers. Any student was eligible in the selection process of the positions in the council.
The council had been meeting once or twice a week because of homecoming season but once the event was over the council started to only meet on a weekly basis. There are 4 different councils- one for every grade-usually each of them meet separately, but due to homecoming all four of them had been meeting together for general meetings in order to discuss the details of the event they were planning.
“There are different councils within the council, like I’m in decorating and our given task is to work on decorating homecoming,” said Vick.
The components of working on student council are of 4 committees: Advertisements, pep rallies, decorations and tailgate. Each student can work on of these components one at a time.
“ We’re all working very hard on our specific task, like I’m working on decorating homecoming, but there are others who are working on pep rally, tailgate and stuff like that.” Both of them encourage people who are not in the council itself to come up to them and share ideas they might have.The freshmen council was primarily established for the freshmen to gain representation in the school and it is said to be the main way for their voices to be heard.
“We’re decking the hallways for the freshmen, we’re making a float for the freshmen, we’re promoting what the freshmen want during spirit week, we’re doing all this to make sure they don’t feel left out of something as significant as school,” said Sykes.
For now, the council has been working on setting up and planning what they want to accomplish later on in the year because it is known that the school event’s successes rest upon the students’ shoulders.
“We know it’s a difficult transition getting here, so we really just want to make it as comfortable as possible while building a community for ourselves, although it is a lot of responsibility, it can also be a lot of fun” said Vick.