The SSC bulletin is a weekly article covering the events at each Monday’s council meeting.
As members of the Student Staff Council (SSC) grabbed their snack of the week, the usual pretzels and animal crackers, with the addition of cookies and Tootsie Rolls, they returned to their seats in an unusual configuration. The senior representatives chose to sit in the center of the crescent arrangement of desks where the freshmen usually take their place.
This week council members discussed Quizlet Plus, WinFo and the council’s in-school retreat.
Assistant Principal for School Life Quinn Killy announced that GDS will not pay for a school-wide Quizlet Plus subscription. He told the council that department chairs had rejected the idea because Quizlet’s school subscription plan requires teachers to enroll students and approve study sets.
Killy added that technology specialist Mauricio Mantilla had found other study platforms that were free of cost, which would be shared with the school at a later date.
The council discussed the Winter Semi-Formal dance known as WinFo, which will be held on Jan. 25 in the lower/middle school performance space.
The council also discussed having WinFo end earlier, as last year, most people had left by 10:30 p.m. when it was scheduled to end at 11 p.m. The council decided that the dance would end at 10:30 p.m. to match the Homecoming dance, which ended at the same time in the early fall.
When Vice President Grace Khuzami asked for members to sign up for setup and cleanup of the dance, nearly all members signed up for setup. After Khuzami described the cleanup process as quick and easy, some members hesitantly signed up for cleanup duty.
SSC is having a half-day in-school retreat in the Head of School’s conference room on Jan. 8. According to SSC President Natalia Freedman they will be getting into the “nitty gritty” of the council’s work and building an action plan.
(Freedman is a Bit opinions editor and did not read nor edit this article prior to publication.)
The council then discussed their search for an accessible location to keep the Wii console. The Hop Shop fell out as an option after senior Sawyer Thompson, the manager of the Hop Shop, did not agree to the plan as the Hop Shop is too busy selling items.
They then explored other options, such as the dean’s suite and security desk, but settled on keeping it in Killy’s office. This was their last resort as the console would only be available for pickup when Killy is present in his office and he described his sporadic schedule, complicating the process.
The council then shifted to discuss feedback from grade-specific office hours. The majority of this period was spent discussing feedback from freshman office hours. Freshmen representatives reported their classmates wanted more microwaves in the Internet Café, food options and, on a lighter note, help reading clocks. Killy agreed that more microwaves could be added, but reminded the freshmen representatives that food vendors were dependent on sales, which have declined.
Freshmen representatives reported that their classmates have struggled to read the analog clocks in the building and wanted to be taught how to read them or have them replaced with digital clocks. Beyond a few laughs the council did not consider this matter seriously.
Freshmen had also requested more options for Spikeball and sports equipment. Again, Killy reminded them that several hundred dollars had been spent at the beginning of the year on equipment and that most of the equipment had been lost and not returned to its proper place.
The last eight minutes of the meeting were given to grade-specific discussions.
The freshmen were finalizing their winter event with ninth-grade dean Julie Stein, and they plan to provide beverages, Christmas decorations, music and games, according to freshman representative Elliot Etter.
The sophomores discussed their grade-wide Secret Santa game called “Holiday Hopper,” for which they have received nearly 40 sign-ups as of this article’s publication. They hope to gain more participants prior to the form closing at 10 p.m. on Tuesday.
The juniors had scrapped their original plan for a grade-wide scavenger hunt and instead are hosting a trivia game with prizes on Dec. 9. “It’s Jeopardy-type stuff,” junior representative John Morsberger said.
The seniors had nothing to talk about as they had finalized their grade-wide gingerbread house-making plans.