The SSC bulletin is a weekly article covering the events at each Monday’s council meeting.
As members of the Student Staff Council (SSC) filed into room 104 for their weekly meeting, they rearranged desks and set their agenda. The animal crackers had dwindled to just a quarter of the jar, and the pretzels were in shorter supply than in previous weeks. Luckily, freshman Gavin Solomon brought a gallon-sized Ziploc bag of cookies for the council to enjoy.
This week, the council discussed club funding, winter activities and grade-wide events.
To kick off the meeting, Enviro Club heads senior Sam Pastreich, senior Mac Penniman and junior Oliver Wolin presented their request for SSC to fund their compositing initiative. Last year, the club used Veterans Composting D.C., a compost fulfillment service that hires veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Assistant Principal for School Life Quinn Killy suggested they look into new options as Veterans Composting was unreliable in the past. Killy estimated the company charged $65 last year for the composting.
The club said that they wanted compost bins to keep a permanent presence similar to recycling and trash bins.
Later in the meeting, junior Rachel Sachs, a club head of Model United Nations (MUN), presented a request for funding to attend a MUN conference in New York. Sachs told the council that it would cost about $1,000 per student to attend prior to offsetting costs. She wanted the council to offset $100-200 per student in order to make the trip affordable to students who might not be able to afford the trip. MUN also raised $100 through a bake sale and $1,000 from hosting a conference at GDS.
(Solomon and Sachs are on the Bit’s staff.)
The council made a plan to create a school-wide game of finding a hidden elf on the shelf in the building. The elf will be placed in a random spot in the school each day this week, starting on Tuesday, until Friday of next week. After discussing the possibility of purchasing an oversized elf for this game, the council decided to use senior representative Michael Dobbs’ normal-sized elf that he was no longer using.
The council also discussed their daily winter raffle, which started on Monday with little turnout. Among others, sophomore representative Matias Sevak won on Monday and was not present to claim his prize. The council decided to drive participation by projecting slides in the Forum to tease prizes and making announcements on the school PA system.
To claim prizes, students must have their student IDs on them. Freshman representative Ella Maas told the council the ID requirement is an issue that prevents many students from winning prizes. Killy explained that the ID requirement was in place in order to encourage students to carry their IDs, as is required. He acknowledged that students will often present another classmate’s ID upon winning but still be given the raffle prize anyway.
Before the council split into grade-specific discussions, Killy praised the junior representatives for hosting a grade-wide trivia game. “They crushed it,” he said.
In their grade-specific meeting, the freshmen planned office hours and discussed hosting a Secret Cupid game, a Valentine’s Day spin-off of Secret Santa. The sophomores discussed hosting a trivia as the juniors did.
The juniors brainstormed ideas for future class meeting events. The seniors discussed a future class meeting. Dobbs said they wanted to “order 150 rubber ducks for January 13 to celebrate National Rubber Ducky Day.” The seniors would celebrate the day in a class meeting, and Dobbs added the ducks would be inexpensive.
When freshman Elliot Etter arrived in the second half of the meeting, the council sang Happy Birthday to him. He brought donut holes to celebrate his birthday, adding to the total number of sweet treats the council enjoyed.