The SSC bulletin is a weekly article covering the events at each Monday’s council meeting.
The Student Staff Council convened on Monday, Sept. 15 in room 104 for their weekly meeting. Assistant Principal for School Life Quinn Killy supplied the meeting’s snacks: Reese’s Oreo cookies and Pringles. While most representatives liked the Pringles, Killy called the Oreos “mediocre at best.”
This week, the council found decorations for homecoming, planned events for class meetings and prepared for the annual grade-versus-grade flag football tournament. The seniors won the tournament on Friday.
Freshman SSC candidates gave election speeches during their class meeting on Monday, Sept. 15. Ninth- and tenth-grade dean Steph Cordo announced the winners to the freshman class on Monday afternoon. Since Cordo had not announced the winners prior to the Monday council meeting, no freshman SSC representatives attended the council meeting nor met in a subgroup. Freshmen Aliana Cromer, Roque Gistau, Jonas Grossman and Cassidy Holmwood will be the freshman class’s SSC representatives this school year.
SSC President Grace Khuzami began the meeting by finalizing the timing for the red carpet–themed homecoming dance, which occurred on Saturday, Sept. 20. The dance ran from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m.
The council agreed to supply water bottles and candy at the dance, and they discussed having fruits or vegetables, as multiple sophomore representatives suggested. Killy was hesitant about purchasing fruits and vegetables because he said that at past school events, produce had not been a popular snack option. There was no produce offered to students at homecoming on Saturday.
Khuzami then shared a Google Document with the council and asked representatives to find possible decorations, including velvet ropes, red carpets and spotlights.
After the discussion about homecoming, the council turned to discuss food vendors. Killy told the council that the bakery Breads Unlimited will come to the school as a food vendor this fall. The Hispanic and Latinx Heritage Month assembly on Friday, Sept. 12 featured Roberto Molina as the keynote speaker. Molina is a general manager of Breads Unlimited, his family-owned bakery in Bethesda, Maryland. He also said that the smoothie bowl company Playa Bowls reached out to him about returning to GDS as a vendor after they came to the school last spring. Killy has not confirmed a date for the company to come to the school.
The council then broke into grade-specific groups to plan class meeting activities and to schedule grade-wide office hours.
The sophomores scheduled office hours for Friday, Sept. 26 during lunch.
The juniors sent out a sign-up form for flag football and also looked into hiring either a ventriloquist or contortionist to perform at their class meeting on Monday, Oct. 6. Since SSC will only vote on what each grade’s budget is once the freshman representatives join the council, the junior representatives were unsure whether their budget would allow them to hire a high-quality performer and looked on multiple websites to find an entertainer they could hire at a low cost.
The seniors planned an activity for their class meeting on Monday, Oct. 6 modeled after the game show The Dating Game. The representatives said their version is called “The Friendship Game,” where three students will sit separated by a wall from another student. The three students will answer questions about themselves, and the student on the other side of the wall will choose one of the three to be their friend.
As the meeting came to an end, Killy told the council he had already purchased a different flavor of Oreos for next week’s meeting, and he said he hoped the new flavor would be better than the Reese’s Oreos. The council ate half of the Oreos. Killy urged the representatives to finish the last of the Pringles as they left room 104.