Junior Class President

Zachary Gin

What new ideas would you bring to the table? What is your main goal?

I want to revive and continue working on some bills that I have worked on in the past, such as the facilities bill and Curriculum Feedback. These bills would improve the student body’s time at Lab through the comfort of their school space and through academic relations with teachers. I also want to introduce a new line grade merchandise, which would be a fun way to further grade unity. 

How will you act as a liaison between students and faculty?

I think that a connection between the student body and the faculty is now, more than ever, necessary. As junior president, I would like to ensure that this connection maintains open through conversations with faculty and I hope that students would feel free to approach me at any time to address their concerns.  

What kind of school culture do you hope to see? How will you work to create it?

Lab’s school culture is an accumulation of our shared experiences from taking history tests to fun all-school events like Art in the Dark and Labstock. I hope to facilitate grade events to promote our unity and to provide an opportunity to relieve the stress of our school day. Although it is the primary job of the Cultural Union, I think that all grade representatives should help bring their grade together and plan grade events. 

How will you work to make U-High a stress-free environment?

U-High is a very academically rigorous school and stress will always follow behind such hard work. I would want to host small gatherings with free food and drinks during stressful academic periods, such as finals or before and after the SAT. In addition to these small events, I know that occasionally teachers will assign too much work or put too many tests in one day and I hope I will be a resource to help students communicate with their teachers and/or counselors to relieve their problems. 

How do you plan to enhance the student body’s engagement in school activities?

Having new and fun ideas about different events would definitely help raise participation numbers in school activities. For example, I know that my grade has not had a grade-wide assassins game or water balloon fight and I think these new events would be fun and interesting for our grade. And of course the homecoming and winter formal have typically had high attendance rates for the two years that I have attended them, but nonetheless focusing on advertising and selling tickets will raise attendance rates. However, I have learned over my years on Student Council that sometimes some students are not interested in going to homecoming or winter formal regardless of the amount of advertising, so selling tickets can be problematic. 

Brent Pennington

What new ideas would you bring to the table? What is your main goal?

My main goal is to do more. I believe that the student representatives have a potential to see all of the problems that students have solved in the way that students want it, and I want to deliver. With that being said I like to outline plans to accomplish the ideas I have and they are fairly extensive and abstract so I would need more space to write about them but I can give a brief overview of what my ideas are: Reform the DEI system to make for more engaging and effective learning by increasing coordinator responsibilities, create another section of Student Council that focuses of fundraising ideas to give to clubs in order to make it easier for them to fund raise, creating a more effective response to the racial incidents by redefining what allows for racism, and a lot more that I can not fit in less that 100 words. (sorry)

How will you act as a liaison between students and faculty?

From my view, the student representatives can only solve student issues the way students want them solved by guiding the administration instead of just telling them. With that being said, I will be more “hands on” during the problem solving portion of creating change and hold administrators accountable to seeing student goals accomplished. This will look like me either sitting in on administrator-administrator discussions, or following up with administrators after meetings, to specify who will accomplish what and identify how progress will be monitored, most likely consisting of a report back. I will act like this to ensure not only that student voices are heard, but also student solutions are brought to the table and change is guaranteed.

What kind of school culture do you hope to see? How will you work to create it?

I hope to see a culture where people are highly educated without the expense of increased engagement and fun activity. I believe that Lab School does not have to be “stressful all the time,” and instead can be fun as well. Reducing stress and increasing the ability for student to have fun is my main goal and I will work to accomplish both by (a) the fund raising explained earlier, (b) the response the “stress free” question below, and (c) in general acting as a funny person who does things to make the community laugh and be happy [i.e. some speeches that I have given]. In general I really enjoy the Lab community and I can promise that I will do as much as I can to give back to it.

How will you work to make U-High a stress-free environment?

I believe that the key to creating a stress-free environment revolves around a combination or communication between the student body and faculty and the follow through by student representatives. I went to a forum discussing how homework over break seemed too stressful and afterwards I decided to write a set of solutions and give them to Ms. Campos to help reinforce what students wanted during meetings that students could not be a part of. I have already been working to ensure that student voices are heard throughout the entire process of making change and this along with increased communication between faculty and students is how I will continue to make this school a stress-free environment.

How do you plan to enhance the student body’s engagement in school activities?

In acknowledgement of the quarantine, I would use Schoology and other social media platforms as a means to create engagement. However, once the quarantine has concluded, I will be a more active participant in the process of connecting students by creating engagement not only through online means, but also in person. A combination of online surveys and days where I just walk up to and talk to a group of people in the hallways, may be the most effective way to get people engaged. In all honesty I talk to a lot of people in  the hallways, so doing this would not be out of the ordinary for me.