What Can Student Council Do?

Lucia Mejia is the current Treasurer for the sophomore class. She can often be seen firing up students and stoking their school spirit. She gives motivational speeches to her classmates and encourages student participation at assemblies by throwing candy to students.

Earlier in the year, Mejia and sophomore president Brianne Lazago decided to take on the task of getting better school lunches. They did this by creating a petition to be presented in a meeting with Maui County.

While the ultimate impact of the petition is unknown, Mejia is hopeful. She says that she hopes “to make more strides forward with this movement considering this does affect our student’s tremendously.” Mejia was elected in April to a second term as Treasurer next year.

Lucia and others are trying their best in Student Council, though some students may not know what they are doing or how they are doing it.

Emma Batson says “They’re saying they're gonna communicate with us.” Yet, she adds, “I've never heard any of them coming around, talking to any of us, getting our opinions on things, asking us.”

When asked what students do for our school freshman, Lyric Austin says “I don’t know, like, put together assemblies?” Austin feels “they are kind of important,” but “not really cause there are no fun events.”

Mejia has faith that “Student council plays a key role in enhancing the school experience and promoting a positive environment.” One way they do this, she said, is by planning events for students like assemblies. Assemblies, Mejia pointed out, cost money.

“As Treasurer,” she said, “I have access to our funds, what we do with our money, writing receipts for payments and keeping records of where our money goes.” These funds are used for events like spirit week: “as Treasurer my council and I have full power to purchase necessary supplies.”

Freshman Kalea Markulis says she ran for historian this year to “help out the council and contribute to making the school better.” The role of Historian is to take pictures and run the Council’s social media accounts.

In her role, Markulis plans to “make sure that all class and school events are advertised” so that everyone feels “like they want to participate because it will be fun.”

“...they can't really pass laws and regulations…”

“A lot of students don’t realize how much their student council can do,” says senior Bryson Aquino. “Most of the class councils have a lot of funds and money from the fire so they basically can afford to do whatever they propose. They can do anything,” he added, “as long as it is approved by Carosso.”

Here is where things get complicated.

“Student Council is like the Congress” said Principal Richard Carosso. “They're like the senators and congressmen.” However, he added that the Student Council is “not necessarily the legislative branch, because they can't really pass laws and regulations, but they are the representative branch of school governance.”

This means that if the Student Council chose to change the school’s phone policy they would have to bring their ideas to either the students activities coordinator or Principal Richard Carosso. They could be turned down in both cases.

Nicole Heinlein points to the legal system outside of the school as an explanation for the limits of students creating new rules. “We do have state laws that we need to uphold,” she said, “and so those (school) rules would need to fall within the state and federal laws.”

Within the school, new rules “would need to be agreed upon by administration and maybe a democratic process.”

“I have no problem with the Student Council coming and saying, ‘Hey, what about this idea?’ Or ‘what about this idea?’ Because we're adults, and we've been used to running schools a certain way,” said Carosso, who admitted that sometimes students may only have the power to make suggestions.

When asked about Mejia and Lagazo’s recent petition for better school lunch he said “I can't do a lot to change lunch. And if I can't do a lot, then, you know, kids can't.” We were not able to do anything about this because “we are currently sort of restricted by the federal programs that help make lunch affordable for kids.”

“...what our students are saying…”

The role of the Students Council seems to be making sure that student voices and concerns are heard. The power to do something about those concerns, however, belongs to the adults.

“Our focus going into next year is to look to the students more and to kind of get that input from for students.” Says Carosso. Getting more student voice will help “better solicit student voice and to better organize our campus around what our students are saying.”

Heinlein agrees and recommends that Council members “gather ideas from other students and come up with some solutions and bring those ideas to administration.  Then we could work together to come up with some solutions to create policies for the school.”

There could be a problem with hearing student voices though because sometimes students don’t speak. As an anonymous junior noticed, “the junior class isn’t as involved as we could be.” This is an issue because “If there was more involvement we could make big changes for our school.”