November 14, 2022 by Olivia Clemmensen (’26)
As many students here at Saratoga Springs High School (SSHS) know, there is a council for the whole school, and one for each graduating class (one for the freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors). Each council is made up of students who are elected by the student body to serve as leaders and coordinators for their class. As everyone is getting acclimated to the school year, the new Student Council is working hard to plan a great year for every class!
Photo by Olivia Tuck (’24)
STUCO members meet regularly (usually once a week) to discuss plans and organize events. Student council cabinets not only work together, but they also frequently collaborate with the SSHS faculty and administrators. These include Principal Tsao, Mr. Wolpert, and Mr. Mcpartland, all of whom are happy to work with the students to make the year better.
With this year being the first “normal” year since the Coronavirus pandemic, the members from each student council are excited to bring back many events and traditions to SSHS. Our school-wide Student Council president Evan Griffiths said that with this year being his last year at the high school, he wanted to get involved with the school more.
Griffiths said, “I have had a great experience at Saratoga, despite three of the four years being weird in some way due to health restrictions posed by COVID-19. With this school year being the first ‘normal’ year, I wanted to help ensure that students would be able to experience events and activities that normally happen during a school year and wanted to help with the organization and setup of these events/activities.” SSHS Student Council vice president Poppy Shishik agreed and stated that as a council, “we are really aiming to be back to normal for the first year since 2019 and [to] introduce the younger grades to how school used to be.”
Griffiths and Shishik were both motivated to join Student Council because they wanted to be more involved in the school’s community and its process of planning events. They also wanted to connect with the student body more, with the hopes of making an impact on the school in a memorable way. They have many goals for this school year ranging from planning an SSHS Dodgeball Competition to restoring the school’s culture and making this year fun for every grade.
Griffiths shares an improvement he wants to make this year for the school. His goal is to “improve school spirit throughout the entire student body.” He continued, saying, “School spirit [has] diminished over the past couple of years, so we hope to bring it back and make it stronger.” They both are hopeful that because more is planned for this year, students will, as Griffiths says, “get out more and participate at events together, making a stronger connection between the student body as a whole.” Shishik’s priority is to make this year fun and exciting for every class, including helping students “enjoy their education” and “get their minds off stressors.”
Photo provided by Kate Lindley (’23)
Senior president and vice president, Clare Hegener and Kate Lindley, are excited to give the class of 2023 a senior ball and many other spirited events just for them. Lindley has stated that she not only wants to bring back the fun of SSHS to the seniors but to all the underclassmen who didn’t get these experiences.“Being the only class who has experienced the high school prior to the covid-19 pandemic, our goal is to bring the fun and traditions that we experienced freshman year to the rest of the classes below us,” Lindley said. She explained that “it feels a little disjointed due to the covid years and we hope to bring the excitement back [in]to events.”
In preparing for the end-of-the-year senior ball, Hegener and Lindley will collaborate with the rest of the senior council all year long to make it the best it can be. Along with the fun senior events like the ball, senior STUCO is hoping to fit some fundraisers into this school year. They have been working with different restaurants that will help them.
Both Matthew DiGeso, the junior STUCO president, and Samuel Chaucer, the sophomore STUCO president, are hoping to get all SSHS students involved in the school climate and excited about school events. Chaucer said that he and the sophomore council are hoping to give their class “things to make them excited about school.” Chaucer wanted to be a part of STUCO because he wanted to be “one of the people to make [his] classmates’ school experience better.”
DiGeso’s reason for getting involved in STUCO was that he wanted his class to have a successful and amazing year through their junior prom and other events. DiGeso is also planning on holding restaurant fundraisers to raise money for important events. The junior council is currently in touch with the restaurants Hattie’s, Druthers, DZ restaurants, and Cantina.
The new freshman council is very excited for the year ahead. As co-president Arissa Gillani said, “I am hopeful that the freshman class of 2026 will easily adjust and transition from middle school to high school with a memorable and positive experience.” Gillani said that at a very young age she knew she wanted to be a leader, and that this was the perfect opportunity to be one.
With having two presidents of the freshman class, both Gillani and co-president Jack Figliomeni have needed to work closely and share ideas with one another to, as Gillani says, “enhance teamwork.” Co-president Figliomeni wants to make “encouraging other students to participate more and not dread school” a priority. He explained that dreading school can be a very common feeling amongst teenagers, and that “childhood is very important and to have to be somewhere 5 days a week and 6 hours a day just to hate every second of it is not exactly a good place to work and make friends.”
Figliomeni hopes that the freshman council can, by the end of the school year, help students feel more welcome, comfortable, and enjoy school more than they did in years past. Freshman vice-president Madison Finn adds to Gillani’s and Figliomeni’s goals, saying that she is hoping that the freshman class can have an amazing school year and that they can “raise as much money [as possible] for our student body and the community.”
Photo by Olivia Tuck (’24)
As a whole, the freshman council is currently working together to plan and set up the Give a Child a Christmas fundraiser, hoping to put out tables collecting donations around SSHS within the next couple of weeks. Throughout the year, as Finn said, they are hoping that they can hold more fundraisers for “students to be able to give to our community and make a difference.”
Saratoga Springs High School STUCO members have expressed and emphasized that having a student government is vital to a flourishing school community. Senior president Hegener says that student government is “super important to getting kids involved in school decisions.” As Lindley states, it “allows for events to be planned by the student body for the student body.” It “gives the students a voice,” Finn said. Overall, all of the SSHS student council is hoping they can make a positive impact on the student body, make as much of a difference in the community as they can, and help all students have an amazing year.