THE SENATE

Last year, in response to concerns regarding attendance and accountability, former ASB President Eli Rowland restructured the Senate in hopes that Senators would reliably report to and represent their English classes.

We can’t hold onto the past forever. But when we look at the present … it’s not pretty.

In last year’s October Lake Views issue, we published an article called  “Senate overthrows the Queen.” For the first time, all students were eligible to be voted onto the Homecoming and Winter Formal courts. The provision, however, did not apply to the Mayfete court, which remained exclusively female students only. This year, the issue has been revisited.

A newly proposed bill would amend the LOHS Constitution to de-gender Mayfete as well, allowing students to vote for any of their peers. Under the proposed legislation, those who ultimately become a part of the court may choose their escorts, not just limited to male-only escorts that were previously enforced.

Unfortunately, many students at our school have not been officially informed of such a bill—one that arguably affects all of the student body in some way or another.

For one, this lack of communication is caused by the roles of Senators, as written in the school’s Constitution. The Senate doesn’t require its Senators to vote as representatives of their English classes, instead, they act as delegates or electors to vote as they please, thus perpetuating the idea that Senators don’t need to communicate with their constituents and vote according to their classes’ opinions.

Secondly, a lack of enforcement when it comes to attendance at Senate meetings allows a sizable amount of students to skip them without consequence. Previously, Senators that didn’t show up to meetings were replaced, but a similar penalty is not in effect currently, which keeps all the students in their English classes in the dark if their Senator isn’t penalized for not attending.

The power of student voice is incredibly important. We have the opportunity, through the Senate, to make concrete changes to how our school is run, to make our school environment more welcoming, to make learning at LOHS a more enjoyable and effective experience. When the lines of communication between its body and the general student population are cut off, so too are our voices, ideas and opinions. We hope that students, Senators and otherwise, work with each other and administrators/teachers to address the concerns regarding the Senate so that all have the opportunity to be informed and involved in the undertaking of change.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Before the year started, school leadership, a committee comprised of department heads and other administration that equates to roughly 10 adults from the high school, made a decision that would affect the entire student body. This decision was to effectively remove daily announcements.

The new announcement format has reduced announcements to just Monday and Friday. Last year, announcements were not very polished. They were a bit disorganized and hard to hear. Some students caught onto this trend and decided to not listen to announcements as teachers showed similar disengagement. However, other students, despite the shaky delivery, found announcements to be quite informative.

Announcements were used to convey information involving all school-related events, including: sports, upcoming deadlines, senate meetings and other essential information. The removal of daily announcements leaves students uninformed on things going on in the school.

One of the primary objections to announcements was that students just talked over them and never listened. That’s a big assumption that a small group of adults made concerning a massive student body.

Many students actually liked listening to announcements, but could never hear over their obnoxiously loud classmates. This problem is the fault of the teachers. Teachers need to make more of an effort to quiet their class so all students can listen to announcements, instead of removing announcements entirely.

To combat the lack of announcements, ASB and class officers have been very active on Instagram and social media, which is awesome. They’ve been doing a great job getting information out to students effectively. But what about the students that aren’t on Instagram?

These students relied on daily announcements to stay informed about things going on around the school. By effectively removing announcements, we have isolated a part of our school community. Announcements are a great way to bring together our school community and develop a sense of unity among the student body. But we don’t have them anymore.

Whether you love announcements or are happy they are gone, there is a bigger issue at hand: a small group of adults made a decision that would affect the entire student body and the rest of the school population without consulting anyone but each other. The leadership team made a series of huge generalizations that led to this decision.