The West High school spirit within the hallways has been increasing throughout the 2023-24 school year thanks to Student Government and their events. Everything from homecoming to library study sessions have impacted the student body and after two trimesters of hosting fun-filled, community-building events, Student Government President Cindy Wang ’24 and the entirety of Student Government are taking a step back to reflect before a strong end to the school year.
Setbacks and reflections
Student Government faced a few setbacks throughout the school year as spirit week participation was lower than their goal and the winter formal SnoCo dance was canceled due to extreme cold weather and low ticket sales. Wang recognizes the reasons why the turnout in both of these events didn’t match up with their goals and explains actions the student government can take in the future.
“I think one reason why some of the spirit days weren’t as fleshed out as they could have been, was because of the complexity of some of the spirit days. There was rhyme without a reason [day] and not a lot of people did it because it was super complicated and it wasn’t really easily identifiable,” Wang said.
“I think coming up with more easily done spirit day ideas is something that we’ve kind of shifted toward. I think just making it easier would help because we know that it’s high school and you wake up at 7:30 and you forget sometimes that you need to rhyme without a reason with your best friend on a Thursday morning. We recognize that and we just want people to participate so we’re going to do whatever it takes to get to to get people to participate.”
In addition to low turnout for spirit days, January’s planned “SnoCo” dance was canceled due to low ticket sales. While the freezing temperatures in the negatives certainly contributed to the low ticket sales, Wang identifies things that she feels they can work on for this trimester, specifically when it comes to publicizing.
“I think we definitely maxed out on publicity, but we can do better. We did everything we could but I think our max out should be more than that. I think we can increase our publicity,” Wang said.
She also recognized that some of the publicity that the student government did wasn’t directly aimed at the student body, as most emails and other publicizing techniques were largely viewed by only parents. “We publicized [SnoCo] but I’m not sure if we publicized it to the students. I think we can definitely brainstorm more ideas that would cater towards our age, like TikTok or even an incentive to buy a ticket,” Wang said.
Goals and plans
Recognizing the reasons behind their setbacks allowed the Student Government to take action and adapt their plans for the final trimester of the 2023-24 school year. Many things are in the works for Student Government to help them finish out the year strong, including a student and staff trivia game.
Wang explains that at some point during the coming weeks, staff members will be able to send in trivia questions about themselves to then be read over the intercom. Students will then have a chance to win prizes by emailing or texting in their answers.
Additionally, students will also get a chance to attend a movie day. In coordination with the Summer of the Arts Festival, Wang hopes to host a movie day at West to help supplement the benefits that she hoped the SnoCo dance would bring. The movie day will likely take place at West but all plans of the movie day and trivia game are subject to change.
Student Government also has elections coming up as the school year comes to a close. While the dates are uncertain currently, students will get a chance to cast their vote for the next president and vice president pair to represent and benefit the student body.
As Wang enters her final trimester of high school she reflects on what she and her fellow peers in Student Government can do to create a lasting impact at West High. She explains that her hope is to cater toward student opinions while creating a community.
“I want to make sure that [students] are heard. If they don’t like something, then we probably won’t go forth with that and if they like something, we’ll do it more often. I just want them to know that we will cater towards your opinion, we want to have activities that you’ll go to,” Wang said. “It’s not about how much money we raise, I don’t think that’s impact that we really ever wanted. I think we really just wanted to foster a good, caring community and along the way if we are able to support fundraisers, such as Teen Breast Friends, that’s a plus.”
