2022 Annual Report

The State of BUA

Student Council’s Year End Report

May 2022

President, Mell Aguiar 

Vice President, Shizhong Xu

Treasurer, Alice Khomski

Secretary, Mia Shapoval

A Note from the Student Council President

Dear BUA,

Thank you so much. Throughout this academic year, as we transitioned from a hybrid world to in person learning, the BUA community has remained as supportive and involved as before- if not more. The work done by Student Council is not only done for the student body, but also through the student body: through survey responses that become presentations to the administration, constructive feedback on school events, students who drop by StuCo meetings to make a suggestion, and even through passionate requests for a hot water machine- which the Resources Committee has successfully implemented! 

As the result of a policy shift enacted by the StuCo officers at the beginning of this year, we have seen an unprecedented amount of engagement with StuCo in the form of new general members: the freshmen no longer elect 3 representatives in the fall, and instead join StuCo as general members if they wish to participate. After careful deliberation and weeks of discussing, we decided to make this policy change to (1) give freshmen more time to get to know their classmates and BUA in general, (2) to give more freshmen the opportunity to get elected in the spring, as more freshmen would feel comfortable giving a public speech after becoming acclimated to the school, and (3) to increase transparency, as the fall of freshman year may not have lent freshmen enough time to familiarize themselves with StuCo’s role in the school and how it works.

Given the drastic nature of this change, the StuCo officers made its implementation our goal for the year, regularly checking in with committee heads on how the influx of freshmen impacted their committees and dropping in on meetings to understand the policy’s impact firsthand. We are happy to report that this policy has increased involvement and made StuCo more inclusive, as freshmen who may have been too shy to give a speech in the fall were still able to play an active role in the council, along with freshmen who wanted to be involved but did not want to fully commit to the responsibilities of elected members. 

The BUA Student Council remains dedicated to involving as many students as possible in our diverse endeavors, and we hope that the following “State of BUA” year-end report gives all of you reading a sense of what we have accomplished and what we are currently working on. Thank you all again for your undying support, and I look forward to seeing what the future holds for this community. 

Sincerely,

Mell Aguiar, President, 2021-2022

Policy Committee

Chaired by Anais Kim 

In the fall, Policy committee discussed a possible new club structure, gathered data on teacher bathroom policies, approved the idea of grade-wide lunch events with Mr. Kolovos, and advocated for gender neutral bathrooms in the building, worked on preparing and experimenting with different policy proposals. As a smaller subgroup, we also drafted a Student Life survey initiated by a few juniors in order to learn about how students feel about the student life experience at BUA. This survey was sent out to the student body in February and Policy committee, in collaboration with the juniors, organized and analyzed the data before sharing it with Dr. White and Mr. Kolovos. 

65% of the student body (144 students) completed the student life survey, including 59 freshmen, 31 sophomores, 36 juniors, and 18 seniors. We found that while students were very appreciative of the efforts made by BU in conjunction with BUA to combat COVID, there was a concern around the lack of mental health support during the pandemic. Students also remarked on the disconnect across grades, especially the seniors noting that they take most of their classes at BU and have less reason to come to the BUA building. 

Our recommendations included an additional counselor or intern (preferably PoC), more adult-run events for the entire BUA student community like senior nights for sports, and developing “incentives” for seniors to come to the BUA building such as new furniture in the JSR, upperclassmen-centered events, and parking spaces. 

As we finish up the current school year and look forward into the next, Policy committee plans on discussing further the recommendations outlined above, and revisiting the student dress code and extra credit policies.

Resources Committee

Chaired by Lizzie Seward

In summer 2021, we continued year three of the Book Swap program, which lent books to 34 participants; the highest number in its history! Due to logistical and academic policy concerns regarding English and History annotations, we have decided to only issue STEM and language textbooks through the program this summer. We are working on a website that would automate and streamline the borrowing process.

Continuing our mental health initiative, resources committee met with Dr. White and Ms. Weiskopf several times this year, beginning in the summer. We have continually met with them to provide feedback on the health seminar course, invite them to class meeting to talk about procrastination and mandated reporting, and to request an additional school counselor, particularly one with experience working with students of color. We planned to send out our own mental health survey to continue the work from last year, however, the administration sent out the NAIS Independent School Health Check survey, so we deemed it redundant to send out our own. Since then, our committee meetings have been more discussion-based to provide a healthy outlet for students to talk about their personal experience with the school’s current mental health initiatives including the health seminar course.

We also met with Mr. Kolovos and Dr. White to reconsider approval for clubs to meet during the Friday afternoon activity block; this reignited the discussion for an early release on Fridays that the policy committee originally passed in the 2019-2020 school year. As it stands, the Friday afternoon slot will still be available for clubs to meet, but it is unlikely to be approved for early release. 

We have also worked to improve student spaces as a whole. In a huge win for the committee, after upwards of three years of asking for a hot water heater, we finally were able to get one for the student lounge on the first floor. It may not be a microwave, but it can make ramen just the same. 

Public Relations Committee

Chaired by Ibukun Owolabi

This year, PR took over three bulletin boards on the first floor and continued to manage the white board.  The board across from the first floor water fountain was designated as the board for the various national heritage months. We switched a small board from Teacher of the Month to Teacher of the Season to ensure that teachers get a full month dedicated to them excluding school vacations. The committee also gave the student activities board a long over due update to display the many new clubs and activities at BUA. Next year, PR hopes to create an annual schedule for bulletin board. 

PR has continued to manage the instagram posting about student clubs, special events, birthdays, student accomplishments, and important school updates. We held a training session to teach members how to use canva and therefore improve the quality of our posts with templates. Student interaction with the page has been consistent and positive. 

We added three new “officers” to the committee. The birthday officer, Anais, has consistently and efficiently posted an Instagram story for every student’s birthday throughout the whole year. The whiteboard officer, Celine, updates the whiteboard regularly for all of the sports matches, meets, and games. Lastly, we are excited that Ms. Teslow has joined the committee to act as a consultant to help design the boards as best as possible and help us work more closely with the admissions office. 

Events Committee

Chaired by Madison Ho

The events committee has worked hard after a year of remote events to bring back the beloved all-school traditions while incorporating the newer, smaller-sized events that were held during the hybrid year. Up to date, events has planned and organized Fall Fest, the Under the Stars dance, the Student-Faculty Charity Dodgeball game, Semi Formal Dance, the Student-Faculty Charity Basketball game, and Trivia Night. We are now coordinating Field Day (with an Ice Cream Truck!) as our last event to close out the school year! 

One major change to note in events is a new weekly meeting structure. In the past years and this fall semester, the events committee head has delegated tasks for committee members to work on outside of the meeting and has spent the meeting time brainstorming the events. However, this spring, we have altered the events structure so that all work is done within the meeting by splitting the committee into smaller groups. For example, in the month of November, when events was planning both the Dodgeball game and the Under the Stars dance, we split into two groups to simultaneously and more efficiently organize both events. The idea for the change resulted from the influx of general members as a way to better manage the large group without discouraging people from joining the subcommittee. This change increased not only committee efficiency, but also allowed other elected representatives to gain experience with a specific role.

Next year, the events committee should think about how to make the dodgeball and basketball events more successful charity events in terms of raising money. While both events were successful in bringing the students, faculty, and alumni together (a council-wide goal every year), the visibility of the chosen charity as well as encouraging donations could be highlighted better. For future charity events, events will have to brainstorm more effective ways to raise money. 

Lastly, there were a number of ideas for events that we hope can be hosted in future years including: Battle of the Bands, Student-Faculty Charity Soccer Game, Student-Faculty Charity Volleyball Game, Family Feud, Battle of the Besties, Scavenger Hunt (for Halloween), and Prank Night (focus on Seniors). For next year, we hope to continue organizing the beloved traditional events while incorporating a few of these mini-events to liven school spirit. Until next year! Events out! 

An update from the officers on BUA’s DEI initiatives

Last year, former Student Council officers Phevos Paschalidis, Kieran Barrett, Benista Owusu-Amo, and Sudarshan Ramanan presented a collection of recommended short and long term Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives created in conjunction with Mr. Kolovos and Dr. White. The recommendations were formed after careful analysis of data from a DEI survey sent out by Student Council in the summer of 2020 and are listed below. 

In March, current StuCo officers met with Mr. Kolovos and Dr. White to check in with the administration on their progress with these initiatives. What we learned from that conversation is outlined below. This table includes the initiatives recommended by the 20-21 officers after gathering and analyzing data from the student body survey. 

Most of the recommended short-term initiatives were implemented last year. The administration also began a new annual tradition this year: hosting a guest speaker in honor of MLK day. The inaugural speaker of the MLK Day Speaker Series was Angela Onwuachi-Willig, the dean of BU School of Law, who presented her lecture entitled “Policing the Boundaries of Whiteness: The Trials of Till and Trayvon.”

For both Hispanic-American Heritage Month and Black History Month, student council decorated boards around the school with information and history, encouraged Hispanic-American teachers to speak about their experiences at ASM, and posted about projects and other information and history about each culture on the student council Instagram. 

Last year and this past Fall, Mr. Stone invited alumni of color to talk on zoom with students about their experiences as people of color. Though participation at these meetings seemed to wane, a great deal of this could be attributed to the fatigue of virtual meetings. Race-based student affinity groups had similar issues, with participation diminishing due to the meetings being held virtually. 

Owing to the greater difficulty of addressing long-term issues, however, the BUA administration is still actively discussing how to implement each of the recommended long term initiatives. Though freshmen and sophomores do participate in a cultural competency seminar for one trimester, further integration of cultural-competency for all students is expected. These conversations are happening alongside ongoing reviewing of the BUA curriculum.  

Dr. White and Mr. Kolovos also assured us that concerted efforts are being made to reach out to faculty members whose identities better match the growing diversity of the student body. During this segment of the conversation, current StuCo officers brought up the frequent student requests for a school counselor with specific experience counseling students of color. 

The final long term initiative still in the works within the DEI Committee is a comprehensive DEI strategy. Changes in leadership have slowed this process, but progress is being made.