Fall Semester Report

Student Council Fall Updates

Events

Chair: Madison Ho

Spring meeting time: Fridays, 11:15a

Over the last two months the events committee has been working hard to plan fully in-person events for the student body again! Event planning included Fall Festival, spirit week, the Under the Stars Dance, and the faculty v. student dodgeball game (organized by Leo Wang to support #TeamSeas, $63 raised) Thank you to the many members of the student body that helped set up and break down the dance and fall festival! The student body feedback for the Under the Stars dance was appreciated and your notes/comments will be incorporated into planning for spring dances. 

In the spring we hope to host student-faculty basketball and soccer games, an ice-skating outing, and student grade lunches along with our usual spring events including semi-formal and a trivia night. Semi-Formal (Fri Feb 11th) will be Masquerade themed! We can’t wait for all the events to come!

Policy

Chair: Anais Kim

Spring meeting time: Tuesdays, 11:15am

Policy began the year by collecting feedback from students about how their teachers handled asking them for their pronouns at the beginning of the year. In general, students were grateful that their teachers were asking, although some felt that execution could be more inclusive in the future. Policy reached out to Dr. White with specific feedback and she shared that she would revisit the topic with teachers before the start of the next school year.

Mid-semester, policy began the conversation about the need for gender-neutral bathrooms and possible solutions. Mr. Kolovos has since provided an update during an ASM that they are working with BU on a solution as fast as possible. We will continue to follow up until a solution is finalized. 

Other policy discussions/initiatives included who can access materials on the student council google drive (on an as-needed basis), use of the intercom system to make announcements (3x per week), access to locker rooms (students can borrow keys to open locker rooms as needed), and the idea of hosting grade-wide lunches.  

We have most recently been working with Nick Reason and Ajay Ramen on a student experience survey specific to this school year. We plan to send this out in mid-January and will analyze the anonymous results to share with the school following. All are welcome to join policy to provide feedback and ideas related to this project. 

PR

Chair: Ibukun Owolabi

Spring meeting time: Thursday 11:50a

After going remote for a full year, PR got back into the swing of things with 100% use of the bulletin boards around the school. Our focus this semester was on planning and creating bulletin boards for the heritage/identity months including Latinx and Hispanic heritage month, and Indigenous peoples month.  In October we reached out to students, faculty, and staff who identified as Hispanic/LatinX to share about their identity and culture. Thank you to those of you who shared your perspective. In November, we asked advisory groups to make hand turkeys and write what they’re thankful for; thank you for helping make the gratitude board be so awesome! In the future, we hope to incorporate advisories and students into more of our bulletin board projects. 

Other projects include updating the teacher of the month board, redesigning the student clubs and activities board, sharing updates of events and sporting events on the student council instagram, and creating the “favorite memories of 2021” paper chain in the lobby. 

In January, we hope to continue with the new initiative of posting weekly student council meeting updates to the @bua_stuco instagram, and will design a New Year’s Resolution board (with help from advisories) to put up mid-January. Looking forward to hearing more creative ideas in the spring, come by the meetings any time!

Resources

Chair: Lizzie Seward

Spring Meeting time: Wednesday, 11:50am

At the end of the summer and start of the school year we organized and executed our annual book swap program. We had a total of 34 students who requested books; the highest yet! The majority of the requests were from underclassmen for math and science classes. Based on demand, we discussed the possibility of offering free textbooks for all BUA math and science classes with Dr. White and Mr. Dettorre. We are hoping the school might be able to fulfill this request in the future.  

We continue working to improve BUA student spaces as a whole. After three years of requesting a hot water heater for student use, we finally have one on the way! Thank you to Mr. Dettorre for his special request to BU Facilities to install it in the 1st floor new student lounge. We have kept close contact with Mr. Dettorre, and there should be one by the 2022-2023 school year. Additionally, we continue to refill the boxes in the bathrooms with various toiletries and essentials. If there is anything you think we should add, feel free to reach out. The boxes are being regularly refilled by our two Inventory Officers, Ally Tang and Michael Song. We have also added air fresheners to all of the bathrooms and student spaces, which will be changed out for the second semester.

Finally, after many discussions with Dr. White and Mr. Kolovos about the Friday afternoon activity block, we have come to an agreement that clubs are allowed to meet during that time and students can sign out to attend those clubs. Unlike in previous years, your club will not need to request permission to meet during this time. If it works for your club, claim it in this sheet. Hope to see you at the resources committee meetings in the spring!