Student council to undergo revamp program for the 2023-2024 school year

From new associate positions to an AI candidate, student council attempts to increase diverse perspectives, leadership opportunities

environmental stewardship.

For the upcoming school year, Student Council (StuCo) will be implementing several changes in its structure and elections. The team, advised by Dean of Students Jackee Bruno, hopes to offer more diverse perspectives within the council and clearer opportunities for student leadership.

“I thought for a school of almost 500 gifted, brilliant individuals, there should be more leadership opportunities,” Bruno shared.

Currently, StuCo has 13 positions—Coleads, Grade Reps, Equity and Inclusion Rep, Student Life Rep, Spirit and Social Rep, Environmental Rep, Community Service Learning (CSL) Rep, Arts Rep, and Sports Rep. This past year, each role was held by one individual except for the two co-leads and three ninth grade reps.

After the revamp, StuCo will comprise a core team, which meets regularly, and an expanded cabinet of associates who serve under specific positions and meet monthly. The council will include the preexisting roles and potentially several newly-added positions. Bruno is considering introducing the Academic Rep, which oversees academic advising and programing, and the Citizenship Rep, which bridges community service and

By having associates, StuCo intends to provide ample support to all team members. For example, the Spirit and Social Rep will have several people assisting them, so when the time comes to organize an event such as Prom, all of the responsibilities do not fall on a single person.

“This year, most of the student council leaders are decent leaders, and they’re hard workers,” Bruno said. “So they just take care of everything. But there’s more to leadership than that.”

While the plan is not fully developed, current Co-lead Lucie L. ’23 appreciates the intentions to restructure.

“These changes are necessary,” she said. “It’s good that we have the momentum [now] to make them for the fall.”

In addition to iterating current positions and introducing more roles and associates, Lucie mentioned the incorporation of specific leadership training into the new program to ensure the team collaborates effectively.

“I think a lot of the time people will come into student council being really eager to make a positive impact on the school,” Lucie said. She hopes that providing expanded leadership training to eager StuCo members will allow the council to function as a team.

Another significant change to StuCo will

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“I loved it,” Bruno said, “because I think speeches sometimes tend to purely lie on either theater type experience or charisma [and] not necessarily the speech itself.”

To Bruno, the system of speeches is “a popularity contest” whereas the “Meet-theCandidates” sessions allowed for students to interact with smaller groups of individuals and eliminated the “risk” involved with speaking in front of 300 people.

However, one candidate was a bit more difficult to meet with in person: Maxwell Turing, the world’s first-ever AI Student President built by AI Club, ran to join StuCo in the fall. According to his website, Turing would “perfectly represent and serve” the study body as his campaign platform is built off of the ideals of students.

“I’m intrigued by the idea of it. It’s a popular topic,” Bruno said. “I’m new to Nueva, but I’ve experienced Nueva wanting to be on the forefront of things and to be so innovative and creative, [so] it makes sense to be, hopefully, the first school to have an AI candidate.”

Bruno perceives Turing to be, in part, a “spectacle,” but also a legitimately “useful

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The student body voted to fill the roles of Co-leads, Spirit and Social Rep, Student Life Rep, and 12th Grade Rep in the spring of 2023 and will vote for the remaining positions at the beginning of next year.

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