Council Update

By Gabe Brison-Trezise

Council has had some rousing discussions in the past few weeks about matters ranging from granting ninth graders off-campus privileges to changing the start time of school. In what will be the last Council Update before the holiday break, here are the summaries of some recent motions and discussions heard by Council.

Council resumed its discussion about giving ninth graders off-campus privileges. The original motion stipulated that freshmen would only be allowed to go the Co-op, but an amendment to broaden the motion to allow freshmen to go anywhere off-campus was proposed and passed. Although Council has the ability to override her veto, Mrs. Gillespie stated that she would likely veto the motion if Council were to pass it. Council ultimately referred the motion to Student Life, who are currently looking at past studies done by Council about off-campus and how it affects HHS’s relationships with its neighbors.

Several weeks ago, Council held a discussion about changing the start time of school from 8am to 8:30 or 9am. The idea behind this discussion was the fact that teenagers need eight to nine hours of sleep each night to function properly during the daytime. Changing the start time of school would allow students to sleep in longer, and, hopefully, to get more sleep. It is not clear how the school day would be affected, or whether its end would need to be pushed back half an hour or an hour to recoup the time lost by starting later. In any case, this was only an informal conversation about the possibility of the school day having a later start time.

A search committee for a new Hanover High principal was formed on the heels of Mrs. Gillespie’s announcement that she will be leaving the school at the end of this academic year. Council voted for two of its members, senior Krista Brown and junior Rowan Dunfey, to be the committee’s two student representatives. The committee will begin interviewing candidates in January.

The Co-Curricular Code of Conduct (CCCC, for short) is a document Council has been working on for years. Designed to standardize the consequences for breaking school rules, the code is nearly complete after much hard work by the Curriculum Committee. The code states that violators will lose any leadership positions they may hold; in a recent meeting, Council broke up into its five standing committees to discuss whether all members of Council should be considered “leaders” under the code, or whether only Council officers and committee chairs should be. Most groups came to the consensus that only those in leadership positions on Council should be considered leaders for the purposes of the code. In its meeting on December 9th, Council continued to discuss aspects of the code, such as the appropriateness of labeling Council an unexceptional co-curricular activity. Another topic was the potential mandate that a violator of the code miss 20% of his or her activity’s public performances that season. The Dresden School Board will discuss and vote on the code in an upcoming meeting. I will keep you posted on any new developments!

Enjoy the holidays, Gabe B.