Council Debates Merits of Creating Assistant Secretary Position – Council Update (5/30/2018 and 6/6/2018)

Before you read the remainder of this article, I would like to apologize to the readers who expect these updates every week for not posting sooner. I also would like to apologize for missing the most recent Council meeting as a result of a large Calculus assignment, so the summary of June 6th’s meeting is a compilation of multiple Council members’ reports. Ultimately, the following update is just a brief summary of both meetings.

On May 30th, the meeting began with some updates. The new Public Relations Person Leila Trummel told Council that she had made a Council Instagram and asked everyone to follow it. Moderator Colm Seigne then added that he had contacted his brother, rising freshman Rep. Pierce Seigne, to ask where the 8th graders were and if they were coming to Council that day, but had only received the answer “nah.” There was only one major item on the agenda for May 30th and it was the Assistant Secretary Motion. It was brought forward by former Council Secretary Cathy Han and former Assistant Moderator Jasper Meyer. Han emphasized that the office of Secretary has gained more responsibilities in the past few years and that creating an additional leadership position of Assistant Secretary might help keep paperwork in order and lighten the responsibilities of Secretary. The debate on the potential new position was extensive, with a notable opponent of the position being staff representative Ms. Ceplikas. Ultimately, no agreement was met and the motion would continue being discussed in the following meeting.

The June 6th meeting began the Budget Motion. This was just the motion to allocate the money to clubs based on the budget that had been proposed a few weeks ago. The motion passed and the remaining budget is $2,903. Next, the Council amended the Dress Code Motion to add that students must be wearing a top and a bottom. This amendment was made to appease Principal Campbell, who vetoed the motion as a result of it not having such a requirement. Council then moved on to the X-Period Standardization Motion, which had been discussed about a month ago but returned to Council with an amendment to mandate teachers give one every full five day week or 20% of their class time, a heavily debated amendment with no clear outcome. Afterwards, Council debated the previous week’s Assistant Secretary Motion but decided to send the motion to the Administration Committee after the Council could not pass the motion. The two last things on the agenda were the Staff Senate Motion and the Term Limit Discussion, both of which got little attention due to lack of time.