As we say our goodbyes to the old student council, we welcome Antoine Delarue, Emily Purvis, Koby Kwakwa, Marine Goeke and myself – Nicolas Santiago Barreiro –who will be on the 2018-2019 Student Council Executive Committee (with Mrs. Jacobson and Mme. Conchard’s help). We wrote an article for The Update to present our ideas for this coming school year, in order to be as transparent with students as possible and to let you know what’s happening in school.
We would also like to welcome the new Student Council Executive member Rron Morina, who. Rron will be working with this year’s Student Council and continues on until October of 2019 when a new student will be elected to replace him. Rron represents all students not just new students!
The Executive Committee will be holding monthly meetings with all students from years 7 to 13, serving as a platform for us to communicate our future plans and upcoming events with students and, similarly, to allow us to listen to your ideas on how to improve school life. It is also the perfect opportunity to ask any questions that you may have. They will be held in the Leman Hall the first Tuesday of every month. The followings sessions will be on December 4th and January 8th. For years 7-9 they will be during P5 and for years 10-13 P6. Since this will most likely be your lunch time you are more than welcome to bring your food to them. Hope to see everyone there!
As many of you know, this past September the Student Council organised our first event, the Hawaiian school dance. It was lots of fun and we ended up getting a great turn out, which made for a successful evening. We would like to thank everyone who attended: the security staff, the teachers who supervised, and anyone who helped set up or clean up. Currently, we are planning next year’s Bal de Neiges which will be held in downtown Geneva, as is traditional. We have been in contact with LGB and Nations and are working on finding the perfect location – it will most likely be held in the Richmond or the Intercontinental hotel. This year we are going to split the cost of Bal de Neiges equally across the three campuses. We also plan to have more school dances, not only for seniors but also for years 7, 8 and 9.
Last year, during our “campaign” speeches, we presented all the ideas we had which we believed would benefit the school and improve student life. We have already accomplished several of our objectives and we are going to continue to fulfill our promises – to the best of our abilities. One of our main ideas as Student Council was to introduce sanitary pads and tampons in the girl’s bathroom. We have been talking with the Nations campus, who already have this in effect, to work out a similar deal with a company (we are hoping that this will be a free service, but it is still not certain). However, Mrs. Jacobson has a yellow bag full of a different range on tampons by her office and the school nurse has some as well. As Koby Kwakwa mentioned in his speech, he wanted to broadcast all of the sports events that happen in school live. Mr. Auger and Mr. Shevlin have been of great help and we are currently drafting a letter to the PTA for a grant to buy the equipment needed. We are working with the secondary reception to have footballs and basketballs for students to borrow during break. You will give your ID card and you will be able to checkout a football or basketball. Once break is over, you will simply return the ball to get your ID card back.
As many of you will have heard by now, the Common room will be used by the Art department until April of 2019. For the past couple of years, the Art department has been requesting the school provide another creative space for their growing classes of students. With 20 students in the Year 13 art class and almost double that in their Year 12 classes – plus all of its IGCSE students – it has kindly asked the school to make use of the common room for art classes and to store their work. We understand that some senior students will be unhappy with these changes, but the school is growing, and every classroom is of value to departments. However, this does not mean that Mr. Hambley’s project to redesign the common room will be cancelled, it will simply be postponed, to after this year’s IB art exams. Mr. Hambley, with the help of Linden Felder, Noa Scroll and Marina Walter, will be turning the common room into a study room. This room will consist of antique furniture with comfortable armchairs warm, overhead lights and wooden desks and chairs (similar to Lem 2.09 classroom). This will be a studious room where senior students can get work done. While the Common Room is being renovated, the Library has agreed that a portion of the Mezzanine will be reserved for students in Years 12 and 13 for quiet study.
That’s all we have to say for now. Expect articles every couple of months, where we will be debriefing the students about upcoming events and so forth. We are currently working on several ideas, so be ready!
Thank you very much, to every single one of you, for supporting us with your vote and desire to improve and make school life that much better!
Sincerely,
Koby Kwakwa, Antoine Delarue, Marine Goeke, Emily Purvis, Rron Morina and Nicolás Santiago Barreiro
The Update 