When most people think about a club, they often think about collaborating with other students within their school. Junior Lucy Wu, one of the eight members representing the Student Advisory Council for Forest Hills Central, thinks that this couldn’t be further from the truth. 

“[Interacting with other students from other schools] is one of my favorite parts, actually,” Lucy said.“It’s cool to compare what your school is like versus [the] other [schools]. The school culture is different too, [and] it’s really cool hearing all the things that are different, [such as] the things that work for them, the things that don’t work for them, and just bouncing ideas off of each [other which] make our schools the best that they can be.”

The Student Advisory Council (SAC) is a club that started to manifest itself around three to five years ago and has now become a platform for students to talk about implementing changes to continually improve the environment of our school. 

How the application works are two representatives from each grade at Central, Eastern, and Northern high school can fill out an application in hopes of being accepted into the club to then be a part of different sub-committees. 

In terms of deciding who are the best candidates to represent each grade from each school, the process involved going further in who is selected: a technique unlike one that has never been used before, according to an executive board member of the student council junior Hayden Bolter.

“[Mrs. Vonk might be] one of the assistants to Mr. Behm, but she is amazing,” Hayden said. “She helps us do a lot of the things we do on the council, but I would say for the application process, [we all] blind react to a different school, and then we gave them back our feedback as an unbiased opinion.”

The reason that the application process is this way is so that it enforces the one morale that the entire club stands for; honesty. 

“People can lie on their applications [and] make it a little more intricate and more complex than they really are,” Hayden said. “By looking at the names we can rule out the people that  we knew [wouldn’t] be a good fit, or we were able to see what social class they were in and what activities they did and find a [varied] and diverse group of people.”

Nevertheless, ever since March, the month when the SAC really started to get its wheels running, the club has made a lot of progression since then and is currently working on a way to address issues that affect students’ lives at school. One of the biggest problems the club is trying to tackle right now is one I’m sure we’ve all heard of; the dress code. 

“Some really hot topics right now are dress code,” Lucy said. “We have a subcommittee meeting coming up in December and that’s really exciting because we’re going to start redrafting the dress code. Eastern as a school [already]  met with their principal and redrafted their dress code [and] we’re looking to do that on a district-wide level instead of just Eastern so that’s really exciting for us.” 

Regardless of the reason why some people decided to join, for some members, it only adds to their personality. For example, people such as senior Amant Grewal, who has been a part of the SAC since her sophomore year, find joy in actually being able to be a part of the council and are glad she joined. But the reason why it was started is so that students could be more involved in not only the school activities but to improve the overall atmosphere of the school and make it a safe place for every high schooler to go.

“It took some inspiration from our district’s Parent Advisory Council,” Amant said. “Parents already had a say in our district, obviously, and people felt that student issues weren’t really being represented to the Board of Education, so they felt that our voices needed to be heard.”

But the reason why Amant started to join was mainly that when her conscience is telling her that something is wrong, there is no stopping her from speaking up about It and fighting to make a change. This is the why behind her choosing to be a part of and eventually accepted into the Student Advisory Council.

“If I see an issue, I like [to point it out] out and come up with a solution,” Amant said. I like being a part of decision-making rather than just sitting back.”

Now obviously the goal of any government-based club or organization is to find the students in the school who are the most involved with the school events whether that be homecoming or football games. But aside from the leadership aspect of it, there are more reasons why certain people decided to apply. 

“We usually try to have a big variety of students who come from all different backgrounds and perspectives and social classes,” Hayden said. “I think that for me, what I think got me [involved] and why I wanted to stay around was I [felt]  like I [had] a good amount of connections with people throughout the school. That kind of helps me be able to gain other people’s perspectives and hopefully represent them a little bit better as well.”

After high school, it’s hard to say what career path people will go down or even what their life will look like in ten years, but one thing is for sure, what makes our district a school, is the students, and if Lucy had one word to describe the Student Advisory council it would be this. 

“[My word would be hope],” Lucy said.” “We are the reason that the school district exists. We’re the hope of this school district and it’s just so special that we get to be able to try and change the environment that we’re already so privileged to be [a part of].”