By: Ester Teper, Shreya Gupta, and Andrew Miller
Every school has class councils, club presidents, and a community of leaders. At Biotech, there is an SGA: a group of students who work closely with teachers to manage school activities. On Friday, May 19th, the student body of Biotechnology High School elected its Student Government Association for the 2018-2019 school year. These exceptional students were chosen in a variety of ways: through a school vote, teacher vote, or principal decision. Biotech, here is your next SGA:
Co-Presidents: Olivia Pasquale and Jeeshan Ahmed
Directors of Student Affairs: Jack Campanella and Amelia Jay
PSFA Representative: Chimaobi Chikezie
Club Representative: Samuel Mueller
Freshman-Junior Representative: Odhran King
Sophomore-Senior Representative: Mia Bersalona
Communications Liaison: Arya Sharma
All of these students are ready to involve themselves in the school community, bring more people together, and make Biotech a home for everyone. We had the chance to interview our new leaders and ask them about their plans for their terms and endeavors for the upcoming year. Here’s what they had to say:
What do you hope to do in the future in your position?
“As co-president, my biggest goal is to bring positivity, happiness, and unity to this school. I know that we all have different groups of friends and classes, but it's incredibly important to make sure that we are all friendly with each other, especially in a small, close-knit school like Biotech. Of course, it's impossible to make everyone best friends, but it would be a huge accomplishment to successfully create an environment in which everyone is united and can have fun at school events. So I guess that's my biggest goal - to unite everyone further and to make school events the most fun they can possibly be.”
Olivia Pasquale (Co-President)
“I want to work on making freshman orientation less chaotic. When everyone is running around in the school, it’s kind of wild. If we mixed the Escape Room idea with the Amazing Race idea, it would make it easier and more energetic. The reason the Amazing Race is so crazy is because everyone is running around. But if we mixed the two concepts together, it wouldn’t be as cramped and it would be more fun. I also want to widen our outreach to other schools, especially Asbury Park and Red Bank.”
Amelia Jay (Director of Student Affairs)
Who specifically do you want to work with?
“I would like to work with Students of Service, Junior Statesmen of America, and Arts & Entertainment because they’re great clubs for anyone to get involved in, no matter their grade level, and they have some really cool events.”
Mia Bersalona (Sophomore-Senior Representative)
“Mr. Evancho and Ms. Siter; they’re my favorite people in the whole school and I’m excited to get to know them better through SGA. They’re really great and intelligent mentors and I think we could make it a great year.”
Arya Sharma (Communications Liaison)
What is one specific project you’d like to implement and how will you do so?
“A potential fundraiser I'd like to organize is selling coffee in the mornings in our school once in awhile. This would hopefully be a very popular event with the BTHS student body and faculty and would help raise funds for our school.”
Sam Mueller (Club Representative)
“I want to implement more events like Battle of the Classes, Mr. BTHS, End of Year Picnic, etc. Students at Biotech sometimes experience stressful working conditions and it’s nice to relax with fun events that people take a lot of joy in. ”
Jeeshan Ahmed (Co-President)
Why did you want to have the SGA position you now hold?
“Several factors went into my decision to run for the Freshman-Junior Representative position. One of the main reasons why I ran for SGA was to become more involved in the BTHS community. I believe that I offer a different mindset to many of my peers, and that difference allows for me to present different ideas that will ultimately help the SGA lead the student body more efficiently. I ran for the Freshman-Junior Representative role specifically because I feel it is the position that best suits my personality. I am most efficient when I work with others towards a common goal, and working with the Freshman and Junior student councils will allow me to really make a difference for our school.”
Odhran King (Freshman-Junior Representative)
“I ran for DOSA because I wanted to help out with organizing the open houses and freshmen orientation as a way to give back to BTHS for all the opportunities it has given me. I also want to recreate the feeling of excitement that was shared with me during both the information sessions and the freshmen orientation.”
Jack Campanella (Director of Student Affairs)
“Well, because of my position as Parent Student Faculty Association Representative, I want to try to improve the physical education for juniors and seniors at our school. Right now, only freshmen and sophomores get gym class and I think it’s something that the juniors and seniors are really missing out on."
Chimaobi Chikezie (PSFA Representative)
What would you like to say to fellow students? Staff? Mr. Meehan?
“There is so much I’d like to say to each individual member of Biotech if I could, since all members helped me get to this point. I’m going to just say a few general groups, though.
To my sophomore classmates: Thank you for smiling back at me in the hallway, and thank you for supporting me :)
To the freshmen, juniors, seniors…: Thank you for letting me get to know you! And if I don’t know you too well, thank you for trusting me to get to know you in the future!
To my teachers, Mr. Meehan, and the entire faculty: Thank you for advising me when I was unsure if I should run for Co-president. And thank you for being so approachable.
To everyone: I’m so grateful for this opportunity; thank you for electing me to be your next Co-President!”
Olivia Pasquale (Co-President)
On behalf of all the students at Biotech, we’d like to wish our officers congratulations and the very best of luck in their time in office!