The Student Senate meeting on Wednesday, August 29 began with introductions. President Lottie Gidal ’19 and Vice President Naomi Meurice ’19 kicked off the meeting and gave a brief rundown of goals to begin the year, and discussed the student-led nature of Student Senate.

“This is your club, this is your organization,” Steve Tygrett, faculty adviser, said. “We’re here to help you, but otherwise this is all yours.”

The Homecoming dance will take place on September 29, and committees for planning the parade and dance will form soon.

“If you’re really excited about something, you can be on that committee,” Meurice said. “If you’re really excited about the dance, there’ll be a committee for that.”

Meurice and Gidal further detailed the process of the Homecoming celebration.

“On September 6, we have the parade, and that starts at [6:00 pm],” Meurice said. “Right after the parade is Powderpuff [women’s football].”

The Homecoming Court voting will take place in coming weeks, and Senate members have been working to make voting more secure, given that it has been tampered with the past two years.

“Since we’ve had some…issues with voting in the past, we’ve come up with another method this year,” Gidal said, and faculty adviser Judith Dickson continued: “Each student can log in through their Google account and fill the survey out once.”

Over the course of the 2017-18 school year, Student Senate debated ways to make Homecoming Court voting more inclusive of LGBT+ individuals.

“This was something [Meurice and I] talked to [Principal] Bacon about, and [Xeniphilius Tyne ’20] did as well,” Gidal said. “It’ll still be seven boys and seven girls, but if you’re in the opposite group from the one PowerSchool put you in, you can go and talk to Ms. Hanrahan in the office to change it.”

Faculty adviser Chip Hardesty also mentioned the annual food drive.

“The food drive will…wind up by the winter formal, I think,” Hardesty said. “We also need to focus on getting more money, because it’s lighter and [Crisis Center workers] actually like it better.”

There will be a professional DJ at Homecoming, faculty adviser Steve Tygrett said. “We just need a professional because of all the work with lighting,” Tygrett said.

The Student Senate meets every Wednesday from 8:15-8:45 in room 3311. To learn more, please attend meetings, which are open to all students.