After weeks of campaigning, ASB officers have been elected for the 2024-25 school year.
Junior Julian Hong was re-elected as President, and will work alongside junior and Vice President Amani Fossatie-Moine. Freshman Paul Wang will take over as the Treasurer, and sophomore Gavin Lin will retain his position as Secretary.
At the individual grade level, juniors Kennedy Do and Tasman Johnson became senior class president and vice president, respectively. Sophomore James Park will be junior class president and sophomore Emily Tang will be junior class vice president. Freshmen Katie Kim and Leilani Chen will serve as the sophomore class president and vice president, respectively.
Kim said she noticed a lack of underclassman representation in school events, which she hopes to change for the upcoming year.
“If I do a good job of representing my class, at least I can add on and advocate for my class in certain (ASB) discussions,” Kim said. “(I would like) a little bit more communication with the class in terms of what they want instead of assuming sometimes.”
Park said he wants to increase transparency around ASB funding.
“I will propose to amend the ASB constitution to make it so that we have to pass a budget report every semester so people can see where their money is going,” Park said. “I hope to make ASB an organization that’ll better serve the student body.”
Wang said he ran for ASB Treasurer because he wanted to try something new that he was confident he could do well in.
“For next year, my goals are to … make sure our funding is in check, as well as the proper utilization of the new semester budget reports,” Wang said. “One significant change I want to make next year is to subsidize all dances. So this year ASB subsidized prom a bit but we didn’t subsidize the other dances — Hoco and the Welcome Back to School dance.”
Because of ASB’s role in organizing student activities, Park said he plans to increase regular student engagement in ASB.
“There’s a very common misconception that student government is a very exclusive class to only a small population of the school,” Park said. “Including more people will mean that we get more participation with activities and will also benefit the student body in general because it makes it seem less like it’s a very exclusive society and more of a body that actually serves the students.”
To counter this preconception, Chen said she wants to change how accessible information is to students.
“Things like the ASB minutes and budget reports — they’re all available online, but students don’t really know where to find them,” Chen said. “People are constantly asking, ‘What’s the schedule?’ ‘What are late start Mondays?’ and if we make that information something that’s a little bit more available, like on Instagram, that’s gonna be something better for students so that everybody can feel like they know what’s going on.”
Chen said she also plans to make Paly a better place for students mentally.
“I noticed through my past seven months at Paly that, at times, there’s a very toxic mentality that a lot of students have, and maybe even myself, of the need to achieve, and I want to be able to do more things that encourage students to be proud of what they’ve done,” Chen said. “I would really like to integrate more events based on social activism.”
Chen said the breakfast social she organized this year was one of her favorite events because of the student involvement.
“I want to do more socials for the sophomores and combine great events with freshmen, juniors or seniors,” Chen said. “I hope to be able to work even harder than I did this past year to create more events and changes in our school that students can notice and appreciate.”
