On Oct. 17, Student Council’s Student Issues Committee invited students to share their perspectives on various topics through their Student Issues Survey. While many are familiar with the survey questions’ subject matter, like alertness during the school day or course content retention, few know what happens with the survey’s results.
The purpose of the Student Issues Committee, one of Student Council’s three standing committees, is to represent the voice of students and create opportunities for their opinions to be heard by administrators.
“[The goal of the Student Issues Committee] is to make sure that we protect and amplify students rights and opinions and present them before the administration,” said Erin Manheim, Student Issues Committee adviser.
The annual survey is used to gauge student attitudes on specific topics so the committee can focus their efforts on prominent issues. Once they have the data from the survey, the committee meets to review the results and highlight areas of student discontent or confusion.
“For the past few meetings, we’ve been going over the data and kind of analyzing what the big issues for each section are,” said junior Nyla Jessup, chair of the Student Issues Committee.
This year, the committee found that the students were particularly opinionated on the new attendance policy that was implemented at the beginning of the school year.
“There’s a lot of students really struggling with the attendance policy. And some of [the solution], I think, is probably going to be understanding the rationale behind it. Some of it might be like how it’s being implemented, and just making sure that students feel like they’re being given dignity in the process. And that’s something that I totally think our administration is open to, but that has to be like a line of communication that they express themselves,” said Manheim. “I don’t think the overall structure of the attendance policy will change, but I think how we interact with each other will.”
After selecting a few major issues to focus on, the committee develops a plan to address those issues. This often looks like creating presentations to share with administrators or working with teachers to change classroom habits.
“Last year, another issue we saw was teachers not understanding how to use Schoology properly, or they were just using it in a very confusing way,” said Jessup. “Student Issues put together a presentation for the whole staff, [focusing on] ‘what are the proper ways to use Schoology? What are some good hacks?’”
Student Issues pulls from this survey all year long to guide their initiatives. Aside from attendance, the committee is also considering a focus on parking, career pathways and student alertness and engagement in class.
