With the start of the new school year, Irvington’s ASG plans on implementing new ad hocs, temporary groups that are formed based on an ASG member’s individual interests, to address topics such as special education, environmental awareness, and mental health on campus. These ad hocs were initiated by SurfBoardE, a student group comprised of representatives from all five high schools in the Fremont Unified School District. 

SurfboardE Secretary and Irvington representative Emily Liu (12) first proposed to address those special topics by starting a new outreach committee whose job is to connect school, district, and city organizations with each other to better respond to certain issues prevalent throughout Fremont.

“For example, within the school district, there’s a student wellness committee,” said Liu. “Within city council, there’s a health and wellness committee. Every school should have a mental health club or a committee related to ASG administration or the general student body. The idea is that we connect all three of these because often times at the school level, district level, or at the city council level, they hold their own individual activities.” 

A combined, collaborative effort, Liu explains, will efficiently yield positive results.  However, for the proposed program to work, every high school in the FUSD needs to have a club that specializes in each of the issues at hand. In other words, although Irvington does have a mental health club, Bring Change 2 Mind, it no longer has an environmental awareness or special education club, which hinders the communication needed on a school, district, and city level to address those topics.  

Fortunately, ASG member and Irvington SurfBoardE representative Zayaan Khan (10) is able to fill in this gap. As a start, Khan plans to reintroduce environmental awareness, special education, and some mental health topics to Irvington in the form of ASG ad hocs. Most ad hocs run for a certain period of time after which the ad hoc dissolves. ASG members are free to join as many ad hocs as they like, entirely based on their interests. For instance, campus beautification was an ad hoc that involved repaving the pavilion and continuing the murals on the walls. 

“We finally got district approval to get that done,” says ASG President Nava Babaei (12). “Now we want to focus on getting trees in that area because it looks really empty and blank right now. We’re even getting requests for more murals. That was something from last year, but it’s a continuous thing. I think a lot of people think ad hocs are a year at a time, but they [can be] ongoing too.”

In Khan’s case, he hopes to express his and SurfBoardE’s interests through an ad hoc that will work with existing clubs at Irvington to bring awareness to environmental issues and special education. 

“I want to have mental health events like stress-relieving events such as Stress Free Week,” says Khan. “What I want to do is not just focus one week on it but have it more year-round because stress doesn’t just go away in one week. And in those events, I want to include the special ed kids.”

 Khan also plans on contacting Irvington’s various service clubs, such as Key and Leo, to coordinate one large, unified event as opposed to multiple smaller ones. The idea reflects Liu’s belief that working together will produce much more effective results. 

With most of the attention focused on Homecoming Week, there is yet to be a set date for the beginning of these new ad hocs, although Khan has estimated that he will likely start his ad hoc in late October.