Candidate Kareena Gupta-Martinez

“I love talking to and meeting new people and I’m willing to put in the hard work that class officer requires.”

Alice: If you could describe your campaign in one word, what would it be?

Kareena: I would describe it as “unity”, because I know [in] our class most people know each other and stuff, but I think it would be really cool to see more people go to events and participate in spirit days, and coming up with new ideas that include everyone in our class and not just a certain group of people.

A: Since you want to include everybody in your class what is one way you would get input from different groups of people?

K: We could do that by sending out Google Forms on our class pages, so that way people can put their input and we could use their suggestions to make ideas.

A: Are there other ways you plan on improving unity within your class?

K: I think a lot of it is about reaching out to different groups of people. So I would get class council and we could talk to people who haven’t really shown school spirit this year and encourage them to come to a dance, or dress up for a spirit day. I think those little things are what increase unity.

A: What would you do differently from what’s being done this year?

K: I’m the current freshman class officer, and one thing I would do differently than what me and Julianna did this year was use class council more. Because this year we did use class council, but looking back, we could have used them a lot more, like for planning more fundraisers, doing more forms, more engagement with our class, stuff like that.

A: What would you like to get done as class officer?

K: I really want to get first in bench, and I know it’s hard to do that because seniors get first…but that’s one of my goals, if not first, then second like we did this year. I really want to start raising money for our prom, which will be the year after sophomore year, and we could do that by planning fundraisers and events. I also want to have more class bondings.

A: What ideas do you have for homecoming?

K: For bench it depends on our theme, obviously. Bench for this year, it went pretty well, toward the end especially because we started adding incentives like free snow cones and stuff like that and we said that if you went to a certain amount of benches you could go to the all nighter. So I would definitely continue doing that, and start with the incentives early on. 

A: Are there any ideas you have about homecoming events or changes you plan to make?

K: Definitely our class dance, could have been better: getting more people to participate in that would definitely be something I’d want to do.

A: How would you increase school spirit within your class?

K: I think improving our spirit days, because this year we had pretty good spirit days but there were like two where people didn’t have anything for it, so maybe making them more general so more people would be encouraged to participate in it. And telling your friends to “oh, dress up” is a good way because if people know that their friends are dressing up then they’ll dress up to.

A: For class council, how will you recruit students?

K: We’ll do the application process and recruit them based on their application if we think they’re fit for class council or not.

A: How will you organize all these members of class council?

K: I would organize them into their own sub-committees and give them projects like every month or so they always have something to do, but at the same time it’s not too much work. 

A: How will you push to increase school spirit within class council?

K: Making them publicize all the events and encouraging them to dress up, because if they don’t dress up that’s saying a lot about our class. So I think making them dress up and making them publicize all their events as well as having them reach out to their own groups of friends and telling them to dress up and go to events.

A: Class council tends to consist of a very specific group of people. How would you plan on making it more inclusive of more students?

K: For this year we have a good variety of students that applied, which was good. But if I do get elected I would try to reach out to different groups of people, asking them to apply, so that way it gets a variety of people instead of people from the same group.

A: For class events how do you plan and organize events after homecoming?

K: I thought a good idea would be a class friends-giving potluck before thanksgiving break. So that might be hard with our whole class, but it could be in the cafeteria and it could be the Friday before break. I think it could be done if we have our class council bring food and publicize it a lot. It could be a good event and that could work. Also having a lot of small fundraisers, like Krispy Kreme, boba, throughout the year, whether it’s for prom or just for our account. And also an end of the year summer bonding, like at a park, we could have boba and food and a water balloon fight or something.

A: What ideas do you have for spirit weeks?

K: We don’t really come up with spirit weeks, it’s like other committees in ASG. But if I had any suggestions I would say increasing participation at FLEX events.

A: What differences did you notice between Horner ASB and Irvington ASG?

K: Irvington ASG is definitely a lot more student run than Horner ASB because at Horner, Mr. Shaffer- who is the activities director- he pretty much told us what to do and stuff. But here you have to learn how to take initiative and come up with your own projects and reach out to people on your own and stuff like that. 

A: Why do you think you’re the best candidate for class officer?

K: I think I’m the best candidate for class officer because I like talking to and meeting new people and I’m really extroverted. So if anyone has an idea, they could come up to me and I think I’m pretty approachable, which is a good quality that a class officer should have. Basically just the idea that I love talking to and meeting new people and I’m willing to put in the hard work that class officer requires.