On Dec. 10th at 8 pm, ASG candidates held their first-round debate, in which they discussed their plans for the upcoming year if they were to be elected to their position. Read our recap to understand their main focuses. Vote for your ASG President and Vice President at ihsvikings.org/vote.

Disclaimer: This recap was condensed for clarity and length. To get the candidates’ full responses, watch the full debate here: ihsvikings.org/debate

1. Anika: What do you think should be ASG’s main focus for next year?

Nosheen: 

• Bring in new events that work for everyone on campus by taking everyone’s interests into mind
• Take advantage of the virtual format to diversify events and represent Irvington
• Response to Raj and Maansi: We need to make sure everything ASG does is more efficient and make our dreams of the best possible events come true

Maansi:

• Use everything we learned from virtual learning to maintain the progress we spirit
• Many students are yet to step onto campus, so we need to rebuild our spirit for them

Raj:

• Over 50% of the students coming in next year will have never been to a spirit event
• Try our best to change the pessimistic vibe that upperclassmen feel from Irvington and rebrand it with a welcoming one

2. Alice: A lot of people, due to online learning, don’t feel ASG’s presence in their school lives. What would you do to increase ASG’s presence, even if we don’t return to school next year?

Nosheen: 

• Replicate an in-person experience through virtual meetings in order to get feedback
• Finding a more personal way to communicate, which can be done in ICC meetings
• Response to Maansi (on ASG impact)
  • Posting about who is in ASG and what ASG does on social media to communicate with everyone
  • Publicize ASG’s procedural emails if people have any questions/concerns
  • Direct messaging ihsbluecrew on Instagram and answer right away, start off the year strong

Maansi: 

• Make it clear what impact ASG can have on the student body to increase ASG’s presence
• Not a lot of people know about what happens in ASG, we need to make students feel like they are free to reach out to us. 
• Response to Nosheen (on feedback):
  • What we usually use is feedback forms, but we need to rethink how we get input, since responses generated from those forms don’t fully reflect people’s thoughts

Raj:

• Focus on increasing ASG’s presence by incorporating feedback from students
• Build off of this year’s online experience to make events better next year
• Response to Nosheen (on feedback):
  • Club officers have a different point of view about how events work, so we need to reach out to them to fully understand what needs to work on.

3. Krithik: How would you address underrepresented groups at Irvington, especially students who aren’t close to ASG or class council?

Nosheen: 

• The biggest thing is doing the work of reaching out yourself as an ASG member, can’t rely entirely on feedback forms in Facebook groups
• Assign people to reach out to underrepresented groups like smaller clubs that don’t always have their voice heard
• Underrepresented people should be apart of ASG, so we can diversify ASG and directly hear their thoughts when we start planning events
• Response to Maansi (on ASG public relations) 
  • Would utilize the about 60 ASG members, public relations committee, and ICC and SIA team to help find out campus demographics
  • Use the results to reach out to smaller clubs about their events and success, identify those trends, and have ASG leaders reach out to them

Maansi: 

• Would find ways to amplify the platform of underrepresented groups, and to connect students who aren’t very involved yet to school opportunities 
• Getting freshmen connected with opportunities from the start of their high school experience by working with freshmen teachers to spread the word about ASG events, then would be able to find their way into events and clubs that interest them
• Get freshmen connected to ASG via social media, use public relations committee to help support transfer students and get them connected

Raj: 

• Reaching out to people physically is most effective assuming we return to campus
• Having conversations, ASG classroom visits during advisory, and posting physical flyers to reach underrepresented groups who don’t use social media
• Work with club officers to spread awareness of ASG events through clubs, and asking clubs for input on school campus from members that might not use social media but are involved with clubs and organizations on campus

4. Anika: What are your opinions on ASG’s current methods of transparency and accountability? If there’s anything to change, what would it be?

Nosheen: 

• Track progress from progress spreadsheets as they allow for easy communication and organization, release progress to student body
• Many current events don’t have ASG’s name attached to it, make sure we make clear ASG’s events so people can understand our impact
• Response to Raj (on centralized documents):
  • Release ASG’s information at LINK orientation and give them access to all documents from the start

Maansi:

• Include condensed information from the spreadsheets and shared drive on ihsvikings.org so that any student can learn about what we are doing
• Make solid plan to implement goals and themes that ASG sets at beginning of school year 

Raj:

• ASG has these documents online (budget, constitution, etc), but students are unaware of their location, so we need to better centralize them in one location
• As current Junior Class Officer, he’s releasing a document listing Junior Class Council’s accomplishments and future plans for semester, make sure all class officers do this to ensure transparency

5. Alice: How would you take into account and address student stress and needs in a practical and decisive manner? How would you address the root of the problem?

Nosheen: 

• ASG Public Relations created Vikings Pulse Panels last year, where we talked about mental health issues at IHS with students and admin
• Continue initiatives like Vikings Pulse to bring awareness and working with administration to reduce stress 
• Response to Raj (on conversations with administration):
  • We had student testimonies in Viking Pulse Panels on competitive culture
  • Get these videos/testimonies mandated in teacher training
  • Have conversations with admin to promote, for example, more asynchronous time to combat Zoom fatigue

Maansi:

• We need to use the different committees of ASG, especially Public Relations, to create a less stressful environment
• Asking teachers to reduce workload and exams
• Have more stress-free week events throughout the semester

Raj:

• Freshmen come willing to do their best, but we lose sight of our mental health as work gets piled on and there is lack of nurturing environment
• Rebuild a fostering and caring environment to tackle the stress, so students can prioritize their mental health
• Invite service dogs and ask teachers to reduce workload 
• Response to Nosheen (working with administration):
  • Speak with staff personally and give them idea of how students are doing because many teachers don’t know how much work other teachers are assigning

6. Krithik: What are your opinions on ICC and SIA? Do you think it’s efficient and treats all clubs fairly? What changes would you make in order for more students to participate in clubs and campus culture?

Nosheen: 

• Make sure that every club has all their needs met after each interclub meeting to treat all clubs fairly, tap into club officers frustrations/concerns 
• Uplift small club platforms, give them the same recognition in their competitions
• Work with IHS Voice and Yearbook, get the recognition in their articles, and put them in announcements/rallies
• ASG needs to do more outreach to find out all the competitions small clubs have and win in
• Response to Maansi (on ICC and SIA):
  • ICC and SIA teams are good at helping new clubs through the process
  • Collaborate with clubs to host events, publicize these collaboration flyers on both club and ihsbluecrew social media to increase reach

Maansi:

• ICC and SIA are both efficient in treating clubs fairly this year: SIA held the Service Week where they worked with many service clubs to hold collaboration events with ASG, and ICC Club Spotlights gave more awareness to new opportunities from clubs
• Recognize more specific club events and successes, letting clubs make those recognitions themselves so it’s not just ASG speaking 
• ICC and SIA are mainly here to handle logistics, it’s up to clubs to connect and increase participation
• Elaboration on ICC and SIA
  • ICC and SIA are welcome to new clubs that promote your interests and form small communities

Raj:

• ICC club structures is extremely important this year because of the amount of new clubs created, and it maintains these clubs’ legacy to ensure they don’t fade out within a year
• Would make minor changes to the ICC system: establish discussion time limit for each club so huge mega clubs don’t dominate over smaller clubs, ensure equal representation and sharing of opinions
• Encourage freshmen to join clubs on MAZE day and through LINK, so that they are more active in campus culture
• Response to Nosheen (small club recognition): 
  • Encourage students to join both recreational and academic clubs to create more interaction and improve Irvington culture

7. Anika: What are your opinions on Minga? Does it truly represent the student body? Are there alternatives to Minga that are more efficient and accessible?

Nosheen: 

• Minga started off really strong two years ago to give clubs a good, interactive check-in system, but this year it has been difficult to run Minga now that there’s an emphasis on social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook
• There has been less ASG members allocated to focus on Minga; recognizes that has caused issues for clubs, as a lot of people don’t have Minga downloaded and are unaware of it
• Area of improvement that ASG – in the future, would uplift the platform so it can represent the student body and help clubs check-in their members

• It’s accessible as a free app, FiveStar was similar, although Minga is more interactive, with a social media platform
• Do better next year to get freshmen on the platform so clubs won’t have the issue with people not having Minga

Maansi:

• Minga has a lot of potential to help clubs with club check-ins, but also for posting about accomplishment and events
• Students can use Minga to discover clubs and increase participation
• Ex: Last year, during homecoming, Minga was used to gain class points when posting their spirit gear
• Increased spirit dress up participation, as students can post on Minga like they would on Instagram; allowed for friendly competition

Raj: 

• Minga is very efficient with helping clubs post about events
• This year, there were concerns with freshman not having the app
• Plans to help freshmen download Minga through LINK Leaders next year so that it can be efficiently downloaded by everyone at once
• Helpful for clubs to keep track of numbers of participants, most efficient for students and contributes to the club system

8. Alice: Do you have specific plans on how to tackle lack of participation besides simply connecting student groups more and publicity? 

Nosheen:

• Use interactive Instagram polls to gauge whether people liked certain events and base future events off of that
• Students need to know about specific sectors of ASG so that they can relay their input to us

Maansi: 

• Assess the student body’s different interests to guarantee good turnout for events
• Work with the Executive Council to assess interests and hold appealing events, have a variety of events to appease all people instead of expecting everyone to come to every event

Raj:

• Will use this year to guide our path for the next year, whether it happens to be virtual or in-person
• Utilize feedback from this year in order to figure out which events are best and what events students would like to see
• Work with class officers to increase the amount of feedback that you get

9. Krithik: What is our characteristic you possess that distinguishes you from other candidates?

Nosheen:

• Involvement, IHS feels like my home
• Sparks my passion for leadership and solving systematic issues on campus
• Having event planning experience gives me a good platform because I have the general knowledge of student’s needs

Maansi:

• Being a new student her freshman year
• Gave me the perspective of what IHS is like to someone with no guidance
• Would make opportunities more accessible as soon as students are on campus, as well as working with LINK to help provide students with their opportunities

Raj: 

• Approachability, encourage people to give me feedback
• Talk to people in person

10. Anika: What is your favorite memory at Irvington?

Nosheen: 

• Freshman year, bench set-up day during Homecoming Week
• “Seeing it all come together. The whole experience of all-nighters, seeing all the people who came to set up, and seeing all our decorations. All our hard work really paid off.”

Maansi:

• Running for a sophomore class officer position
• “That was my first instance of knowing how passionate I was with leadership and working with everything in our school to make a better impact than we already do. I got to meet a lot of new people, a lot of new friends, and many of the connections I met then are still important to me today. I wouldn’t have found my place in ASG if it wasn’t for that.”

Raj: 

• Freshman class council
• “I remember very distinctly attending the freshman class sleepover. That’s where I met a lot of my close friends. A lot of the people I know right now, I met through my work with the freshman class council.”