Candidate Harshith Yallampalli

Tanmay Lakhotia, Staff Writer

“My goal as Senior Class Officer is to make the best senior year experience for the Class of 2022 by redefining bench, increasing transparency, driving class spirit, and engaging the class.”

For those in a hurry:

Harshith Yallampalli is a candidate running for Senior Class Officer and defines his campaign as RIDE: (Redefine Bench, Increase Transparency, Drive class spirit, and Engage class of 2022)
He believes that his various positions on class council committees over the past 3 years as well as club officer positions make him the best candidate for the senior class officer.
He wants to host open town hall forums to receive feedback from the class of 2022.
He wants the class of 2022 to have the most memorable senior year by helping them participate in class events and by maximizing spirit and unity.

Tanmay: Why are you the best candidate to redefine the senior year as a class officer?

Harshith: I am the best candidate for many reasons. My acronym for this year is RIDE into senior year. R: I want to redefine bench building to be as fun as it used to be, and bring back the atmosphere and excitement from the class. I: increase transparency. I want to have various town hall meetings every two months where members of the class can learn what class officers are doing. D: drive class spirit. Everything has been virtual, so it’s been difficult to have that same connection and events. E: engage the class of ‘22 by having various fun and innovative spirit events that involve the whole class, not just officers. I’ve had various leadership positions over the last three years: 3 different committees in class council, as well as been an officer for clubs.

T: You talk about engaging the class of 22. So what is one way that you’re going to get input from you know, the entire class, not just your bubble?

H: I want to do that by hosting bi-monthly meetings. This way we can start involving ideas of other people who aren’t necessarily in class council, kind of breaking outside of that bubble. Because as of right now, class councils sometimes become a concentrated group within the overall class and isn’t always about representation. But by having this open forum, we can let more people come in, provide their opinions on what they want to see in the class, and then later implement them. And also, another thing that I wanted to do was help drive class spirit. The way I want to do that is by letting members of the class pick spirit days. Sometimes we feel that spirit days aren’t necessarily things that we’re interested in; by having this open forum, we can potentially help increase that and turn that around.

T: Sounds like you have a lot of great ideas and goals, and what would you do differently than what is being done this year?

H: The main thing I would do differently is focusing on increasing that transparency. The current class officers do a really great job of creating that transparency between class officers and the class council. But I want to sort of expand upon that and reach out to every single person in the class, regardless if they’re in class council or not, to those town hall meetings. I want to implement fun activities that we can do during every bench building so that we can keep growing upon that engagement. In the chance that we are in a virtual environment, I still want to make sure that it’s a priority that we’re still getting those bench creations done, as well as creating that same sort of bench environment by switching to online games to make sure that every member of the community is engaged in whatever activity we’re planning.

T: So do you believe or do you think that one of the main problems this year is with transparency? Or do you think it’s a different issue?

H: I think the main issue this year is mainly because we’ve been virtual. I know there’s not much to change about that, but because of that, it’s led to these other smaller issues, such as transparency—it’s been really hard. But by having this online setting, we’re going to pull up various games as engaging activities. I want to kind of close that gap on transparency.

T: So currently, as of right now, do you believe your class has unity?

H: Yeah, definitely. I think our class is very well united. As I said, I think the central problem to most of our mini problems is because you’re online, but even through that, I think our class has shown a lot of unity. Obviously, I want to continue adapting and building upon that unity by increasing and implementing some ideas, such as redefining the bench, increasing transparency, driving class spirit, and engaging the class of 2022.

T: Is there anything else about your campaign or yourself that you would like people who read this to know?

H: I want to get the class of 2022 involved and integrated into our environment. Because again, it’s senior year, and I want to make this the best experience possible for them as well as you and other people and make sure that everyone is engaged.

T: Do you have any ideas for homecoming?

H: Something else that I want to implement along with redefining the bench is to increase our overall bench committee for homecoming. We can have more members involved with various friend groups. We can help make sure that we have the best homecoming possible, as well as leading up to the days of homecoming. During homecoming week, we have all of our class spirit days. This is where I want to continue engaging in the class of 2022 and building upon that spirit so we can continue having the best senior year experience, and kind of being able to connect with every member and making sure that everyone’s involved and enjoying our senior year.

T: But assuming we do remain in distance learning next year. What are some things that you’ve personally learned this year that will help you improve the local process for next year?

H: Something that I’ve learned this year is that it’s really hard to kind of continue working together. But this year, what we have tried doing as class council, as well as me, being a member of bench community, I’ve been sort of involved in this process to create things called bench kits, which are basically take home little things that you can assemble those structures are usually on a zoom call, I want to continue expanding upon that idea. They worked really well last year, but some flaws that I noticed was that sometimes we didn’t have enough frequency to continue developing these structures. As a senior class officer, I want to have more of these virtual benches, and the best way to do that is by increasing the frequency of these bench kits, as well as, like I said, increasing the overall size of the bench committee. And by having more members participating in the bench committee, we can start tackling larger structures, because the main issue behind this year is that we can only build small structures.

T: And for class dances, and how are you going to get your class to participate?

H: That’s another issue with being virtual, it’s really difficult to create that same environment. But going forward into developing these class dances, we have to work directly with the choreographers. If we want to do a virtual dance, for example, I think the best way going forward is to create a compilation of all these dances together, to show that we’re a united class. At the end of the day, it’s all about unity, class engagement, and the spirit that we’re trying to develop.

T: Do you have any other ideas to encourage a very strong school spirit?

H: I want to open the floor a little bit for everyone to get an opportunity to be involved in the class spirit days. I have an open forum where people can submit ideas that they want for their own class spirit days, and we can build off of that. Because of that, we can continue building upon the class spirit that we’ve already developed up to this point and keep developing it.

T: How are you going to recruit students to the class council?

H: One of the goals of my campaign is to redefine bench building by increasing the overall size of the bench building committee just a little bit. Right now, bench is limited to around eight to ten people, usually unlike the last two years, so I want to kind of open up the opportunity to get more people involved in the class of 2022, especially considering it’s our senior year, and we want to go all out on all of our bench decorations. Also, increasing the overall time to work on the application by a couple of days or a week will let more people participate.

T: How are you going to organize, manage, and delegate tasks to members of the class council?

H: I’ve noticed that it’s often broken down for a committee. Within those committees, there are usually committee heads, and that’s something that I want to implement. We want to increase transparency. That’s one of the key points of my campaign, increasing transparency by having an equal delegation of tasks. So it’s broken down into a structure where everyone can get tasks, and tasks are split evenly.

T: How are you going to go about organizing and improving bench building next year?

H: My vision heading into bench building is having members of bench building being in charge of small pieces of the largest structure that they can then put together to develop the one large structure. For smaller decoration structures that can easily be done in pieces, those will be distributed to other members of the class council. We want to continue having those engaging, fun activities. In the scenario that we are headed back to an in-person bench atmosphere, we will select a house that would be very similar to the traditional process, where we’ll be conducting those structures.

T: You know, after we see the end of homecoming, lots of class events end, so do you have any plans for events after homecoming or throughout the year?

H: After homecoming, I really want to work closely with my co-officers and continue implementing various events to serve the community, like mask drives. After senior year, we all go our different ways, so it would be really great to leave our mark here.

T: Do you have any separate ideas for class bonding itself?

H: I noticed for seniors, there’s a lot of big events that take places such as the sunrise and the senior breakfast. I not only want to work on these community events by developing them, but I really want to emphasize the bonding aspect. Working alongside my co-officer to help create these events will help reshape the senior experience, and bring back that engagement.

T: What are some ideas that you know, you’re going to actually make spirit week work and you know, see a boost in participation, other than just publishing on social media, with flyers?

H: It’s virtual and really hard to develop that sort of spirit. Something I really wanted to do aside from creating Instagram flyers, is finding a way to interact with members. By having events outside of what we’re regularly used to doing, it can be a great way to continue focusing on increasing transparency and class spirit so we can get more people to dress up. Obviously, one of my original ideas was to have open forums where people can input information they want on their class. By having this outlet as a way for people to input ideas, I’m hoping that more people will just start getting more involved in the class as a whole.

T: Do you have any plans for prom right now?

H: We do various fundraisers and events to help pay for some of the activities. We didn’t get a chance to have a prom this year, yet we still did our fundraisers, and that means we still have a lot of money that we can potentially use to work on this senior year experience and make it the best it can be. I really want to go all out in our senior year prom and make it the largest event.

T: Will you have a combo prom with the juniors next year? Or do you anticipate this thing happening?

H: I think this depends mainly on the circumstances. For previous years, class officers usually split the problem into different parts for junior prom and senior prom. Depending on various regulations or whether or not we’re in person, my vision is to have that special senior prom.

T: Do you have any plans for raising money for prom next year, any specific goals or ideas?

H: In this type of scenario, I want to just take a little bit of the small portion of bench funds, and particularly put it towards prom. Club rush and other food fundraising events have proven to be very effective. In general, they do really, really well, and they get a lot of people involved, especially around Christmas times. I want to implement some sort of gram system that not only is school-wide but also something that’s specific to our class.

T: Yeah. And for the senior year, are there any specific bondings that you would, you know, just targeted towards seniors that you have in mind that you’d really like for us to have?

H: One of them was the community events, which is a way for us to leave our mark on the community and bond as well. Another event that I wanted to have was the sunrise, which is a tradition. For the senior class this year, I really want to work on that engagement, increasing class spirit, and really building upon that unity that we already have, and establishing it as the final year of our high school experience, and making it the best it can.

T: What are your closing notes for your campaign?

H: Check out my website and speech videos to learn about my campaign and various ideas, and the reasons why I think I’d be a great candidate, which is my vast leadership experience. I’ve been an avid member of the class council for the last few years, working very closely with the two officers, and linking various ideas in a variety of different committees, which are part of my campaign ideas. Through these ideas, I really want to change our experience to make it the best it can be because we are in our last year of high school. I want to make it the largest impact and make sure that everyone is really involved and engaged with the class.

Harshith Yallampalli is a candidate running for Senior Class Officer and defines his campaign as RIDE: (Redefine Bench, Increase Transparency, Drive class spirit, and Engage class of 2022)
He believes that his various positions on class council committees over the past 3 years as well as club officer positions make him the best candidate for the senior class officer.
He wants to host open town hall forums to receive feedback from the class of 2022.
He wants the class of 2022 to have the most memorable senior year by helping them participate in class events and by maximizing spirit and unity.

Quote: “My goal as Senior Class Officer is to make the best senior year experience for the Class of 2022 by redefining bench, increasing transparency, driving class spirit, and engaging the class!”