Candidate Summer Chu

“I really want to build better connections with the people in our class by doing more outreach, especially using our class of 2022 Instagram page. One of my goals is to be more transparent with the people in our class. I want to make sure that all the students know exactly what Class Council and ASG are doing.”

For those in a hurry:

• Summer Chu is a candidate running for Senior Class Officer on the campaign theme of MEMORABLE. She believes in utilizing the class council’s social media to showcase different features of the student body, allowing for better connectivity in such isolated times.
• Chu prioritizes building better connections between the senior class, which will make the bondings and social events much more memorable
• On the topic of class spirit, Chu explains that she wishes to set up competition-style events that will allow the student body to be better engaged. She also wants to utilize TikTok and other social media by making a TikTok trend that teaches the class dance, and many other similar ideas.
• To improve class council efficiency, Chu believes in shortening the class council application and putting more focus on the objectivity of the process. She also plans on increasing class council bonding.

Cindy: Why are you the best candidate for class officer?

Summer: I believe I’m the best candidate for class officer because of my experience. I’ve been in class council for the past three years since freshman year. I’ve also experienced what it’s like being in ASG. And this year, I got the opportunity of serving as Irvington LINK director, and I led over 170 sophomores, juniors, and seniors to help introduce our freshmen to high school. I think everything that I’ve done leading up to next year can really be showcased with the position of class officer, because it kind of requires a lot of leadership and communication skills. 

C: What would you want to get done as class officer and what do you plan on doing differently? 

S: I really want to build better connections with the people in our class by doing more outreach, especially using our class of 2022 Instagram page. One of my other goals is to be more transparent with the people in our class. I want to make sure that all the students know exactly what Class Council and ASG are doing. I think by better utilizing the resources that we already have, like the Class of 2022 Facebook page, or the Instagram page, we can get more personal with people and showcase the talents that students have in our class. I feel like right now, we don’t really use our Instagram or Facebook page except for those big events like HOCO or other spirit weeks. We can better utilize these resources to target specific groups in our class and showcase the rest of the students in our class to make everyone feel closer.

C: So what ideas do you have for homecoming, if we’re going to be in person?

S: We would have more decorations, and more bench building in the summer. I think we’re probably going to have more interactive and bonding events at the bench building itself, too. Because benchbuilding is throughout the school year, it’s really important to incorporate some bonding events or other activities, or even have specific days where we do something else. I think, for homecoming, in general, I really just want to be able to create something memorable that people can remember for many years after high school.

C: Assuming that we do remain in distance learning next year, what are some of the things that you’ve learned this year that you think will help improve the HOCO process next year?

S: I think as a member of the class council, our bench building process was definitely really difficult this year. We really didn’t know how to go forward with homecoming with distance learning, so we didn’t start planning. For next year, I want to make sure we start planning early to make sure we get specific things assigned to specific people. I’d also like to have more Zoom meetings for us to all gather, even during in-person, because what I’ve found is that we don’t really have much time to bond during actual bench building days. Even if it’s just watching a movie or listening to music, more bonding will help build connections and make our class council better.

C: How would you organize class dances? And how would you get the class to participate in them?

S: As of right now, I don’t have any specific ideas of how we can make that better. I know we’re still doing the class dance this year, but it’s just incorporating videos of people doing it themselves or with their social bubble. But I’d like to reimagine it and change the class dance into maybe a class trend that the whole class can do which we can create a video for. Then, more people can participate in it, because I feel like more people will be comfortable filming themselves doing something that they’re more comfortable with instead of like dancing. Almost kind of like starting the small like IHS Tiktok trend.

C: How would you encourage school spirit and other methods, if you have any, anything else to add there?

S: I want to incorporate more competition style events for people to participate in. For example, I think gaming, like video games are really popular now, especially because we have a lot of time to play them. And I know that a lot of people play like a lot of different games. So I think we should have a series of like video game tournaments throughout the school year for people to participate in. And then even simpler competition, style events, like sending pictures of what you ate today, or ate this week or month, or like some of the outfits that you wore, when you went out, I think it’s really important to just get people to send in stuff that they’re proud of. And then I think working with the media team, from class council to create more like recap videos, like who else is in our class and what other people are interested in or what other people are doing. And then that can definitely create more connection with the people in our class. It doesn’t necessarily have to be spirit, in my opinion, for specific events, or like going to this one day event, I think, just like having people like, present themselves, and then being comfortable and confident in what they’re doing. And then I think if people were to feel that way, that’s enough to make it really memorable, and a really good school year. So I think I’d really want to increase the number of videos that we put out or even like igtv, like short videos that we can put out for our class on our class Instagram page to increase like, the number like, just get more people to want to be involved in like school or leadership.

C: How are you going to recruit students for class council?

S: So I definitely would want to make sure that it’s not biased. I want to make sure that class council is not like the same friend group that’s always in class council for the past three years. I would definitely reach out to past class offices to see what feedback they have. I think that would definitely help with the decision of who can be in class council. I’d also really like to start shortening the actual written application, which I think is the least important part of the whole application process. I think the interview is the most important part because then you can really get a gist of who the person is by talking to them. We also should shorten the written application process to help us increase the number of people who apply for class council. The interview should be the bigger part of the application process, where class officers can get to know who the applicant is, their true goals, and what they really want to do. I think that can really help build a stronger class council.

C: How would you organize and manage the large group of students in your class council? And how would you delegate tasks to improve efficiency?

S: Something that I’d like to see more next year in class Ccuncil is getting people to know all of class council better. And I feel like that would probably have to mean more meetings. Although many people might not like that, I think it’s really important to start off with more meetings so that we can build better connections with each other. That way, more people would be willing to do the tasks that they’re given. And I think, because class council is divided up into different committees, some people or committees end up having more work than others. I do think we should rethink the committees a bit, listen to feedback to help us better group people together, and have more specific committees that people are willing to do and be in. As for delegation of tasks, I consider myself a bit of a planner. I like to see what things need to get done, and then check them off. So I think for delegation of tasks, I would definitely want to have plans for each month on what we would have to do or what class council would have to do what each specific committee would have to do. That way, delegation of tasks won’t be as difficult because they’ll already know what’s going to be going on the next month, and they won’t be super shocked or scared of what they have to do. And then I would also make sure that I’m strict and straightforward with what I need to get done from class Council. That way, I feel like I’m giving people tasks that won’t be as difficult as it may have been in previous years.

C: Do you have plans to have events for the class throughout the year? And what ideas do you have for class bonding events?

S: I would definitely like to see more class events after homecoming. I think it’s really important to give back to the community and learn more about what we could do for the community. So I think some other specific events that I’d like to have, maybe specific to our class, would be more service events. Something else I’d like to do more of our fundraisers. I think it’s really fun to have fundraisers, like even just going out to get like Chipotle or like some food. We can also use that money to, like, get better things for our class. As for spirit events, we could have people sending in videos or competition style events, like compiling videos, or something else I said before was having events that go through a series of video games. I think using series is pretty good because we can start in the beginning of the school year, and then have it be like once every month, or once every two months so that people can expect something from class council. I think that could definitely get people more excited about what’s to come in the school year. Then, something else I wanted to bring up was because we’re going to be seniors next year. I think another event to give to the students would be related to alumni or college resources. Because we would be seniors, we would be getting ready to go to college. So I think we could try to do more outreach or research on what we can provide for Irvington seniors and have workshops for people to attend to maybe learn about a specific college that they would like to go to, or learn about specific careers. Because I think it’s really important for us to all know what is out there, and what opportunities are out there. And I think it’ll be really fun, because we can learn about something that we’re all interested in, and then also still be on like a video call with people with similar interests. That could also build better connections with the people in our class, which can lead to an overall more unified class of 2020.

C: How would you raise money for prom?

S: I think it’d be fun to have more competitions with, like, prizes that we could use to incentivize the class to participate in. Like, for example, class, the classes last year, the winner would get a certain amount of money that went toward their prom. And I think that’s really fun to do. And then I mean, going back to fundraisers, I think, that could raise a lot of money if people knew that it was specifically for our prom. People often don’t really recognize what the money is used for, and I think if we really promote that, it’s for our senior prom, the last dance that we would have all together, I think more people would be willing to participate in it or help raise money for it. And then also, like before, I would obviously, make sure that our class merch is being sold. So we can use that money for our prom. Maybe more marketing for those specific items or like, specific items that the class of 22 has, would be a good way to raise money for prom. We could stick to the same, like, foundational ideas that we’ve been using. But we could make, like, raise more money for it by changing the smaller things like how we market these items, or how we promote these items. Especially because everything’s online this year, I think you utilizing our resources is really important for us to do like making more hype, videos, or, like more engaging fires, or even just an accept like that, to get more of the class to be willing to spend their money for our problem.

C: With senior year being our last year, how are you going to ensure that our year is memorable?

S: To ensure that our senior year is really memorable,  I would make sure that we really reach out to a different variety of students next year and appreciate them by using our social media pages.. So by building these better connections with people, it’ll let students feel more comfortable and more like part of the class. Then these people can be confident in who they are, which I believe can help them remember their high school career better. Ensuring that students can receive all the resources they need can make sure that they have a memorable year. That way, it can be memorable for everyone.