“It’s not that I don’t like it, it’s just that it’s boring,” Freshman Naomi Pendo said. With every new year a new grade joins Student Government, new appointments are made, new ideas are thought of and a new grade has to be trained and learn the ins and outs of student government.
Over the past years, 9th grade involvement in student government has changed drastically. From the passing of the Freshman proposal which includes freshman positions being appointed in the fall to make it fair for new students. “I am proud of the things that we have done to raise 9th grade participation, it was one of the biggest things that we focused on before the pandemic hit,” Upper School History Teacher and Student Government Faculty Advisor Jeanne Barr said.
The responsibility of integrating the freshman into student government falls to the Directors Of Cross-Grade Communication (also known as DOCCs). “Student Government is not something that everyone is interested in, but I am excited that some 9th graders are engaged! And for those that aren’t, that’s completely valid as well!” Senior Saroya Ornelas Pagnucci said. This year Ornelas Pagnucci is one of the DOCCs along with Arjun Kalra. They have both been involved in student government since their freshman year and were appointed by the elected cabinet in the spring of 2023. “The role of the DOCCs is very important because without them none of the freshmen know what they are doing or what any of the language means, and sometimes people forget that someone in that freshman class is going to be president one day,” Barr said.
Currently, the DOCC position is in review by cabinet and a new proposal is being written to reimagine the role that they will play in student government. “Next year’s DOCC role is going to look very different from this years role because the 8th grade being taken out of student government, and they will never have had contact with student government and so the DOCCs will have to start from scratch,” Barr said, “But this year our DOCCs focused on teaching the 9th grade and engaging them in student government.”
“I think that one of the reasons why it is kinda boring to some people in my grade is because we don’t really know what is happening, I think that we also didn’t start out on the right foot with the other people in student government, because of the training session that happened at the beginning of the year,” Pendo said.
During one of the training sessions early in the year between the DOCCs and the rising freshman tensions rose resulting in unpleasant comments being exchanged. “This year at our first training session our DOCCs had spent all this time preparing for the training session, and they had created this beautiful slideshow, and the 9th graders were just not paying attention. They were just constantly talking and frankly being very disrespectful and because of that the DOCCs then ended up getting very frustrated.” Barr said. “And then Arjun just yelled ‘shut the fuck up, just shut the fuck up’ and it was so loud and startling that we all just started laughing which I’m sure did not help the situation,” Pendo said.
Since the training session cabinet has examined what went wrong in the situation and what prompted the extreme language to be used. “After that training session we were talked to and basically yelled at for talking so much, which we were in the wrong to do, and I think that they had talked about it a lot and so it was helpful I guess for people in my grade to hear it coming from an adult,” Pendo said. xvcBarr said.
Later in the semester a second training session took place, with an adult present and a designated topic of conversation, two things that were missing from the first training session. “For the second meeting, which was exclusively about the DOCC Proposal, we had an adult present in the room, which I think helped settle the 9th grade. I think it was very successful, as we were able to have a good discussion and generate a lot of feedback that makes the DOCC Proposal representative of the student body’s needs,” Ornelas Pagnucci said. “And I think going forward the 9th grade is going to be more interested in student government because of how successful the second training session was.”
Looking forward, Pendo said, “I think that more people will be engaged next year because more people will have positions and more people will be active members of plenary, but I think as a whole, some of the grade is interested but not very many.”
