After many weeks of campaigning and a student vote on Friday, March 29, a new StuCo executive board was elected. The new board consists of Hannah Rahe as president, Fatima Khalid as vice president, and Victoria Martinez as treasurer.
After junior Hannah Rahe won StuCo President, she was very thankful for what the votes came down to.
“I wanted to be elected president because I’ve been on the student council since freshman year and it has become a really big part of my life,” Rahe said. “I really want to help out the community and better our school. I just wanted to be president because it will be a fun way to be a new leader.”
Leading up to the election was nerve racking for Rahe.
“I was really nervous,” Rahe said. “My competitor was pretty good,” Rahe said “so I was kinda nervous, but I’m really thankful I got chosen.”
Many of the candidates used social media to help them promote themselves.
“To promote myself, I posted a lot of things on Instagram and my Snapchat story,” Rahe said. “I also posted posters around the school, and I sent a lot of stuff to my friends to post on theirs stories.”
Being president comes with different and new opportunities, which Rahe is excited for. As president, she wants to make changes to the school and staff to better themselves.,
“For StuCo, personally I want to create some more bonding within the council,” Rahe said. “So we’re gonna have some summer get togethers and have a pool party at my house. nd for the school itself, I want to make a bond within StuCo and also the students and admin of course so one.”
Junior Fatima Khalid was also elected for executive board as vice president, which she ran unopposed.
“Lucky enough for me, I did not go opposed in both elections, so last year I went for treasurer,” Khalid said. “I was unopposed, so besides what I was required to do, I posted about it on social media sometimes, but besides that, I really had no reason to promote. A majority of my ideas were in my campaign speech.”
Khalid has been a part of StuCo all four years of being at Olathe West.
“I’ve been in StuCo since freshman year and I always really loved it and I wanted to have a leadership role. So i felt like if i got my foot in the door with being treasury this year i would like. So I could step into a bigger role my senior year so I went for vice president.”
Khalid shared her ideas to improve StuCo for next year.
“I really want to work on our branding, making it more noticeable and recognizable within the West,” Khalid said. “Right now, not a lot of people know what StuCo does, so I feel like if we could brand ourselves better like on social media and whatnot, I feel like we could get a lot more done.”
Branding Olathe West StuCo is important for Khalid so people can really see what they do.
“A lot of people think you don’t do anything, or you just do things during homecoming, and I don’t think that’s true,” Khalid said. “There’s always a lot of stuff to do outside of homecoming. We do a lot, people just don’t see that.”
Sophomore Victoria Martinez went for treasurer and got the position for next year’s StuCo team.
“I made my posters ahead of time to make sure I knew how I wanted it to look early on because I wanted to get first dibs on where to put them,” Martinez said. “And I also posted on social media to get the word out.”
Martinez said she ran for the position because she wanted to be more involved with the club.
“They’re a big organization for the school and they do a lot,” Martinez said. “And being involved in that and being a leader in the club.”
