We have already brought you information about your candidates’ interests and talents. However, since this election will determine who serves as the face of Harriton for the next year, the most important factors to consider for your vote is their political intentions, rather than their popularity. In the first of five installments, the Banner interviewed the candidates to uncover their policies, some in person and some over email. Here are the interviews for your 2014-2015 Sergeant-At-Arms candidates: Pranav Pillai and Julia Marks. As we start off, please keep in mind their duties that these candidates will have to fulfill.

The Sergeant-At-Arms must…

• Report to the President and Advisor weekly regarding individual and committee activity – must attend all Cabinet meetings, full Council meetings and respective committee meetings.

• Chair the Internal Planning Committee, which recognizes Harriton students, maintains communication between Council and other clubs and sports, and plans the annual Council icebreaker retreat.
• Set up the room and maintain order during full Council meetings.

• Keep attendance and voting records at full Council meetings and inform the Cabinet of attendance violations.

Pranav Pillai

What do you intend to do when you get to office?

            My goal as officer would [be] to continue the great traditions that Aliza has put into place, such as Music Friday, but also make it easier to plan events here at Harriton. The first thing I would do would be to speak to Mr. Ferguson and find out exactly what it takes to plan an event here at Harriton – things like what type of organization do you need. From there, I would work with anyone, one on one, with anybody that has an idea for an event and just plan it out, step by step. We could really get these events to happen. I know in the past that people had ideas for events that they were not able to put together, so I believe this would make things a lot easier.

Why are you running for Student Council Office?

Well, running for Student Council Office is a way to talk to people higher up. I had a lot of the same ideas I have going into this year going into my co-chair position of the Finance Committee, but it had been hard to communicate those events on a large scale. So this is an opportunity to talk to the Harriton student body at large and also to contact teachers like Mr. Ferguson to make it easier for my agenda to get through.

How will you make Student Council more transparent to the student body?

As I discussed earlier, I believe that organization of Harriton events should not be just Student Council. You know, we have 1,200 students here and we all have very great ideas. So let the event planning be open to anyone, and I will take them through, step by step.

Regarding transparency, will you make student or technology rights more readily heard? Many people are fed up with the web filtering here at Harriton.

There are two points that I want to make on the ideas of technology. I think you made a good point about blocking sites and that a student rights thing and as I said before, as an officer, it is much easier to talk to adults about it. And frankly adults will listen to you more and suddenly you are the voice of the people while being Student Council Officer. Therefore, I would definitely voice my displeasure. Gor instance, my AP Government class could not do part of a project because we could not access videos due to CleanVideoSearch. I would definitely bring this issue up, and I believe that there are better ways of filtering YouTube without CleanVideoSearch.

Another point I want to make about technology is that I feel that the TVs here are really underused. Maybe we could have some announcements going on and having them going on through out the day… Maybe we could have a weatherman, maybe even local man Sam Ebby – maybe we could have him on the TVs. I feel it would be very cool for something like that to happen

Julia Marks

What do you intend to do when you get to office?

I would like to focus on creating a better communication system for our school. It seems that many people miss out on a lot that is offered simply because nobody knows about it; if people were better informed, turnouts and support of school functions would be greater.

 Why are you running for Student Council Office?

I honestly just really want to do all that I can for this school before I leave. I spend around 50 hours a week at Harriton, and I understand that it’s really important to appreciate a place that influences so much of my life.

 How will you make Student Council more transparent to the student body? 

Actually, Student Council is already transparent; any student interested in the happenings of Council is not only welcomed but also encouraged to attend meetings. As part of increasing school-wide communication, the time and location of these meetings could be announced.

 How would you change the use and role of technology here at Harriton?

Technology would be a key part of my plan on how to increase communication. I think the laptops, especially with the school e-mails, are great tools for connection that we can utilize next year.

Once again, here are the interviews for your 2014-2015 Student Council Sergeant At Arms Candidates. Let us wish the candidates good luck on their campaigns.