Here is the final installment of the candidate interviews, focusing on the 2014-2015 Student Council President candidates: Jesse Bregman, Ben Hewitt, Dan Liu, and Max Raphael. While reading their responses, keep in mind the duties of the Student Council President, who must:

• Be the spokesperson for Harriton’s student body, inside and outside of school.
• Attend School Board and Student Council meetings.
• Oversee all committee actions and actions of other officers and members.
• Conduct Student Council elections.
• Chair the Student Rights Committee, which acts upon concerns of the student body by proposing policies to the school board and administration.

Jesse Bregman

HB: What do you intend to do when you are elected into office?

JB: First, I would celebrate.  Next I would promptly implement my idea.  We all know that there are times when a video or website is blocked that should not be.  This can get very annoying and something needs to be done about it. I’m proposing App4Apps: an application for applications/websites.  If a student found a program, application, website, or anything on the computer that they feel they should have access to, but don’t, they would fill out the form located on the Student Council eBoard.  This form would be reviewed by members of council to ensure that the claim is legitimate and then passed on to the tech department for them to unblock it.

HB: Why are you running for office?

JB: I feel that I can bring a positive change to the school environment.  I know that the phrase is a cliché and that you probably hear it a lot, but that is what I genuinely plan and hope to do.  I want to make both my school experience and your school experience better.

HB: What activities are you in beside Student Council and how will that affect your ability to lead and direct the activities of Student Council?  

JB: I participate in baseball right now, but I also played soccer and basketball at Harriton.  Any athlete knows that there is no better feeling than when individuals develop chemistry and come together as a team with one common goal: to win.  As president, I would unite the branches of Student Council towards the common goal of making your school year better.

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

JB: When I wasn’t in Student Council, my biggest question was whether or not they could actually execute any of the ideas that they were proposing.  I think this question still exists within the school.  I just want to let everyone know that Student Council does have the ability to make change.  We aren’t a group of resume-padders; we are a group of students who want to improve our already-stellar school. I feel that once this barrier is broken down, Student Council will become much more effective in our school community.

Ben Hewitt

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

BH: Overall, across several aspects of Harriton life, I want to give more decision-making power back to the students. This is our school, and it’s important to me that every student feels like they have a say in decisions that are made around the school. One of the main aspects that I want to change is the website blocking. The blocking software blocks all websites with certain keywords, even when those websites are useful. Teachers are able to send in Helpdesk tickets requesting websites to be unblocked. I see no reason why students shouldn’t have the same power. That’s just one example of where students should have more of a say.

HB: Why are you running for Student Council office?

BH: I’m running for President because I know I have the experience and work ethic to make Harriton better. I served as Secretary this past year, and it was a great learning experience and a lot of fun. It was awesome to get to help plan Mr. Harriton, interviewing the potential contestants and planning the set design. I also loved hearing people’s ideas throughout the year. I set up an online suggestion box where people could ask questions and suggest ideas.

As President, I want to expand this and regularly pass those ideas on to Mr. Eveslage to see some simple, but also very impactful, improvements to Harriton made. People also approached me throughout the year to tell me about their ideas, and to ask questions. I really enjoyed answering these questions and pondering those ideas, considering how to implement them.

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

BH: I think Student Council is overall pretty transparent already, for people who care to ask what we’ve been working on. However, I would improve this by encouraging students not in Student Council to still come to our meetings. I think it’s important to hear as many varying viewpoints and ideas as possible, to foster the best brainstorming. Topics discussed at Student Council meetings range from Spirit Week and Mr. Harriton themes to revising our bylaws. We usually don’t take very formal minutes at our meetings, usually just ideas that were discussed and what we decided on, but they could easily be revised to be published on the Harriton Banner website. This way, everybody could read about what we did at that Student Council meeting.

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

BH: There is so much more we could accomplish with the technology available to us in school. Small changes would greatly increase their usefulness. We should be able to connect our phones and other devices to the school’s Internet, and print from our computers at home. Again, I think students should be able to request websites to be unblocked to make our computers easier to use in school and at home.

Also, I would try to get Facebook to be unblocked in school. It is no more of a distraction than Twitter or any other social networking site, with the difference of it being extremely useful to communicate with other people to do work, such as in groups or group chats. I see no reason why Facebook still needs to be blocked during school hours, especially since we can access it on our phones also. I am also very open to other people’s ideas, and would love to add some ideas to my list of changes to the technology here at Harriton.

Dan Liu

HB: What do you intend to do when you are elected into office?

DL: Harriton is a society, a culture, and a community. I strive to make Harriton a greater version of itself. Students need to hold more significance in the Harriton community in order to develop more relationships and improve the individual’s experience at Harriton. Peers need to support one another and converge to create an improved environment at Harriton. The best way to do this is to create frequent events in which upperclassmen and underclassmen are able to interact with and befriend each other. I propose to do this in several ways, including intramural sports tournaments, which I mentioned in my campaign video. Other possibilities I have thought of include increased involvement in the Lower Merion community through media such as lip dubs to raise awareness, and a perpetuation of Quidditch. I have several ideas of what Student Council can do to improve people’s experience at Harriton, but I am always open to more.

HB: Why are you running for office?

DL: Being Student Council Treasurer opened my eyes to how much Student Council actually does to create a beneficial environment for the students at Harriton. I am running for President because I believe that with my experience, I will be able to manage Student Council and its committees in unprecedented ways. As of right now, the individual committees within Council do minimal work. As President, I would ameliorate this inefficiency and leave Student Council free to pursue greater and increased amounts of projects. We should be involved around the school all-year-round, not in just a couple events and Mr. Harriton. Student Council has the potential to be so much greater and I believe I have the vision, experience, and ability to help it reach that potential.

HB: What activities are you in beside Student Council and how will that affect your ability to lead and direct the activities of Student Council?  

DL: Other than Student Council, I am in TSA, Physics Olympics, Ultimate Frisbee, and Debate. My involvement in these Harriton activities would not and do not inhibit my ability to be an officer. Rather, these activities would benefit my position as President in that they would increase my awareness of the needs of our community, as well as provide me additional opportunities to conceptualize ways to increase involvement in our school.

Max Raphael

HB: What do you intend to do when you are elected into office?

MR: I have a few initial plans for when I am elected President. First, I want to lengthen the running time of the breakfast table from just the morning to all day (except during lunch, as that would be a violation with our agreement with the lunch services). I also am going to turn the JSL into an actual student lounge. I plan on creating a more welcoming and comfortable environment consisting of comfy chairs and low tables for work and relaxation, rather than the uninviting, high chairs and tables that we currently have. I also plan on creating an intramural sports league of different intensity levels for those who wish to play sports but are unable to play at the school level.

HB: Why are you running for Student Council Office?

MR: I know this sounds clichéd, but I honestly want to be President of the student body because I want our school to be the best that it can be. Our school is great as it is (obviously), but it would be ignorant to say that Harriton is not flawed. I believe that I have the ability and the ideas to institute new programs and changes that will largely
better our school and make it as awesome an experience as possible for the students that go here.

HB: What activities are you in beside Student Council and how will that affect your ability to lead and direct the activities of Student Council? 

MR: I am involved in a series of extracurricular programs, but none of these will hinder my ability to lead the activities of Student Council and Harriton. Rather, these outside activities have actually helped prepare me to be President. I am a leader in the Stock Club, I am the newly appointed Treasurer of Swinging for Change, I play both Varsity
and Junior Varsity sports, I am a freshman mentor, and I am a member of Gems not Genocide. By participating in all of these groups, each as diverse and different as the next, I now hold a worldly view of the school as whole, not just particular sections. As a result of this, I will be able to evenly and effectively distribute my leadership and
direction throughout both all of Student Council and all of Harriton.

HB: What previous leadership experiences have you had and how have they affected you?

MR: Like I said before, I am a leader in the Stock Club and a leader of Swinging for Change (a non-profit, fully student run organization that aids Philadelphia parks and recreational centers). These positions have taught me what it truly means to have leadership and responsibility over an entire organization.

I am also a Freshman Mentor, which has been a really awesome and rewarding experience. This position above all others has showed me how important it is as a
leader to connect with each of the people who you are working with in order for the program to succeed. In my advisory, I have an extremely diverse group of freshman, and over the course of the year I have developed different yet equally special relationships with each and every one of them, which allowed us to succeed as a unit.

All of these positions have yielded completely different experiences, yet have been
equally rewarding. Ultimately, they have taught me how to successfully lead and be innovative, while simultaneously have showed me how unbelievably amazing it can be to be largely involved in something that I really care about, which is exactly why I want to be the next President of Harriton.

Once again, these are the candidates for your 2014-2015 Student Council President. When voting, choose the candidate you believe will best represent and serve Harriton. Let us hope that these interviews have given you a deeper view into the candidates’ beliefs and a better basis for voting. On that note, for one last time, good luck to all the candidates.