Bear River’s Associated Student Body, or ASB, ratified their constitution in 1987; the long-standing document is quickly becoming outdated, leading to recent amendments by the current Leadership class.
According to Activities Director and Leadership Teacher Matt MacDonald, these changes include, but are not limited to: adding black as a school color, raising requirements for elected officers, and modifying the way elections are run. The election modifications are still being actively considered.
Mr. MacDonald said that the last time the constitution was officially amended was in 2009. Incoming ASB President and Junior Maggie O’Callaghan explained some of the changes that have been made to update and correct Leadership’s guidelines.
“We added black as our color, because seniors always wear it and it’s used a lot,” she said. “Then we … took out some jobs, and reworded some of them to be more accurate. I think it’ll make more sense now… and [it] just reminds them what they’re supposed to be doing.”
O’Callaghan said that she thinks these guidelines are some of the most crucial.
“I definitely think that the most important guidelines are … everybody’s jobs that are in Leadership,” O’Callaghan said. “It kind of just reminds us all of what we’re supposed to do, and what the school is about.”
The GPA requirement for elected officers was also raised from a 2.5 to a 3.0, and details about the bell and class schedules were updated.
“There were a couple things … that had changed over the years,” Mr. MacDonald said. “One of them was we used to have an Advisory period. … It was every Monday, and it was after second period and so every group on campus would go to an Advisory and you would stay with your Advisory group all four years.”
He went on to describe the purpose of these Advisory periods.
“We had a student council,” Mr. MacDonald said. “It was just another way for us to inform people, so we would have representatives from each Advisory go down to the MPR, and there would be kind of an update from the executive council on the things that were going on. … The Advisory members would report back.”
Mr. MacDonald then talked about how he and the officers would like to continue this in some form next year, perhaps during Monday Bruin Times. Another subject being continuously discussed is the rules regarding elections at Bear River.
“We do [voting] on a Google Form right now, and we try to write the link in classrooms and put it on our social media, but we want to have official rules on that,” Mr. MacDonald said. “Certainly it’s gotta get better.”
Mr. MacDonald said that the elections used to be done on paper ballots, but election fraud was a common issue, and that led to the online form.
“We went to this online google form, that allows us to make them sign in to do it, that way we can track if they only vote once,” he said. “… So we cleaned up in a lot of ways, the last couple years; we cleaned up how the voting is done. However, the one downside would be that now we’re not getting as many people.”
According to ASB Vice President Cat Renner, 203 Bruins voted in this years ASB elections. Mr. MacDonald said that Leadership has determined through extensive polling that social media is the best way to reach the most people at our school. Despite this, O’Callaghan said she’d rather Bear River return to the old paper method.
“I think you should vote in class with a Scantron; if the teacher could just take five minutes out so we make sure everybody’s voting,” she said. “I’m [also] a big believer of posters around the school. I really like that, because I know not everybody has social media which is not a bad thing at all, so I think it’s important to have people walk around and talk about it.”
Senior Camden Criesco explained his perspective, as he does not have any social media.
“It is difficult to say if elections need to be advertised more or not, since I am not engaged in social media,” Criesco said. “I do not know how much activity occurs through those means, however, I know outside of social media, information is not readily advertised.”
Apart from elections, Bruins said that the most important guidelines to them regard job descriptions. Isabella Batula, a senior and the current ASB President, said that she thinks this section of the document gives power to the people.
“I would say the constitution makes clear rules that break down those involved in the Executive Counsel and the roles that the counsel plays,” she said. “Looking back on it, I wish this was brought to our attention earlier on, because I feel it would have delegated power back to student leaders rather than the advisors.”
Mr. MacDonald concluded that he’s looking forward to the changes to come.
“It’s exciting we’ve got a constitution again, so we’ve got our guidance,” he said. “I think we’ve made some positive changes. We’re thinking about how we can get better with our structure, so it’s good.”
