With enthusiasm and many fresh ideas, Student Council’s newly elected members seem more than poised to confront the issues important to the Upper School and bring the community together. The new leaders of the Upper School, President junior Oliver McIntosh and Vice President sophomore Tarika Kumar, are ready to listen to student opinions as they take charge.

In terms of experience, the pair are anything but lacking. McIntosh has been on Council for the past two years, first as a grade representative and later as Secretary Treasurer of Council. Last year, Kumar served as one of her grade’s presidents. Prior to that, she was also a class representative to the Community Service Committee.

A few weeks into office, McIntosh and Kumar have big aspirations for the coming school year. One of their main goals is to help the administration and student body communicate, especially when it comes to issues such as scheduling and the dress code.

“What we are trying to do just as a general idea is have more open dialogue with the administration. I think Student Council is perfectly positioned to be a sort of liaison between the administration and the student body,” said McIntosh. Kumar added, “One of our main goals is to sort of bridge the gap between students and administration, so that we can just have a transparent communication system pretty much where we know what they want and they know what we want, and we can build off of each other to make the community the best it can possibly be.”

Another one of their hopes is to have the student body become more active in Council affairs, whether by increasing attendance at meetings or encouraging students to express their opinions to their elected representatives. “I’d like to try to make the Upper School community in general a lot more involved in Council. For a long time, it’s sort of been something that happens on the fringes, maybe even viewed as a ceremonial position to some extent, but it does actually have the potential to have a lot of impact on Upper School life,” said McIntosh.

New to the election this year was the combined ticket for president and vice president. Instead of students running separately, each president ran with a vice president on the same ballot. This election system helps to ensure that the president and vice president, students that must work favorably together in order for Council to be successful, will complement each other. McIntosh and Kumar feel they will be able to balance each other and work together towards a common goal of bettering the Upper School community. “We both just agreed on things but also challenged each other at the same time,” said Kumar. McIntosh agreed, “I’m sure over the next year we’ll work well together.”