The All-School Congress, a compliance of officers and delegates from every grade, has been created this year in order to help revive the name of Stamford High School. After an intense campaigning period, members were voted for by students of every grade during Connection Time. Senior Joe Vukel, senior Olivia Beech, and sophomore Maddie Santora are the current officers, including five delegates from every grade. The Round Table was able to sit down with Beech and Santora to talk about the All-School Congress.

The Round Table: Why did you want to join the All-School Congress?

Beech: The main reason I wanted to join is because I felt it would be beneficial in actually making a difference in the school. There have always been some changes that I have wanted to make. I figured if I could contribute in some way it would help, so this was a definite advantage for me.

Santora: My main reason for joining the congress is because during my two years here at Stamford High I’ve seen negative things happen. I want to help make a change.

TRT: What are the changes that you speak of?

Beech: We want to revive the name of Stamford High and possibly be able to fund academic and after school programs. That is one of our main goals so that students have more opportunities to do things. We know that the art department is struggling financially and we want to address that issue.

Santora: Additionally, instead of raising class funds, we want to raise funds as a whole. Since [city budgets] are sort of low, our goal is to disperse the money equally throughout the school and try to get programs up and running.

TRT: What are some things you want to accomplish this year? What are some short term and long term goals?

Beech: As of the moment, we have not officially formed an agenda. We are just trying to establish ideas for what we want done during the first part of this year, but we definitely want to improve some of the academic and social situations that go on in this school, and how they are handled on a daily basis.

Santora: Since this is the first year of the All-School Congress, we want to establish what we’re going to do and set the foundation. Our main is goal is to really get this up and going and have it go far, to the point that it will still exist in 30 years. We want to see this make a change; we don’t want it to be ineffective. Our short term goal is to try and get some really good ideas flowing. Our long term goal is to see it have a long term effect on Stamford High.

TRT: What’s the difference between this student congress and class officers?

Beech: Well, in the case of student congress, it has a much bigger effect on all of the classes in the school. Senior class officers are mainly assigned to the members of their particular class. Take, for example, the senior class. Right now [its officers are] focused on senior activities such as homecoming and prom. We deal more with things that impact everyone, upperclassmen and underclassmen, so that mostly pertains to things like class structure and social after school activities. We focus on things that actually include everyone.

Santora: All-School Congress is also more focused on getting changes around the school instead of fundraising. Class officers are looking to fundraise for their class, but were looking to make changes that benefit the whole school instead of a specific grade.

TRT: Stamford High has over 1,700 students. How do you plan on reaching these students and getting the opinions of so many people?

Beech: One very important message we want to communicate throughout the school is that we need people to give us suggestions and ideas for what they want done. The only way for student congress to be successful is to actually hear the needs of the people that we work for.

Santora: Another factor is that our leadership board has seniors, juniors, sophomores, and freshmen, which is really going to help get every grade involved. Plus, we have the delegates who can really help spread the word through our school’s dense population.

TRT: Are there any other important things you want to tell us about student congress?

Beech: We really think that even though this is our first year running it’s actually going to be a very good start, considering the fact that we have a lot of strong delegates and leadership members. We discussed in our meeting yesterday some ambitions that we have for this year. We want to definitely focus in on funding because [some departments in our school] definitely need money. That’s one idea that I’m familiar with at the moment. We have people from [each] class participating [so I] think we will be able to get it done.

Santora: School policies are somewhere we’d like to see a change. It would be good to see a difference after some of the administrative problems that have been going on. Us stepping in may help.