Meet Your 2020 Student Body Candidates, Jeevet and Lexi
Disclaimer: The Pixel Journal’s articles do not reflect endorsement of particular student government candidates. These articles are only meant to provide the student body with additional information about the candidates. Happy voting!
As elections are right around the corner, let’s get to know Jeevet K. and Lexi T., who are running together for student body president and vice president!
Why did you choose to run for Student Body President / Vice President?
Jeevet: I chose to run for Student Body President to make a difference in the inclusivity of this school and implement solutions to problems Lexi and I have both faced, being full timers at OHS for a few years. I love leading in general; before I was Sophomore President, I was also Student Body President and VP of my old school, so I’ve seen the difference a strong student government can make to a school’s spirit and community engagement. I’ve had opportunities to be in charge and influence a strong community, and not only did I enjoy making decisions and coming up with new ideas, I also loved reaching out and solving individual issues! The last two years at OHS have been filled with bittersweet, new adventures that I am so thankful to have experienced, and I couldn’t have gone through the late night study cram sessions, months without seeing my friends, or the initial 77 on the first MSB writing assignment without the amazing and supportive community that OHS offered. I want to give back to this amazing environment through the support system I truly believe Lexi and I can implement if we are voted into Student Body President/VP. I know that this support system, which we came up with after careful consideration and asking people while we were sophomore reps, will truly help and better the OHS community. Lexi and I are so excited to have the opportunity to implement a variety of amazing ideas, ranging from school-wide events, fun spirit days, and a ton of academic and mental health help!
Lexi: I chose to run for Student Body Vice President because, as an OHSer of 4 years, I’ve seen (and heard from students) a lot of their positive and negative aspects of OHS, and Jeeves and I have formed a campaign centered around fixing these problems for all of you. Jeeves and I were Sophomore President and Vice President in the 2019-2020 school year, and this year, we were able to target specific issues that sophomores came to us with. I’ve been at OHS since 7th grade, and through that, I’ve dealt with a lot of the things that are classic when coming into OHS. I had the initial learning curve where the academics were so new and difficult and I had to adapt a new style of learning. I got used to having friends across the country and seeing them a couple times a year. Even with the harder parts, I would not trade anything for the time I have experienced at this school. I’ve learned so much, met some of the most incredible people ever, and overall had an amazing time! Simply put, I want to be able to give back to the community that has given me so much, whether it be through implementing new ideas that can ease academic stress, or extending/creating new meetups so everyone can see each other more often. As I mentioned previously, one of the main things that has been a big adjusting point when coming into Stanford OHS was the academics, and I want to work closely with the Executive Committee and all of Student Government (Class Reps, Boards, etc.) to make sure the student body is getting the support they need. Next year, we want to make shared notes drives for all core classes, implement bimonthly labs for writing based classes, and create an accessible peer tutor list!
The mission of Stanford Online High School is “to create a worldwide learning community of diverse, intellectually passionate students and teachers.” How do you plan on furthering the mission statement?
The mission statement of Stanford OHS is one I feel like we already exemplify incredibly. We are a community of smart, driven, and intellectually diverse individuals that form and enrich such an amazing community. We want to further this mission statement in three ways: implementing new forms of academic support for new and old students alike, increasing international student attendance in the community, and overall forming a tighter knit community in the upcoming school year.
We want to modify the academic support by adding new things to it, specifically things that have worked on a small, grade-wide scale. In the 2019-2020 year, the HSC shared notes drive was a hit with the sophomores! When people needed clarification on a reading, or wanted to get a better perspective on the material, the notes of various students were available. We worked with the HSC instructors to make sure it was approved to be used, and we want to do this in the upcoming for all core classes.
Next, international students make up a large percentage of the student body, but many of my international friends have told me it is difficult for them to feel connected in the OHS community because differing timezones make it such that events never happen during their waking hours. Next year, we want to try to set up specific groups of people from different parts of the world together. For example, if you are in a time zone, you could be put in a group with other people in that same time zone. Then, we could work with specific people in that group to coordinate events hosted by the students at OHS (sort of like meetups but online)! With this, there would be running forms of communication at any time zone.
We want to foster a high sense of community by creating school-wide events such as movie nights, class-wide Kahoot Sessions, and more! Along with this, we will work closely with student leaders (club leaders, class representatives, etc.) to make open and accessible events for various members of the OHS community to be able to attend. Overall, we want to create an open form of communication between the student body and student government. We want to hear the problems you want to be fixed, and make them better to support you all in the best way we can!
How do you plan on maintaining a connection with the students?
Since we’ve both been at OHS, we make a conscious effort to reach out to every student we can and talk to them. Getting to know more about the incredibly diverse and intelligent people that OHS has in their student body is something we’ve done because we wanted to. Next year, one of our main goals is to form a tight knit community between all grade levels and students at OHS. In the previous question, we mentioned the plans we have for international students. On an overall school-wide scale, we want to implement events both online and in real life. Online, we want to make more informal events, since OHSers love just hanging out with friends and watching a movie or playing a game. We also want to make holiday-themed events, like Secret Santas and Valentine’s (Friend) Matchmaking Games! Events are the best part of the school year for OHSers; we finally get to be with the people we’ve been Skyping with for the months beforehand. In real life, we want to work closely with administration to try to extend various events, like Pixelfest and Graduation Weekend. With these online and in-person events in place (which we will both be attending) we can maintain a connection with the student body and become closer with the insanely talented group of people this school has!
We also want to be close with the student body by working with class reps to make sure they have a streamlined source of communication with the entire OHS community! We want to make an effort to make sure every students’ needs and requests are heard through monthly assemblies, check-ins, anonymous ask boxes, and polls, seeing what everyone wants improved! As sophomore representatives, we maintained a strong bond with our class through the Class of 2022 Skype Group Chat and the events we hosted, and loved reaching out to people one-on-one. Through these online events that will foster a closer connection with the student government and student body, communication platforms that reach out directly to the student body, and continual check-in with the class presidents, we want to maintain and thrive on a strong connection with OHS students.
Lastly, why should people vote for you? What sets you two apart?
What sets us apart from other candidates is a few ideals. First, we have had the opportunity to work together as Sophomore Class President/VP, so we know we are a compatible match to lead, as we’ve been in agreement and continuity since the start of the year. We’ve also been close friends since freshman year, so our thought processes and community ideals are always on the same wavelength, and that is part of the reason we’ve had a successful time as class representatives. Throughout the past year, we have seen what works and what doesn’t, and how to foster a high sense of community on a grade wide scale, and next year, we want to apply this on a school-wide scale!
Another ideal that sets us apart is our ability to deliver promises. Last year when running, we promised 4 main ideals. We talked to the OHS community, as well as thought about our experiences for the last few years, and we came up with a few main platform points while running for sophomore president and vice president: this included mental health check-ins, a shared notes drive, more IRL events, and online events/movie nights. Every month, we would send out an email consisting of a movie night/check in, and we did our best to implement the requests everyone had as often as we could! We also offered more academic help through study calls, Kahoot sessions, and paper write-ins, and were planning to host a sophomore event at grad, but unfortunately it got cancelled because of COVID-19. We also started the school year off with the HSC Shared Notes Drive, and when it was received with confusion by the HSC instructors, we worked with them to reinstate it and deliver on our promises! We’ve been successful in keeping up with every guarantee we wanted while running for class president, and we want to promise a few things for Student Body president and vice president.
We promise we will work our hardest to foster a stronger, more inclusive, and engaging student body through school wide functions such as monthly assemblies and spirit week events. We promise to implement academic help from every aspect; not just Core class shared notes drives, but also petitioning for bimonthly core class labs, like they have for TAA. We promise we will do our best to foster more in-person events in the spring semester of this year, as COVID-19 has a bunch of uncertainties regarding winter events being cancelled. We also promise to take our ideas we had as sophomore class representatives, and implement those on a school-wide basis! We promise that we will not make promises that we cannot keep — we will focus our energy on goals that can and will happen. Lastly, we promise that if you vote Jeeves and Lexi, you vote for a stronger, more tight-knit community that cares about students’ individual issues.
Further…
To learn more about Jeevet and Lexi’s campaign, you can follow their Instagrams (@jeevetkaur and @lexitabacu) where they have their own personal Q&A sessions on their IG story highlights! You can also read about their campaign promises more in depth on the Canvas student community page. Ballots and voting information will be sent out on Friday, May 1st.