As the first term comes to a close, the ASB elections have concluded. Meet your new ASB executive team:

President

As the newly elected ASB president, Kody Mongold (11) said he is striving to make the ASB program more transparent.

Mongold also plans to prioritize student input before deciding and committing to ASB’s plans and events.

“Anytime anything is planned, we want to include and make our students’ opinions important,” Mongold said. “We want to let them have a say and be heard.”

Mongold also said he wants to focus on including clubs in decisions like in planning for culture months and keeping open communication between ASB and the rest of the students.

“I want to constantly put out as much information as possible,” he said. “This is so that the students are giving us input and ASB is bringing out new information constantly.”

Vice President

Aditi Anand (11) envisions an ASB that provides equally strong support. She said that as vice president, she wants to make more clear what exactly ASB’s role is to its students.

“I want to make sure that students know what is going on behind the scenes,” she said. “We want to make sure that our peers know what we are working on at all times.”

Anand also said that she wants to emphasize communication of events to students—letting them know more universally what spirit events there are during any given week.

“Behind the screen, it’s harder to be in the know and get involved [than in person],” she said. “I’m committed to making sure that we can relay events and news on every platform, to reach out to as many students as possible.”

Secretary

ASB Secretary-elect Michael Braun (10) said he wants to make sure every student feels comfortable being themselves.

With social injustices and prejudice surrounding the nation, he said, it can be easy for students to be scared or uncomfortable with themselves, whether it’s race, sexuality, or gender identity.

“Putting out statements or hosting educational weeks similar to our Digital Footprint Week is something I hope we can do more,” he said.

Treasurer

Treasurer-elect Amy Zhao (10) said she wants to be more than the person who handles the money. Whether it may be creating activities to raise Wolverine spirit, or promoting different cultural events, Zhao said she will do everything she can to meet the needs of the students.

“I feel like my mission is to properly fulfill all of our students’ needs and not just such a generic group of students,” Zhao said. “This is so everyone will feel like they’ve been heard, and they have a purpose and enjoyment of being a Westview student.”

What ASB plans to improve

Following ASB’s newly-elected executive teams are some changes as well as clarifications to its role on campus (and online).

Transparency

According to Mongold, the exact role that ASB plays at Westview has stayed unclear since its beginning. He said that the executive team wants to make ASB’s powers and limitations clearer this year.

“I think that people assume we have power over things that are not really in our hands,” he said. “One of our goals is clearing up that boundary between what our role is and what issues need to be taken up with the front office or with school administration.”

ASB will begin holding school-wide forums to hear suggestions from the students and receive their feedback at the beginning of the second term. Currently, Mongold said, the online suggestion boxes where that feedback is normally received are not utilized enough by students.

“We want to ensure more open and public communication than ASB has in the past,” Mongold said.

Braun said that the forums would also better facilitate communication of events. With ASB’s winter event, Wally’s Wishlist, he said, many students mentioned that they didn’t know what was happening.

According to Anand, ASB will improve this communication of events by expanding the platforms they provide information on. Currently, ASB provides most information through its Instagram.

“[Because some] students don’t have social media to stay informed with us, we’re trying to use other platforms like Canvas and make sure that teachers are putting out reminders,” she said. “We want to increase our connection to students.”

Mongold said that ASB will also make public records of its plans and documents, in order to keep students as informed as possible.

“We plan to have weekly logs of things that all our groups inside ASB have been doing ready and accessible for anyone to see at any time,” he said. “We just hope to make everything a little clearer.”

Inclusivity and Diversity

According to Mongold, a major goal is to accept different types of students to make ASB more diverse.

“We reached out to different clubs with different backgrounds like culture and even specific people who we feel will make the class more diverse,” Mongold said. “ASB really does need that diversity within the class and it will really help us gain insight and allow us to view situations through different lenses.”

Mongold said a lot of the new applicants are going to make the class more diverse than it has been.

“ You can never have too much diversity,” Mongold said. “The diversity we gain through our new members will allow us to have more insight and advocate for more of the students at our school.”

Restructuring

Due to the online environment, most know that interaction and enthusiasm are limited in most classes and ASB is no exception.

“We’ve restructured the class and changed the different roles and the different positions that we’ve asked people to fill,” Mongold said. “Hopefully, it will empower our class to be able to do the work they want to do, instead of forcing them into strict positions,” Mongold said

Last year ASB attempted to put its members in positions where people were needed like culture or spirit but soon learned the outcome wasn’t as effective or productive.

“People just weren’t motivated to be forced into a certain spot,” Mongold said. “So with this past term, we’ve opened up and changed the entire structure of the class and made it so that our students can do more of what they choose to do.”

In the beginning of the year, ASB had structured its class to have four total groups, two focused on culture events, and two focused on spirit events.

“These roles kept people from getting too involved in planning, and left them less motivated to do things outside their own work,” Mongold said.

Each group had about seven people but with about half being seniors. The groups were very strict and each individual was delegated to a specific role.”

“Another problem we had was that most of the groups consisted of seniors, which a majority were leaving this next term,” Mongold said

To solve the problems, ASB’s newest structure is composed of two groups, one in charge of spirit, and another in charge of culture.

“This way, once the seniors leave, each group will still have about seven returning members.” Mongold said. “All members are also free to contribute in any way they like and me interested and involved in all aspects, not just their own.”

ASB is also encouraging its underclassmen to take charge of the planning in order to prepare them for when the seniors depart, Mongold said.

“All of this is in effort to really keep our class running and motivated as well as gain our composure,” he said.