Student Council officers for the 2018-2019 school year were announced on Friday, June 1. Junior President-elect Amanda Armstrong and junior Vice President-elect Gage Fuller defeated the junior tickets of Emerson Kiefer and Henry Stafford and David Hill and Nick Smith, along with the sophomore ticket of Daniel Ryu and Robert Glazer. Meanwhile, junior Treasurer-elect Daniel Nee edged out junior Jeremy Kunen, and junior Secretary-elect Andy Wang overcame both junior Abaigeal Donaldson and sophomore Angela Chi.

The election saw record low turnout levels. 120 out of 237 freshmen voted, or 50.63% of eligible voters. 92 out of 213 sophomores voted, or 43.19% of eligible voters. 87 of 204 juniors voted, or 42.65% of eligible voters. It is possible that the low turnout was a result of paper ballots during lunch being used as opposed to electronic voting.

The four officers will now prepare to plan, organize and develop several events and activities for the upcoming school year.

“Both Gage and I are extremely excited to begin our preparation for these leadership roles next year,” Armstrong said. “Honestly, we were both quite nervous about the election. The other candidates are all very smart people and we respect them a lot, so it was nerve-wracking running against them and watching their videos. We’ve been thinking about ideas ever since we decided to run together, so we’re looking forward to getting the chance to implement them. Both of us care about helping others and making things the best they can be. We’ve both had amazing experiences thus far at Wayland and can’t wait to improve these experiences for the student body next year.”

“I feel confident about the makeup of Student Council next year,” Nee said. “I hear there are significant changes in the power [we have and the] decisions we will have to make. As such, my outlook is positive, though time will tell how exactly these changes play out. I’m just as curious as anyone else as to what the changes are, as well as how and why they were implemented.”

“I am pretty happy about winning the election and also very content with the abilities of the officer team that has been put together,” Wang said.”I think that [our] priorities all align really well, [and] we all have goals to improve many traditional events of Wayland. Especially knowing that we will be receiving more weight in decision-making next year, my outlook is optimistic and I very much believe that we can adhere to all of our campaign promises and be very successful in making the next year fun for everyone.”