Members of the first Class Council at Saint Mary’s will be announced this week. The Class Council will take the place of Class Boards, Brittany House, director of student involvement, said in an email.
The Class Council will hold the same responsibility of building class community through organizing events, programs and parent weekends, similar to the current duties of the Class Boards, House said. The decision to restructure Class Boards into Class Councils was made in collaboration with current Class Board presidents and vice presidents.
“The current Class Board presidents and vice presidents saw a need for change, and I worked very closely with them, as their adviser, to develop the new structure and utilized their feedback, in addition to benchmarking, to determine the new structure,” she said.
The four Class Boards each had different numbers and arrangements of members, she said. The new Class Council will consist of nine members, including two representatives from each class, and an additional representative from the senior class who will be the president of the overall council, House said.
In order to avoid confusion with the previously existing structure, benchmarking was conducted to determine a new name for the restructured Class Board, House said. The process determined that many schools with a similar group use the name ‘council,’ and the name was applied to the group at Saint Mary’s.
“The hope is the new structure will provide more cohesion among the council, a higher level of accountability for all council representatives and a smoother transition for the first-year class representatives,” she said. “The new Class Council selection process follows the same guidelines as the other ‘big boards’ of Student Activities Board, Student Diversity Board and Residence Hall Association.”
Applications for Class Council Representatives and Class Council President were due March 22. According to the application on OrgSync, positions for these ‘big boards’ cannot run as tickets. Applicants need to have a 2.5 GPA or higher and be in good academic and social standing with the College. The newly-selected members will move onto campus early this fall to prepare for the 2016-17 school year.
