This article is a follow up to last week’s article on Student Alliance. In the last article, I discussed Student Alliance’s role in the school. This article covers more of the relationship between SA and the administration and general student opinions of SA.

There was a point in recent Trevian history where the students had five governmental organizations representing them. What was originally Student Alliance and a senate for each grade is now just SA and the freshman senate.

This recent waning of student government groups, all of which happened in Principal Tim Dohrer’s tenure, is actually for the better, according to Dohrer. “We made some conscious decisions to make a clear student government arrangement,” said Dohrer. “SA wanted to become a bigger player.”

With only two parliamentary student governments left, there is a lot less overlap between who is representing the students. Before, there were instances where the Sophomore and Junior senates were unable to do anything because SA had already taken on the project they wished to do.

When the senates were abandoned, the class officers ceased to exist as well. SA’s structure has officers but only for those only in the 9th period club. Dohrer would be open to the return of officers but noted that “having no class president is a trend. They are leading by committee instead of leading by an individual.”

If class officers were to return, Dohrer feels that the adviser chairs should not be in charge of class boards as it would create too much conflict. The conflict lies in the fact that the boards would meet during advisery but adviser chairs meet with students during advisery.

Some students are disappointed that there are no class officers. “I heard that there are not going to be anymore senior class officers through one of my friends. It feels like [the school] took away a classic part of high school life,” said junior Harrison Homer. Even without a class president, students still have SA representing them.

Student Alliance is acting as the voice of the students, however many students feel that SA is not hearing them. “They don’t take surveys to find out about issues that matter [to us],” said Junior Sam Cothran. SA actually does hand out surveys, but not all advisories. They also hold advisery forums so they can reach out to the student body.

Ian Mitchell, a student who attends the forums, enjoys them and feels SA is doing a good job. “Students just don’t know that there is a group advocating for them,” Mitchell said, “It’s great what they do, but they should inform the student body more. They should raise awareness.”

Concerning the awareness of SA in the student body, Policy Committee head, Zach Urisman said, “Students who aren’t particularly keen on reading the publicly-available minutes from [Student Alliance meetings] don’t necessarily know that our job as a body is more nuanced than [just delivering results].”

There has been some talk within SA to publicize more and solicit more feedback.

Urisman’s comments are in response to the general question the student body of “what has Student Alliance done?”

Junior Paul Song feels there is an issue with responsiveness stating, “I feel that SA has not really done anything all that big that I noticed but that feeling may be because they don’t really raise awareness on what they’re doing.”

Can the student body’s opinion of their student government really be that negative?

Junior Ruth Lee thinks so. “The student body’s opinion on student government is not that positive. There are not a lot of tangible changes at school that Student Alliance has made,” said Lee. Lee also said that the student body is not informed. An example she gave was when she was voting for SA officers, “we might not have much personal connection to them, so we just vote for whomever.”

Even though some members of the student body feel that they are not accomplishing much, SA still represents the student body. Dohrer is the administration liaison to SA and his door is always open for them. In fact, most days during 9th period, he meets with many SA representatives to discuss current projects.

Dohrer meets with SA both formally and informally. The informal meetings are the previously stated ones, where they stop by his office. The formal meetings are quarterly luncheons where they discuss SA’s agenda. The biggest project on the docket is ETC or all school seminar day.

ETC Day is not a novel idea to New Trier. In the past there were seminar days in 2001, 2003 and 2006. What makes ETC different is that it marks the first of a new two year cycle of seminar days. Every two years, a day like ETC will occur.

Dohrer will be holding a school wide forum about the cafeteria food scheduled for Dec. 19 during periods 5 and 6 in the Epi Center.