Student Council is an organization dedicated to planning student events and promoting school spirit. Currently at SHS, the senior class president is also awarded the duty of student body president. For many, this can be a stressful job, especially with other ongoing school activities.

“The senior class president is already in enough stress,” junior Zach Smith said.

In order to take some pressure off of the senior class president, Smith is proposing the leadership position, student body president, as a different election than class elections.

Smith has been in Student Council for all three years of his high school career and was the sophomore class president. This year, he says that he has stepped up to help senior Taylor Kincaid out, the current senior class president.

Kincaid was a one-act director in the winter and didn’t have a lot of spare time, so Smith says that he wanted to take some of the stress off of her, since he was a class president himself and knew she was too busy to always be there for student council.

“She was really wrapped up in her directing, so I had to make sure someone was there for (the student officers)…,” Smith said. “I stepped up and told Lenny ‘if you need somebody to do this, just let me know.’”

Smith says that he currently acts as student body president and his responsibility is to make sure that other officers know what they are doing and help guide them if needed.

“I didn’t really expect to come into my junior year and be student council president, it just happened,” Smith said.

Social studies teacher Joseph Leonard agrees with Smith that there needs to be a separate election for student body president starting next year.

“From my viewpoint, as working with the student council, anytime we could have more leadership positions, it’s a good thing,” Leonard said.

Leonard has been in charge of Student Council for almost 13 years and says that there used to be a separate position, however, he can’t remember why they combined the senior class officer and student body president.

Leonard says that this idea is not yet concrete and it still has to be approved by administration. He also says that there are many more details to be decided later on.

 “We have a lot of stuff to iron out with Martzall and administration,” Leonard said.

If this idea does go through, they are hoping to appoint this role to someone who has previous experience in student council and who can dedicate most of their time to this.

“It’s not really a learn on the job position,” Leonard said.