Last School Year was the last year where Bryan Haws was the teacher and advisor for the ASB Leadership class, with John Odell taking up the role in his absence, and while this is a massive change, this happens every year on a similar scale with the ASB President. The ASB President is an important job not just for Leadership, but for the West Salem High School community as well, outlining the direction for the students of the ASB class and essentially being in charge of every school event.
With such a large responsibility, it is important that the one in charge of the group knows what he’s doing, and that goes beyond the 3 weekly leadership meetings. The current President, Henry Baker, is involved in a myriad of clubs outside of the class, including NHS, Cross Country, and volunteering at the hospital. He also volunteers in other aspects of the community, with events like soup kitchens. All of this experience is very useful to have in any role, but in ASB it is extra valuable, even more so in the President position, due to how much it involves community engagement as well as working with other people and persevering, again, beyond the 3 days a week that Leadership connects.
The aim of Leadership has always been to generate and maintain school spirit, doing so through planning events and themed days at school and community functions like football, volleyball, and basketball games. But that is a very broad goal, and each president has a different way of approaching it. For Baker, this means, “We need bigger student sections, more participation in that sense, just getting more people involved, more people dressing up, more people having fun in high school.” He believes that this is definitely possible, and says that a difference between West and some other SKPS schools is that we have a “great potential for an amazing community, and we’ve just got to kind of bring that out in people.”
This approach is specific and allows the class to have a mostly complete outline, but despite this, there are still many challenges the class has to face, “Events take a lot more time than you think they do, and a lot more planning to people think they do, even like simple get-togethers, at the school for small things can take days of planning to make sure all like little details are ironed out.” And with plans for more dances, assemblies, and even a new Titan Spirit Hammer for Leadership to be in charge of, the planning and “hammering” out of details will be very important, as well as potentially being a difficult hoop to jump through.
With a changing status quo and an active new ASB President, there’s no telling what other new additions will come to West, things like the Spirit Hammer, the new dances, and the potential for restructuring in the leadership class. All that is certain is that the culture of West Salem High School is always changing, and while Leadership is responsible for laying the groundwork for this change, and planting the seeds for positive growth, it is the job of all students at West to participate in and foster the kind of environment that creates school spirit.
