Recently, our student body elected SGA (Student Government Association) officers and representatives for the 2021-2022 school year. With all the uncertainty and changes that have been happening over the past couple of years, we wanted to know what our officers had planned for the year and what their goals were. We interviewed SGA President, Omar Velasco, about why he chose to run for President and what he hoped to accomplish. Omar said, “After being in Montevallo for so long and knowing so many people, I felt that I could represent a lot of students… I hope to… make sure we have a fun time with our school events with Covid still in play”.

We interviewed the rest of the officers and there were similar sentiments. William Zou, Vice President, says, “I want to have more student events” when talking about his goals for the year. Jose Martinez, the Secretary, says he “wants to vocalize more the minorities of this school… there’s still some kids here that don’t speak fully English and they might have good ideas for this school”. 

We interviewed the sponsor of the SGA, Mrs. Lee Pastor, and asked her for the goals of SGA this year. She responded with, “Well, I’d like for us to be a lot more active and have more events, activities, fundraising because of the last two years of COVID.” Due to COVID and the strange past two school years, a lot of activities had to be shut down as a precaution. Many clubs couldn’t meet and among those, was SGA themselves. In the past two years, SGA had a very small presence on campus and wasn’t able to accomplish much. This year, with the school year trying to get back into the groove of things, there seem to be many hopes for this group.

Leilia Mendoca, the newest Media Agent for SGA, said “I hope to spread news and upcoming events for our student body and tell them about the decisions we make on their behalf for the school.” I asked her for her goals for SGA as a whole for this upcoming year. “I hope to create better leadership for myself and across the school,”. 

When asked about why Blessing Adejumo, this year’s treasurer, ran for student council, she responded with, “It’s my last year at high school. I wanted to do something different, go out of my comfort zone.” She said she wanted to make an “impact” and make it a “fun year for everyone”. We also asked her for her goals for SGA within her respective role and she told us that she wants to come up with more fundraising ideas. “More than last year and have fun. My goal is to have a good homecoming and more events so people can be interactive in the school.”

With all this being said, it seems like this year will be a very exciting year for SGA. We hope to see them prosper with their new team and ideas this year!