A New President For a New Year

Amelia Wright, Reporter

The year is ending, seniors are moving on, and the school recently voted for the new ASB officers for next year, with rising senior Shafer Newton becoming the new president.

“I wanted to be president to help our students, staff, and school. I want to make changes that will benefit this school,” said Newton.

Being president has a lot of responsibilities. Representing all of the different groups of students and staff is going to be Newton’s highest priority.

“Shafer will need to represent the different groups, students, and staff individually, but he also needs to bring them all together as a whole. His hardest job as president will be trying to keep everyone happy, because everyone wants something else, and they won’t always get it,” said leadership teacher Danielle O’Leary.

As president, many students and staff members will be coming to Newton with ideas about what the school needs to add or improve. In this position, Newton will need to decide what’s important and what can be put aside and addressed at a later time. Handling projects in a timely fashion will be just one of the barriers in his way.

Newton will have to balance action and attention between many different demands. Right now, he feels that developing and expanding school spirit is something that he really wants to focus on.

“I plan on making the school spirit bigger and better. I really want to get a bigger support group for all sports, especially the ones that don’t get recognition, like Knowledge Bowl,” said Newton.

Many students feel that this is very important, because all students should get cheered on and receive the spirit that their teams deserve.

Assemblies are also a topic that Newton intends to change. He wants to add more school spirit to the assemblies and he wants to get all of the students involved, rather than just a select population.

Peninsula High School has only had a couple spirit assemblies this year. Looking out over the bleachers, you see some students participating and others not really knowing what to do. Newton hopes to change this when he is president, getting everyone excited and participating

Parking has also been a big problem here at Peninsula High School and this is a  challenge that Newton is excited to tackle. The students here will be anticipating a change for better parking, and he feels that this is one of his most important jobs. With hard work, he is sure that he can make a change.

“I voted for Shafer because just now starting to learn to drive, I hope that I would be able drive to school and not have to be stressed out about finding a parking spot. I really hope that this parking situation would get changed for next year, and I felt Shafer would be able to make this change.” said Ellie Coberly, a freshman this year.

This is one of the more serious problems that will be focused on next year, but one more fun one will be new video announcements.

Newton wants to change the whole way that announcements are done. He feels that the announcements could be more fun, so he has started planning how to turn written announcements into videos. This will hopefully grab the attention of more students and encourage them to actually keep up with them, and it will also give the principle a break from reading them every morning.

Being president takes a lot of time, effort, hard work, and motivation. Newton will need to not only grow the school spirit but he needs to be the school spirit. Taking on all of these projects will take time, and thinking of ways to fundraise will be a big part what Newton needs to take on as president.

Many students, like Ellie, voted for Shafer because they believed that he can truly make this school better. Is he up to the challenge?