As the 2018 school year comes to an end, a new student council is needed for the following school year for the house system. On April 23, a student election was held for candidates to try to woo their peers to elect them for the position of School Vice Captain, Vice Captain of Spirit, and Vice Captain of Program.

The position for School Captain was passed down to Patrick O’Brien ’19 as he ran uncontested. Estefan Granucci ’19, Michael Gray ’20, and Sean Moore ’19 ran for School Vice Captain; Louie Mezie ’19, Thomas Monfredini ’19, Ryan Quock ’19, and Vherny Rustrian ’19 ran for School Vice Captain of Program; Cheyne Fernandez ’20, Marcus Reimer ’19, and Christopher Yung ’19 ran for Vice Captain of Spirit.

Following their speeches, students were dismissed to their second block class to cast their votes on Schoology. At the end of the day, the votes were tallied and the new electees were announced. Granucci was elected Vice School Captain, Rustrian was elected Vice Captain of Program, and Fernandez was elected for Vice Captain of Spirit.

Even though this is the second year for Student Parliament, the electees have already seen improvements from the old student government and wish to better it under their newly obtained leadership roles.

“The old system was definitely biased, especially in rallies where it was hard for other classes to get involved and feel apart of it, especially the freshman class, and so I think there is definitely more brotherhood than there already was and deeper connection between your classmates and more rivalry between your classmates,” O’Brien said. “Before, it was seniors versus juniors and that’s cool, but now your friends and the people you have been going to school for four years are talking it up in the hallways about how your house is better as opposed to their class.”

Granucci wishes Riordan, as a whole, to be committed to making the school the best it can be. He hopes to improve the new house system by giving more power to the voices of the students in their ideas and opinions.

He said, “I want to incorporate a system where any complaint or constructive criticism from the students can be heard and physicalized, whether it is in mentor groups or any other facet the house system covers in our day-to-day life and able to adhere to student complaints.”

Fernandez hopes to be persistent and manage time better for next year to make spirit week and rallies more enjoyable for everyone. This year, he saw flaws on how these events were advertised to the school and desires to fix it.

“I didn’t really see a good amount of organization and inclusiveness. I felt like we were not on top of our game informational-wise,” he said. “I want the community to be in the loop of what’s going on. I want to be on top of the timing of [when] these things are announced because announcements had been really lax the past few months when we had these organized events, and I want to show the students that these events can be really fun with added planning.”