The election for the 2024-25 Student Council Executive Board was held on Monday, Feb. 26. 

Shreya Chellu was elected executive board president; Ida Chang was elected vice president, Lyndia Zheng was elected treasurer and Nimisha Kasliwal was elected secretary.

Student Activities Coordinator Craig Alexander explained the duties of Executive Board members.  

“The president sits in on board meetings and sets the agenda for the upcoming year for Student Council,” he said.

The Executive Board includes two vice presidents. 

“One vice president works with the PTO and the other works with the Beachwood Bison Boosters,” he added.

“The secretary takes notes at Executive Board meetings and general Student Council meetings and the treasurer works on finding budgets for dances, White and Gold and other events,” Alexander said.

Besides the Executive Board, each grade has their own president, vice president, treasurer and 3-4 representatives. 

Alexander explained that class elections will be held in late April.

“Class representatives spread the word about spirit-related events in the high school,” Alexander said.

Student Council also organizes events that benefit BHS students. 

“With a small school, [prom] tickets for students become expensive and …  the Student Council aims to lower the costs as much as possible,” Zheng said.

In addition to organizing events, the Student Council provides an opportunity for student voices to be heard. The student council president attends Board of Education meetings, where they speak on behalf of the student body.

Although actions can be taken to address the concerns of the student body, Zheng indicates that there is a lot of red tape that hinders the Student Council, such as compliance with rules and administrative policies when making decisions. She emphasizes that while Student Council works hard to address every issue and concern, it is often difficult to do so. 

On the other hand, the Student Council has executed multiple charity drives and fundraisers this year. 

Ritika Iyer, representative for the class of 2027, explained the class’s participation with Olivia’s Dream, a charity drive coordinated jointly by the freshman and junior classes.

“Olivia’s Dream aims to provide kids who don’t have access to toys with something they can play with, and was named after a girl named Olivia who passed away in a fire in the Cleveland area,” Iyer said. “The toys that we gathered were given to the Olivia’s Dream organization.”

The class of 2027 also worked jointly with the junior class on a double good popcorn fundraiser, successfully raising over $1,600. Iyer added that the freshman class is also aiming to host restaurant fundraisers in Chipotle and Choolaah by the end of the year. 

“Right now we’re in the initial stages of fundraising and are just trying to get as much money as we can, and we hope to gather more money through the rest of high school,” she said. 

Fundraisers require much collective effort among the student body, and Iyer highlighted the key challenges that the class of 2027 has been facing. 

“Our biggest roadblock so far has been garnering student participation, and pushing the goals for Student Council to our class so that they recognize the importance of us gathering prom money,” she said. 

Aside from fundraisers, collaborations between the Student Council and the spirit and dance committees helped to organize spirit events such as football games and school dances. 

“Currently, the biggest collaborations between the Student Council and other student organizations occur through the spirit and dance committee,” Zheng said. “There has been talk about helping other clubs hold fundraisers, but nothing concrete has yet happened.” 

Zheng explained that one of the current goals of Student Council is to address scheduling conflicts, which would be resolved through the creation of a master list of all school clubs and activities. 

“Creating a master list of all the clubs will help students to have an easier time managing their extracurriculars,” Zheng said. 

“We’ve had stress relievers for students during midterms, such as therapy dogs in the Community Room for students who may be under stress,” she added.

Next year’s Student Council President-Elect Shreya Chellu hopes to foster more collaboration with other members on the Executive Board.

She has other goals for her term as well.

“I hope to do an overall community service project because we did a [successful] refugee drive this year,” she said.

“I really want to do a little bit more with the cafeteria committee because people really do want to see [changes] with that, and it’s been a little difficult in terms of communication,” Chellu said. 

According to Chellu, students have expressed concerns about prices and food options in the cafeteria.

Chellu also wants to boost school spirit by having announcements about clubs. 

“Giving more recognition to club competitions or sports teams [would boost school spirit],” Chellu said. “I think right now we have some recognition, but it could be better.” 

“On the announcements, we have a lot of announcements about the bus system,” she said. “How about ‘Hey, good luck for the science olympiad team tomorrow.’ Or, how about ‘Hey, congratulations to Model UN on their competition this weekend, they did really well.’”

“I think [announcing and honoring students’ accomplishments could] boost spirit and just foster a better sense of community within the student body,” Chellu said.

In previous years, there have been many ways the Student Council has represented the student body and helped the community. For example, David Silver (class of 2011) founded BHS’s pre-med club. Additionally, Hanal Leland (class of 2016) and volunteers made over 36,000 sun butter sandwiches to help the homeless population in Northeast Ohio and fight the issue of hunger. 

Another project Student Council took on was revising the dress code.

“President [Samah] Khan really wanted input on updating the high school’s dress code last year, and she worked very closely with Mr. Chase and Ms. Erkins to make sure that different cultures were represented in the code and that it was gender-neutral,” Alexander said.

Alexander said students in Student Council work really hard to make sure every BHS student has a voice.

Zheng mentioned several ways that students can get their voices heard in the school.

“One way is to run for Student Council because currently, class boards have fewer people than they need,” she said. “If you want to be a class representative, it’s very easy and you’re almost guaranteed that position.” 

“Another way would be to just talk with your Student Council representatives about the things that you care about,” she added. 

Alexander emphasized that getting involved with Student Council is a great way for students to make a difference in the school.