Student Representative Council Reflection

Student Name	Yasmyn Ntege
Activity Name / Description	SRC
Location	In School
Was it C, A, S or a combination?	CAS
Hours of CAS	8 Months

I was chosen to be a dorm captain and as we were many of us, there needed to be a representative who pushed ideas forward and drove discussions. I decided that that was exactly what I wanted to be – the voice for all residential students – the residential representative. I was able to prepare a speech to present to the whole residential community and was voted in.

Being the residential representative meant I was also part of the SRC. Before the residential community was seen as an independent body however, that created communication and collaboration problems within the day and res community. Involving a residential representative was a way to bridge this gap as best as possible and so ideas decided by both the day and res community were in tune. I enjoyed the experience in the SRC as being an executive member I really feel that we had the power to make change.  

As a member of the SRC we had to come up with ideas that involved the whole school. We held parties that were great from the feedback we received; we also held a sporting event the whole year round. This event was football and for the longest time it was just a boys thing but this year, I acted as a voice to ensure girls got as much time as the boys did on Friday afternoons. Because this was the first time this was happening, there were a few miscommunications between the teams or some teams didn’t have enough members. But towards the end of the year, I posted onto the year level group, rallying all the girls and got a whole lot of positive responses.

As I am an art student, I was able to transfer my skills in this area and was the one who made most if not all the posters for upcoming SRC led events. This was beneficial as I got a lot of feedback and was thus able to improve my skills in this area. It was fun to work on and I learnt how to work with complicated, more advanced and professional design applications such as Adobe InDesign. This will help me a lot as well in Art if I wish to use this app as my already profound (but still growing) knowledge in this software give me a head start.

One of the major problems we encountered as the SRC was having constant communication with the heads of school as decisions were being made. At times the heads would make harsh decisions, which the student body would not agree on and the SRC was caught in headlights, as the students would blame us. We had numerous meetings with the head’s of school with the argument that the student representative counsel should have input in decision making as it represents the major stakeholders that keep the school going, the students. Although the senior leadership team to some time to get used to this process as it was an adjustment, they began to approach us more which was a great success on not only our part but the school as a whole as we begin to work more like a democratic system where all parties involved are acknowledged and accepted.

I also faced the problem of trying to conjoin both the residential community and the day community in the most impartial way. There was a lot of backlash from the residential side when focusing on the topic of allowing day students to attend our events. This was a good idea because they often felt left out. This was a demand from the parents association and also the heads of school. In the end we tried it but there needed to be a lot more fore planning so that everything made sense logistically as well as economically. This is something that I think the new SRC will carry on into the next year as this problem remained unsolved.

All in all however, I enjoyed my time in the SRC and it taught me a lot about the importance of responsibility and communication. It was also a really fun experience and I was able to branch out and talk to a lot more people than I normally would because of this high position of leadership. Next time however, I will always have a timetable to work around SRC and planning because I found that it interrupted with a lot of our schedules. I would also advise this to any upcoming members as, as much as it was fun, it was also very time consuming.

SUPERVISOR: Ms Emma Thompson & Ms Aalia Visram