Every year, staff members have been tasked with the responsibility for planning the annual Passion Day event, but in order to address crucial issues regarding student involvement, staff members turned to amplify student voices, assembling a new Passion Day planning committee.

“As the school has gotten larger, this is our fourth year, we now have more than 1,800 students,” Passion Day coordinator and library media specialist Pamela Quiros said. “We had input at the end of Passion Day last year from some of the students saying that we should have more student voices on the planning committee, so this year we implemented that.”

Consisting of a group of diligent students, the committee’s main objectives are to provide general input based on past endeavors with Passion Day in order to improve certain aspects of the event like attendance and session interaction. 

Two proposals that have been approved by the administration team include giving students the opportunity to use their Passion Day presentation in their portfolio as well as providing descriptions of the sessions beforehand rather than the day of.

“We try to decide what we can do to incentivize students to sign up to present more and what we can do to have a higher attendance because that day is mandatory and some people last year and the year before did not know this,” junior and committee member Mona Tavassoli said. 

As time progresses, the attendance rates follow. When Passion Day was introduced, approximately 400 students attended. However, as new classes were added with each year, this number skyrocketed. For the third year, data displayed that 1250 students participated and the expectations for this year range at a higher level. With these participation rates, the committee strives to cultivate better ways to increase not only student interest, but also student participation as speakers.

“[The committee] creates a better chance because more people are involved since we as students are representing the rest of our peers and ensuring that they are satisfied with an event as big as Passion Day,” sophomore and committee member Amitoj Singh said.