Portola High ASB Hosts its Fourth Annual Election Convention
ASB hosted its annual election convention on March 31 during the school day in the theater to determine the elected ASB positions for the 2023-24 school year.
- Junior Arjit Singh: ASB president
- Junior Michael Shen: ASB vice president
- Junior Taisho Shiono: senior president
- Junior Kate Niho: senior vice president
- Sophomore Mahat Chandra: junior president
- Sophomore Zoe Wynn: junior vice president
- Freshman Jamie Youn: sophomore president
- Freshman Kesin Jayakumar: sophomore vice president
- Sophomore Arden Sundaram: girls’ athletic commissioner
- Juniors Madison Curran & Emmett Lo: spirit and rally commissioners
- Junior Gabriel Mutsvangwa: student representative
“From the elected positions at least, I’m really proud,” ASB secretary and senior Caroline Kim said. “I know, it’s a lot of work and a lot of stress to be on that stage. So with all their responses, they all did a good job.”
The preliminaries determined the top two candidates for each position, except for spirit and rally commissioner which took the top four, according to ASB and activities co-director Emily Sheridan. For the first round, each candidate answered a set of questions prepared by Caroline Kim, ASB president and senior David Kim and ASB treasurer and senior Acelyn Nguyen.
“The part I really like about it is the election convention allows us to take it a step further and to ask these candidates questions that more specifically relate to the job that they’re interested in taking on,” Sheridan said. “So instead of just a popular vote, you really get a feel for whether a candidate is prepared for the position that they want.”
Delegates from each advisement voted between candidates in the first round, and candidates continued into the second round if they did not gain a majority vote of sixty percent or more, according to David Kim. During the second round, delegates asked questions to the candidates.
“There are many factors to choosing a candidate, but the most important would probably be an attraction of interest to their character and personality and how upbeat they are and how social they are because it shows how much representation they can bring from the students to ASB,” delegate and sophomore Zoya Khan said.
ASB planned two activities for the delegates: Athletic director Peter Abe’s advisement won a competition for best advisement flag, and an activity in which each row had to pass up a holiday item (the theme for the delegates) that they had on, and the row that brought up that item to the front the fastest won.
The ASB interest meeting for appointed positions will be held on April 18 during office hours in the ASB room.
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Maitri Allani is the Media Director and a Business Manager for her second and final year of Portola Pilot. She loves to write and read, especially horrible...
