...and that's why you should vote me, Caroline Soler for South-West representative!

It seems like it was only yesterday that my best friends were cheering on my Student Council (StudCo) campaign video and boy! has it been a wild ride since that day.

I will forever remember our first Student Council meeting. Upon joining the virtual Google Meet, I recognized only two familiar faces: Briana Lee from my quadmester one classes and Abeed Zaman from my home school.

The other four? COMPLETE. STRANGERS. TO. ME.

However, I would soon come to learn that the six faces beaming back at me through the screen of my MacBook, cover every walk of life offered here at Ottawa Carleton Virtual Secondary School (OCVSS). Athletes, artists, academics, you name it, someone on our team is interested in it!

Speaking from experience, a traditional Student Council usually tackles one or two projects at once. However, that is not normally the case here at OCVSS! Having seven Execs representing 25% of all OCDSB Secondary Students allows us to split up and conquer several meetings, tasks and events at once, based on our strengths.

Organized chronologically below are a list of past and current events organized by Student Council!

At our first StudCo meeting, Kelly Pham and I were chosen to be Co-Presidents. When Kelly and I first met, we were absolute strangers with almost NOTHING in common. Kelly likes volleyball, I like skiing and running. She has an older brother, I have a younger sister. She plans to study science, I plan to study commerce...you get the idea. We talked maybe once a week at most and solely about StudCo. However, right before our first big board-wide meeting, we decided to meet and have a “quick” planning session. Next thing you know, four hours have passed and we are engrossed in the deepest conversation possible for two individuals who had just met, and before we knew it we became the best of friends! Side note: StudCo is awesome in that sense! At the last PresCo (a meeting with all the StudCo Presidents across OCDSB) meeting, Kelly and I fielded several questions on behalf of the 4,500 OCVSS students, about OCDSB’s first ever virtual education institution asked by the other Co-Presidents.

Next, our student senator, Josh Gertsvolf has passionately represented OCVSS at two Senate meetings. During the first meeting, the Senate spoke primarily about improving communication between schools throughout the board, as well as in-person vs. online cohorts. At the second, recognizing challenges with student mental health was the main subject of discussion.

On Thursday December 10, OCVSS Parent Council will hosted their first meeting. Abeed Zaman and Briana Lee attended the session, representing the StudCo team. The pair gathered feedback from parents regarding their child(ren)’s experience assimilating into the culture of OCVSS and informed parents about our past successful events.

On Tuesday December 8, I led our first leadership training sessions for four dozen specially chosen, exceptional grade eleven and twelve students where we discussed effective leadership, communication, teamwork and identifying and solving injustices, as well a run through of our orientation plan, in preparation for our grade nine Team-Building/ orientation event.

December 14th- Athlete Monday (modeled by Dana)

December 15th- Tropical Tuesday (modeled by Caroline (me!)

December 16th- Colourful Wednesday (modeled by Kelly-11 & Abeed-12)

December 17th- Pyjama Thursday (modeled by Josh and Ashley)

December 18th- Holiday Friday (modeled by Briana)

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Being the Executive with the most prior StudCo experience has been a valuable and humbling teaching experience for myself. This meant that it was up to me to ease our members who were new to StudCo into the process and answer several questions to assist them in their catch up. However, it was impressive to see how quickly they were able to catch on and they have been thriving ever since. It baffles me to think that a little over a month ago, the majority of us were strangers to one another. However now, even though we are all learning virtually, we are very much a close knit team. It is exciting how we all bring different experiences and ideas to the table, which allow for us to all think outside the traditional box. This may sound a little cheesy but I am truly honored to be an OCVSS StudCo Exec and Co-President! Student Council has allowed me to make more friends for life while simultaneously allowing me to help out the entire scholastic community. Furthermore, we look forward to expanding our team in the New Year. Currently, there are two ways for YOU to become involved with Student Council!

If you are interested in becoming a StudCo executive, we are in need of two representatives for each grade! Grade Reps would be the main source of communication between the seven StudCo Execs and the students in their grade. Please submit this application if interested and StudCo will be in contact with the eligible running candidates soon.

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Executive members: Caroline Soler, Kelly Pham, Briana Lee, Josh Gertsvolf, Abeed Zaman, Ashley Ghaie and Dana Abozmal. In case you missed the introduction of our seven StudCo Execs in the last issue of OCV News: The Virtual Voice, check out our introduction interviews.

Layout and pics by Daria Maystruk