On Wednesday, February 16th, Erie High held the first of the student class president debates this year. Freshman gathered in the auditorium to listen to the candidates for Sophomore class president. This year there are 5 candidates. They are Melanie Bell, Zeke White, Kennedy Gorske, Lily Coventon, Nicholas Pawlowski, Taryn Petruncola. 

During the debate, each candidate presented a campaign video, and also answered questions. Here’s the rundown:

Melanie Bell –  Bell is a current member of StuGo, and according to her, “not only have I been in StuGo, but a lot of my ideas have been done [in there].” If she is elected, she plans on pushing for new privileges for sophomores, “One that I’m really pushing for, if for sophomores to leave for lunch, because throughout your sophomore year, most of us will get our licenses.” 

Zeke White – White, according to himself, is a hard worker, who looks forward to accomplishing his goals, “I work extremely hard to accomplish all my goals, and I am very ambitious and organized, and I love just getting things done.” He says. If he gets elected, he wants to work on the activities the school has, “I think we should have more events for less supported extracurriculars, and just have more events in general.”

Kennedy Gorske – Gorske desires to improve the inclusivity of the school, and increase the involvement of underclassmen, “I think it would be great for our school to add underclassmen in more activities and events, and just have underclassmen more involved in our school.” If she gets elected, she says, “I’ll always listen to your ideas and opinions.”

Taryn Petruncola – Petruncola has been to numerous schools throughout her life, and she wants to take her experiences at each school and put it to good use  at Erie High, “I might not know all of you, but I think that because I’ve been to five, maybe six schools… I have a lot of experience with many different types of student communities, and I know there’s a lot of events my old schools did that this school didn’t do. I would like to use my experience at a lot of different schools to help this school.” If she gets elected, one of the actions she plans to take is getting Erie High involved with Erie businesses, “I want to partner with more Erie businesses so that we can get discounted or free food from, like, pizza places or coffee, or smoothies: anything.”

Nicholas Pawlowski – As a self-described competitive person, Pawlowski plans to get change done at this school using his competitiveness, “This means if you present to me an idea… I am going to make sure that that is prioritized over everything else,” because according to him, “it’s a competition.” If he gets elected he wants to work on unifying the sophomore class, “One of the things I was thinking of doing is incorporating more class unifying activities… I feel a lot more whole sophomore class activities would be amazing.”

Lily Coventon – Coventon was not present for the debate, so information on her campaign comes from her video. She is interested in both engineering and painting, and puts an importance on grades, “As your sophomore class president I promise to reward those kids that have good grades, for their effects” She wants to promote change in the community as well.

At Erie High students are highly encouraged to put thought into who they vote for their class president. Election Day will be coming up soon on March 17th.