COASTAL OBSERVER

Responsibility comes in stages, according to Elijah Mason, and student council is the first stage for a lot of middle and high school students.

Mason, Waccamaw High’s senior class president and the state representative for the National Association of Student Councils, said the main goal of a student council district event was to spark a love for leadership in attendees.

It’s a shared experience, he said.

“When you start to get a little burnt out, you can see 500 other students that could be going through the same thing. It gives us an ongoing community that we can bounce ideas off of that we can all relate to each other in some way,” he said. “It is hard to be a leader in any capacity, whether you’re the president, a senator, the governor, a CEO, or if you’re just a class president.”

More than 400 student council members from approximately 20 schools attended Monday’s S.C. Association of Student Councils District II rally at Waccamaw High. District II is geographically the largest in the state that covers 11 eastern counties.

“We don’t have as much participation because our schools are not closely contained,” said Julie Humowitz, who has been the faculty adviser to the Waccamaw High Student Council since 1994.

Abby Williams, a senior who is the district’s chair and the WHS student body president, was happy to see a large and “overwhelming” turnout at the rally.

“It means so much that so many schools from so far away, like up to three hours, took time out of their day to come and conference with everybody else,” Williams said.

Mason said they’re not just seen as leaders in school.

“We really represent just a friend, someone that can speak up for you. They feel like they can come to us. We really try to foster that inclusivity,” he said.

Thanks to student council, Williams said Waccamaw High events are turned into traditions such as the rally and next week’s homecoming festivities. A lot of the work they do goes unnoticed, as she said students don’t recognize the council’s impact.

“We’re the ones going and putting up banners, cleaning up the student section after football games and that kind of thing,” Williams said. “We do make an impact, whether people realize it or not.”

Williams sees student council as a way to let student voices be heard.

“You can complain all you want, but you can make that change as well. So unless you’re going to do something about it, you don’t really have a reason to complain,” she said. “Council is definitely an organization that gives you a platform to make a lot of change in your school.”

Humowitz said she has seen her student council members learn skills such as time management, task delegation and accountability. She described them as an independent and ambitious group of student leaders.
“They see a need and they just jump in. They’re not scared to ask,” she said. “They plan it, they execute it, and I’m just kind of there advising.”

“She’s been our student council rock forever. She’s grown us as leaders,” Mason said of Humowitz.

In order to be considered for student council, students must fill out an application to show they meet requirements of having a 3.5 weighted GPA and no disciplinary infractions. That’s not the only way to get involved.

Williams said student council recently created a volunteer program where students can get informally involved. Student volunteers are not considered full members but they can work to be appointed as a member of council if they participate often.

“That’s really elevated the amount of involvement,” she said. “We appreciate all the help.”

“You just have to bring your skills,” Mason added.

From Georgetown County, Waccamaw Middle and Carvers Bay Middle School Student Council members spent their first day of fall break at the rally as a part of the school district’s modified year-round calendar. Other schools got the day off in order to attend.

“Even though we were on break this week. I was really glad that they were able to participate,” Humowitz said.

Events like these are important, Humowitz said, because a lot of schools don’t have the resources to attend a state convention.

“We try to do this so that we can provide them with the same resources and opportunities that we’ve been lucky enough to have after all these years,” she said. “We often play each other in sports, but we don’t come together to share ideas. So to have a collaboration with each other is another thing that is very important about something like this.”

This year’s theme was “blasting off with leadership” which is a play on words, as well as a main goal for Williams, to make space for student leaders. 

“My biggest goal was to show everyone that there are these opportunities in our district and making space for everyone, but also helping increase that level of involvement within our district,” she said. “It gives you a lot of perspective to see what other schools have the power to do and what they lack.”

Williams also said it was “on theme” to invite Wes Hitt to deliver the keynote speech at the event. Hitt is a physics and nuclear engineering professor at Coastal Carolina University who also serves as the head of Coastal’s space program. 

He gave the students advice and engaged participation as he spoke. Hitt had the audience do a stadium wave to demonstrate how difficult it is to lead a large group of people. He also asked the students about group presentations and why they usually turn out to be bad experiences. Standing in front of a room of over-achievers, he said he assumed their main issue.

“Almost always, one student is doing all the work, and everybody else is just sort of riding their coattails,” Hitt said. “If you’re the student doing all the team’s work, you’re part of the problem.”

That usually shocks his engineering students to hear, Hitt said, because students are assessed on individual contributions such as test grades and attendance in an educational environment. But he said that’s not the case in industry situations.

“An important part of transitioning into being a leader is leading people instead of leading contributions,” he added.