Cameron Spurr

Grade 12 graduation will take place at Central Hall Westminster with extra COVID-19 regulations and will be available to watch over livestream. Grade 12 students may only invite two guests and will be seated on the ground floor rather than the stage.

Following presidential speeches via Zoom, members of the Social Justice Council elected their new co-presidents April 28. The newly elected co-presidents are Olivia Benjamin-MacDonald (’21) and Zarina Choudhari-Stewart (’21), who are taking the reins from former co-presidents Jasmin Taylor (’21) and Talia De Beer (’20).  

For the rest of this school year and the next, Choudhari-Stewart hopes to “reforge the connection of this club and the student body.” 

Benjamin-MacDonald agrees with Choudhari-Stewart. Going forward, one of her main goals is to “establish SJC as its own safe space” for the student body to feel comfortable to approach. 

Furthermore, Choudhari-Stewart is looking forward to “restructuring and remodeling particular aspects” of the council as well as “taking SJC into a larger level.”

Benjamin-MacDonald believes that SJC brings awareness to certain issues as well as addresses common misconceptions through different events. 

“When we celebrate certain days in the school year I think we do a good job at raising awareness, for example informing why we are doing a certain bake sale, why we are bringing a certain speaker or why we are posting different things on our social media platform,” she said. 

As leaders of SJC, Choudhari-Stewart said that she thinks that it is necessary to expand on its events and go more in-depth as a whole.  

“We also want [to] focus this year on how to deal with issues and problems that come up often and how to better equip the members of the council and hopefully the high school with how to address these situations,” she said. “Not necessarily with us giving a lecture, but individual, personal connections by talking to people and figuring out where these problems are and how to make them better.” 

SJC is also introducing two new leadership positions for the remainder of this year and next year, whose elections took place May 5. These positions are Aequitas lead and media director. There will be two Aequitas leads, Alice Agostinelli (’20) and Rachel Brooks (’20). The media director will be Mona Marouf (’21). In addition, the council is looking into possibly opening more positions in the future.