Submit to The Scrivener! - University Liggett School

N E W SStudent Council - Then and Nowby Damiana SorrellStudent Council Past Years v. Student CommissionTodayA large number of people in the Liggett community,including myself until recently, are unaware ofthe fact that there are a number of documents thattell us about the student government in our school.These documents include charters, minutes frompast meetings and pictures from the year 1915 untilthe 1990s. When Student Council, now the StudentCommission, got together last year to create a charter,everyone thought that therewas no existing charter thathad been written out, but weall were wrong. It was thoughtthat we had created the firstwritten charter and minutesfor the University LiggettSchool. When I went to theDevelopment office to see formyself if there was any writtendocuments from past studentgovernment, and was shockedwhen I found out that thesethings did exist. To start off,of course as everyone knowsthere were no computers backin 1915 so the first constitutionthat was made was handwrittenand over 15 pages long.The document was titled Constitutionof the Junior Self-GovernmentLeague of The LiggettSchool. The handwriting of theteacher or student that wrotethe constitution was immaculatealong with the vocabulary.I’m not trying to say that our vocabulary today is notup to par, but as I was shifting through each page thewords that were being used were very beautiful andseemed to capture me and made me want to keepreading. As I was reading through this constitution Iwas amazed at how structured everything was andhow they made sure that they wrote in full detail theresponsibilities of each person and how they had tocarry out her (because Liggett was an all girl schoolthen) job to remain a person in the government.The differences in the way things were ran withStudent government years ago and today are many,although that isn’t to say that we don’t have many similaritiesbecause we do. In fact the similarities we havetell us that someone had to know of the past charterssomewhere in our history because we reuse a lot of theirprocedures and also a lot of what the past student councildid for our school is still being put into effect today. Theminutes for the year of 1915 and some years after, allstarted with the same 3 sentences and were taken verydifferently than the minutes today. Back then, they meetingswere called for one very specific purpose and whateverit was, it was something serious and that was goingto be tackled at that meeting.There were not any prolongingsituations that the governmentdidn’t take care of and they werevery serious about what they did.In 1949 Liggett was called theGrosse Pointe Country Day Schooland this was the next year that wehave dated that the student governmentmade another Constitution.This was the first year thateverything was typed out insteadof handwritten and the vocabularyalso had changed dramaticallysince then as you probablyhave guessed. This year and allthe years before, not only was the9th-12th graders together, butalso the 7th and 8th graders. Theywere part of Student Council alsowhich is a big difference becausewe now have separate campuses.During 1949 and the years beforethat, there was no where in thedocuments where it listed whatthe Grade Pointe Average hadto be for the officers or what would get them kicked outof the Council. This was the first year that they identifiedthemselves as the Student Council, although we havejust changed the name to the Student Commission. Therewas not a President or Vice-President like there is now orlike it was in 1915. The two heads were both called theCo-Presidents and one example of how we still use theirmethods today is how these Co-Presidents were chosen.They would make a speech the May before the next academicyear and the whole student body would vote. Theother officers on the board were picked by their individualclassmates in their grade. The Co-Presidents switchedroles which is a very big difference. Whoever they pick to