Entering the unusual school year, Forum is attempting to bring normalcy back to Blake. Typically, Forum elections are in the spring, but with the shutdown of school, they decided to push elections back. Although this has delayed the start of Forum’s planning, they still plan to take on their regular duties, as well as more.
New Student Body President, Sonia Baig ‘21, has big plans for the community and wants to emphasize transparency with the student body. Baig stated that her main goals are to “increase efficiency” and make Forum “more receptive with the student body,” by listening to the students’ wants. She plans to have students’ voices heard through town halls where students will “stop in and share what they would like to see Forum do or work on this year.” In addition, Forum charters all the clubs at Blake and did everything they could to make the recent virtual club fair “feel as real or as close to the original as possible”.
Forum Faculty Leader Ben Cady stated that he is very proud of students who are “working to make things better”. Cady, along with other members of the administration, felt that during the online period last spring, “it became a challenge to relay messages from Forum to the entire student body”, so freshman and sophomore class presidents were newly added this year. Cady states that the role is “still developing” and the “responsibilities for the roles are still undetermined”. Regardless, Forum envisions this addition of what is called the “executive committee” to be beneficial for the entire student body.
Cady is proud of Forum’s small actions to create a better student life. An example he gave were feminine products in all the bathrooms, larger cups in the lunchroom, higher quality tissues in all the classrooms, etc. Lastly, Cady admits that Forum “sometimes has a bad wrap” but he believes that it can be changed in the next few years with the group of student representatives
