On Sept. 26 through Oct. 4 Manitou Springs High School held Homecoming week. Traditionally, MSHS has a spirit day for each day of the week, and the Student Council plans the majority of Homecoming week events.
Liz Tindall, one of MSHS’s Student Council advisors and one MSHS’s teachers, believes that without Student Council, there would not be much of a Homecoming week. “I’m not sure who would plan the events if not StuCo,” Tindall said.
Tindall feels that students don’t truly know how much time the Student Council spends outside of class for events. “StuCo spends a lot of hours at school that no one knows about, getting hallways ready, getting the dance ready and planned,” Tindall said. “The week itself is really busy and exhausting for StuCo members because they’re at just about every event.”
She also wants students to know that StuCo has been taking feedback into consideration from last year. “They spent time focusing on suggestions and feedback that they had gotten from the student body,” Tindall said. “I want everyone to know that we did work really hard to take the student body’s voice into account.”
It’s important to her that students understand how Student Council members tackle Homecoming week. “Student Council members are divided into different committees for Homecoming week,” Tindall said. “They spent 12 class periods preparing for events, ordering supplies, coordinating with other groups, as well as helping each other to make sure that everything gets done in time.”
Tindall believes that the Student Council tries to think about the school as a whole. “They truly want these events to be exciting, memorable and fun for everyone in the school, not just themselves,” Tindall said. “The amount of time that they spend is just astronomical.”
She is incredibly proud of the Student Council and the work they have put in. “I am super proud of the Student Council for the creativity they had this year. It’s hard to try new things,” she said.
Tindall has watched how the Student Council has really expanded on their ideas this year for Homecoming week. “I think our Student Council members tried to step out on a limb and try some new things,” Tindall said. “I think they created some great events last week, and I am proud of their work ethic.”
Mackinzy Wall serves this year as the Senior Class President. She feels that the biggest struggle of Homecoming week is the hallways and the dance. “The biggest part of it was coming up with ideas for the hallways and decorations,” Wall said.
She, along with Tindall, also wants people to understand that the Student Council puts in work outside of school for these decorations. “We have to spend hours and hours doing that and setting it up and creating it and making ideas,” Wall said.
She knows that it’s hard to please everyone. “People complain so much about Homecoming but just behind the scenes of getting a DJ or getting Homecoming set up is challenging” Wall said. “I think that’s one thing that most kids don’t really think about when they think about the dance, or hallway set up.”
Wall is affected when the Student Council works hard to put on events and people don’t like them. “When kids aren’t really interested in doing those activities it kind of sucks because StuCo spends a lot of time and effort to make those activities fun for everyone,” Wall said. “We want to include everyone.”
One of her biggest goals within the council is to continue to improve their creativity. “ I think we should be more creative when we come up with themes, decorations, or how we involve people,” Wall said. “We do the seniors on the senior wall, which is where seniors get to show off what college or career they have, that’s a really good way to include seniors that don’t get represented that much.”
She has also witnessed how the Student Council has made big improvements compared to other years. “I think one of the biggest accomplishments was student engagement, especially outside of Student Council,” Wall said. “With the DJ, we always have a lot of complaints about the DJ every single year, but this year, we haven’t had very many complaints.”
Noah Theys, a junior this year and MSHS’s Student Body President shares similar beliefs with Tindall. “Almost every event is planned and run by StuCo,” Theys said. “We start planning as soon as we get into school.”
He strives to get students to the events and he believes the Student Council was able to do that this past Homecoming week. “We had good advertising and StuCo hyped up each event to make it seem the best as possible,” he said. “We had good events and good attendance at everything, especially S’mores Night, we had an incredible student band perform, and everyone popped out for that.”
Theys knows that advertising is very important for good event attendance. “I think people underestimate how many events would go unnoticed if we didn’t advertise them well enough to get them out to the student body,” he said.
He believes that with the amount of time the Student Council has to plan Homecoming week, they do a good job. “All of those events that people see are planned within a month in advance,” Theys said. “Everything we do is kind of cram packed, but it always comes out amazing.”
