By: Amalie Nohe-Moren
The SGA elections have come to a close and students have all placed their votes. Among the roles to be filled this election was the leader of the student body, the SGA president. For this position, the BSA community chose Sydney Lane-Ryer, a senior in the film department. While the SGA and her role in it is new, Sydney being a leading figure for the student body is not.
One of Sydney’s main motivations for running for Student Body President this year was her experience with co-running the Survivors of BSA Instagram page and working to address issues of sexual assault within our school, and the city school system at large. After hearing all the ideas of students, and seeing first hand the desire for change, she became motivated to continue to push for progress based on the feedback and values of the BSA community. Her policies are centered around creating a safer school environment where people are comfortable and the students’ voices matter.
Though BSA’s student government is new, Sydney sees the potential in it as a real tool for change. In her own words, she states, “I really hope the student council is a place where students can bring and voice those opinions and hopefully where something can happen because of them”.
This system relies heavily on the students and their voices, meaning community engagement is central to Sydney’s idea of how to make a student government act most effectively. For this to be successful Sydney describes how important it is for the students of BSA to both be passionate and willing to give their opinions to create change in the school. To facilitate this, Sydney plans to focus on making it as easy as possible for students to speak directly to the SGA.
For this to work, according to her, it is crucial that students are embracing and utilizing not just the SGA but also the school’s workshops and events to educate and improve our environment. Along with this, Sydney wants to encourage that among the students we should always be working on creating a safer school environment.
Hopefully together with the more organized actions of the student government the BSA experience can become a healthier learning environment for future students.
As greater student input and engagement is a main goal of Sydney’s as president, it is important to go more into how students could make their voices heard. Sydney stated how it is important that students have easy access to submit ideas, information, or anything else you feel may be helpful to the SGA.
One way she has discussed carrying this out is through a form which can easily be accessed by anyone at any time and have what they submit be read and taken to the proper place. This policy has the potential to make it easy and safe for students to voice their opinions.
In the past when students have had concerns they often have nowhere to go or don’t know who to speak with and this could be a system to resolve that if well executed. Sydney explains how this issue was one of her main motives for running: “I kinda realized that without bringing those somewhere they were just going to fall… and I didnt want to do that to the students. I had kind of a responsibility to uphold those. I also thought that I could hopefully make some changes.”
As a community the students of BSA have lots of conviction, motivation, and ideas on how to improve not just our school community but our world. If all that energy and thoughtfulness can be listened to and acted upon there is so much potential for creating a better school environment. In the past the students have never had much access to a good resource where these ideas can be heard, but maybe now Sydney can help lead in changing that.
To contact this writer, email Muse Newspaper at musebsa@bsfa.org.