My fellow Upper School Students,

(Or as 2016 Student Council President Jacob Dubner put it back in 2016; “my fellow A-bear-icans.¹”) Today, I am writing to all of you with a great sense of optimism about the year ahead. After the past three school years, which can be described as anything but normal, the first four weeks of school have been punctuated with a sense of renewed liveliness throughout the halls of Winchester Thurston. Every trimester, the Student Council will release a “State of the Thurston” through Voices that will act as an overview of our goals, what we have accomplished so far, and what we are in the process of organizing. 

This school year has started at a remarkable pace with everyone getting used to the new schedule and activities such as sports and clubs, filling all of the empty blocks throughout the bi-weekly cycle. The first major event we held was the club fair. It was excellent to have the Willis room full of people signing up for clubs they have participated in during the past and eagerly trying out new ones! Thanks to all of the great work from our club leaders, we had over fifty student unions, academic teams, publications, and other student groups represented. In conversations I was having with several seniors that day, we were mentioning how although it may sound strange, it was good to feel as if it was our freshman year again (the last time the event was held in the Willis Room)!

In accordance with my promise last year, the Student Council has been hard at work planning this month’s community activities. We are very excited to announce we will have our very first volleyball classcapade! Inspired by the format of the longstanding Upper School dodgeball tradition, each grade will form a team to compete for the glory of being the first-ever volleyball classcapade champions. Paired with volleyball, throughout the same week, we will be having our first spirit week! (Details on both events will be released soon). We anticipated both of these taking place around mid-September; however, due to scheduling conflicts, we will be pushing these activities back to the first week of October. 

Looking ahead to the rest of October, we are discussing building upon last year’s fall social and having a homecoming-inspired dance in the gym. We will reach out to the student body shortly to form a committee. Halloween will also arrive before we know it, and so we are also in the works of organizing some spooky activities including a pumpkin decorating advisory competition and a murder mystery classcapade. We will be informing you about the progress we are making in organizing these events.

On a final note, we believe that our goal as the Student Council is to represent the voice of the entire student body and to serve as a connection between the students and the administration. If you have any questions, ideas, or concerns, we encourage you to attend our meetings. In an effort to make this process more convenient, we have moved the meeting time to every week after morning meeting on the top floor of the library. In addition, if you would like to reach out to any of us with any concerns, I am including the email of all of the Student Council members. The executive board and grade representatives are also eager to talk and listen to you, so please feel free to find us throughout the day.

I hope you have enjoyed the busy, productive, and exciting start to this year and are looking forward to what is to come. We can’t wait to continue to work together with all of you to build a brilliant school environment for everyone!

Your Student Council President,

Tommy Gordon

Student Council Email Addresses:

Please type in the last name and first initial and the email should show up.

Executive Board:

Thomas Gordon

Aria Narasimhan

Brynne McSorley

12th Grade Reps.

Alex Sayette

Jay Simhan

Rohan Sykora

11th Grade Reps.

Torey Bullock

Ella Thomas

10th Grade Reps.

Solvei Islam

Jianna Miller-Evonich

Rishul Sharma

Works Cited

1. Dubner, Jacob. “The State of the Union: New Beginnings.” VOICES, The Winchester Thurston School, 14 Oct. 2016, https://voicesofwinchester.org/668/archived/the-state-of-the-union-new-beginnings/.