Before the summer break, I had the opportunity to meet Joe Sheets, current President of the Student Council, to discuss what his presidential cabinet plans to accomplish over the upcoming school year. He and I went over the changes that he hopes to implement for the betterment of the brotherhood, and he saw the interview as a chance to make an early public statement about his ideas for change. This is a collection of the exclusive entries from that interview, with supplemented details from Mr. Jackman.

A Thorough Redesign of the House Games

The student council plans to leverage its power to entirely redesign the time-honored tradition house games. As many students may recall from last year, the competitive atmosphere was underwhelming — personally, I never knew what the standings were other than that Birkenheuer held 1st place and that my house, Tucker, was somewhere in the midst of the turmoil. Joe recognized this and is working collaboratively with the House Council to reshape the games. 

First, there is talk of a new system that will enable houses to wager their points by directly challenging other houses to competitions. Every month, each house can challenge one other house to a competitive event of your house’s creative choosing with the exception that it cannot involve food consumption. Within that month, your house may also be challenged twice, which will allow houses to partake in a maximum of three challenges per month. Each competition has a wager limit of 30 points that is decided by the challenging house. 

Given that your house can only deny two challenges over the entire year, this new system will be a game-changer that will effectively work to cycle different houses throughout the standings. This is due to the fact that houses at the forefront of the leaderboard will be a more popular target for these challenges and will have a greater opportunity to lose points. This new system, projected to start in October, will give rise to the formation of strategic alliances between houses and, by extension, rivalries. 

This electrifying new system also gives houses the freedom to strategically utilize the talents of their students when making the decision about which events to challenge other houses in. As a hypothetical, if Tucker challenges Fromentin to a 1 on 1 basketball match and utilized the sizeable skillset of Mrs. Godfrey, they would, as many of the Tucker Knights would agree, have an ample advantage over fightin’ Phoenixes. By cornering houses into challenges that can only be denied twice per year, there will be a more competitive aura surronding the House Games that will enable individual students and teachers alike to express their unique talents.

House Man of the Month

As an extension to this thrilling streak of change, there is a plan to create the House Man of the Month, which will reward students based on their character and contributions to the Salesian community. As the name suggests, once a month will a student of each house be nominated by their housemates for this title. Once attained, he will be given a polo shirt to wear on Fridays, a free lunch, and a shout-out in the Daily Announcements. On an additional note, this is not grade-based, so there will be one student nominated over all four grades.

Further Commentary

The linking thread between the aforementioned programs is that they are ambitiously designed to focus on the student body at a level regarding the capabilities of the individual rather than the collective. House Challenges will make the individual student compete directly against their friends in other houses, and the House Man of the Month program will reward that student based on their contribution to the House. Along with shining a light on the members of each house, President Sheets also wants to enhance sister-school involvement — an idea that, although early in its stages, is recognized as being a key component to the Salesian community.

About Joe Sheets ‘20

As a former house representative of Quintus since freshman year, Joe Sheets, class of 2020, has a distinctive passion for advocacy. He is a member of the varsity baseball team as well as Salesians for Sustainability. In addition to his Student Council presidency, he is also the president of STILT (The Student Technology Integration Leadership Team). Joe cited former President Luke Stuchlik as a guiding figure and role model for his term and additionally praised the former Student Council team for their extraordinary efforts towards the betterment of Salesianum.