I recently sat down to ask the freshman class president, Jacob Jackson, about SGA, Foundations, and how things are going. I especially wanted to ask Jacob about the Foundations program, which is in its first year, and has received mixed reviews, to say the least.
As a friend of Jacob’s, I know him to be a dedicated programmer who worked with the Student Government Association (SGA) to create a digital suggestion box platform called Vote!Potomac, which has collected opinions on issues affecting student life from inaugurating a winter formal to loosening the dress code. Jacob is also a member of the debate team and, I can attest, knows everything about geopolitics. In the IS, Jacob was a member of the Student Council.
Josh: I think a lot of students don’t really know what goes on in Student Government Association, can you give us some insight on how SGA functions?
Jacob: Most of it is really just a lot of trying to convince admins that you’re right. We have biweekly meetings, which really are just during lunch and serve to help everyone get progress updates and get feedback from other SGA members. The bulk of the work is done interacting with members of the administration like Mr. Davis and Ms. Virchow to get your policies passed.
Q: Do you think your creation of Vote!Potomac prior to the election helped you get elected and how, if at all, have you used it so far?
A: Yes, I think it did. I think it showed that I can actually do something and have already done something. Whereas most other people, the furthest extent of their sort of track record, if you could say that it is IS SGA which, at least in my opinion, was a little useless. I think it helped show my track record and it also showed that I have a concrete way of listening to people’s suggestions, and to that point, I have used it. For example, one proposal I’m exploring is hot food in the Panther pit, which is something that I found on Vote!Potomac and has grown popular. And so hopefully I can figure something out for that.
Q: A lot of the 9th-grade candidates made some big promises in their speeches that didn’t really seem doable to me. How do you make sure that you actually get things done now that you’ve been elected?
A: So it’s really just keeping your ideas in check. Generally, I find it’s pretty obvious when ideas are just not feasible. For example, a lot of people wanted me to move Foundations and that is not exactly possible because that’s a core class for ninth grade. So it’s just applying a little bit of thought and pragmatic thinking to the ideas.
Q: Speaking of that, an important issue with freshmen is the very negative response to Foundations this year. You’ve already given us some ideas during recent class meetings, but what are you doing to address these concerns?
A: As I’ve already talked about previously, enforcing a maximum time limit and trying and restructuring the curriculum to support more to make it more dynamic and interesting are the main ways Foundations will and has already been changing. And then beyond that, I hope to, first of all, work on changing the end-of-year project, which is a speech which a lot of people are not fans of. So I will try to change that to something perhaps more generic. Also making larger curriculum changes to 10th-grade Foundations, such as changing it to be more life skills-oriented, and making it less journaling focused.
Q: Have you enjoyed being president so far?
A: Yes. I’ll leave it at that.
Q: That’s shockingly menacing. What’s a day in the life of Jacob Jackson like?
A: A lot of programming. Things like Vote!Potomac. That’s where a lot of my free time goes. And I just have a lot of various hobbies and projects that I work on.
Q: Anything else you’d like to add?
A: No, just please don’t quote me in such a way to make it seem like I said something horrible.
