For the third year in a row, the SHS Student Senate has won the regional Spirit of Excellence Award, an accolade meant to showcase the accomplishments of our school. A committee of dedicated Senate members–including junior Nadia Olveda, who headed up the committee–worked hard to prove the leadership and community-building skills of SHS students. 

“It’s been difficult this year to have the student body participate in stuff because we haven’t been in person, so right now what we’re trying to do is include the students in certain events. We’ve done a food drive over homecoming and we’ve done a lot of dress-up days, activities students can do from home,” Olveda says. 

The vice president of the Student Senate, senior Tessa Pickett, also worked on the project, and says it was nice to be able to make a difference in the school. 

“I met a lot of really cool people from different backgrounds [through Senate] that I probably wouldn’t have met before,” Pickett says. 

According to Senate president Elise Carter, the award itself is given based on how a school performs under different categories of leadership and school spirit during one calendar year. Things like sporting events and academic performance are catalogued by Student Senate members and compiled into a document upwards of 50 pages long. 

“It was difficult to do because this year all the activities are shut down, so it definitely took a lot of creative thinking and perseverance to find anything, but it’s super fun,” Carter, a junior this year, says. 

Junior Isabel Wollangk and first-year Senate member says that besides the Spirit of Excellence award, the Student Senate organizes a lot of other activities and opportunities for SHS students.

“We do a lot of work with homecoming and spirit week, and there are fun ways to get the student body involved outside of sports,” Wollangk says. 

Senate treasurer and current SHS senior, Savanna Jemilo, says the Spirit of Excellence award is also a good way for Senate members to come together and form a community that can help not only our school, but Stoughton as a whole. 

“We explained how [SHS students] impact the knowledge of the school and the community through service projects. There are so many categories outside of school achievement. I love being able to serve the school in different ways because it’s just a huge group of peers working together to make the community a better place,” Jemilo says. 

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