This year the student council has looked a little different due to the COVID guidelines and limitations that prevented normal activities from taking place.

Head student council adviser Melissa Sanson believes communication and the lack of seeing students face-to-face was a major drawback this year. She said, “It’s hard to have meetings, and it’s also really hard to get your students rallied to do something.”

The junior class was creative and attempted to have a few online fundraisers. Sanson said, “We were able to do some fundraisers because Mayfield is now a cashless school, so everything has to be paid on credit card through Infinite Campus.”

President of the junior class, Nadia Gerbasi, claims that a lot of the online fundraisers that were planned never happened due to technical difficulties. She said, “The Among Us tournament that was planned and announced actually didn’t end up working, so it did not happen along with a lot of the other online fundraisers that we tried to plan.”

This year there was only one in-person event that the student council was able to safely help prepare for, according to junior class treasurer, Leo Weissman. He said, “Well you know since the pandemic is going on, we really only had time to plan one which was the Sweet Sixteen.”

The entire student council was able to socially distance in the auditorium and decorate and prepare for the Sweet Sixteen event to recognize the seniors on the Homecoming Court. Gerbasi said, “During the Sweet Sixteen event, the juniors were given jobs by the different head council leaders in putting together the props used on stage during the assembly.”

Typical fundraisers done in previous years were not able to be held due to the social distancing and covid restrictions. Gerbasi said, “We also were not able to sell food at all, which used to be a really easy and effective way to easily raise money so we had to improvise for a lot of new ideas.”

Due to the uncertainty of the virus in the beginning of the year, everything started behind schedule. Gerbasi said, “We had to wait a long time to get together for fundraising ideas because originally, in the beginning of the year, for at least the first quarter we were not allowed to meet at all.”

Gerbasi was very disappointed when Principal Jeff Legan announced that no events or fundraisers were going to be held during the first quarter of the school year. She said, “There were so many families in need during this time, [so] we missed so many opportunities to help those in our community.”

Weissman stated that the absence of in-person meetings was a setback in this year’s student council. He said, “Over Zoom, I feel like ideas can’t spread as effectively as when we are all in-person because you can bounce ideas off of each other and I feel like on Zoom some people can be more intimidated to share ideas.”

Usually, fundraisers were done either before or after school since all students were in person, according to Gerbasi. “Since some kids were still online it made connecting with them and also spreading the news of the online events a lot harder because we had to do it through social media,” she said.

Gerbasi did find that through these challenges she was able to decipher who really wanted to participate in the club and contribute ideas. She said, “Through being online we were able to see who was really committed to the club and see who stepped up to get things done in time even though there were a lot of setbacks. We were able to see who was willing to get involved and benefit the student council as a whole.”

Although Gerbasi said that this year was very challenging, she added that it was a learning experience and will positively impact the student council in the future. Sanson said, “[I learned] how important building relationships with students are, how important it is to think about fundraisers that have not been done, being innovative, having fresh ideas and how important it is to rally students together but not just at an assembly, but by building some camaraderie.”