Derek Zheng: ASB President

EE: What is the general description of your position?

DZ: ASB has a variety of roles, so there’s lots of concrete responsibilities I’m responsible for gathering motions and leading the Leadership Council within the Leadership class. And I’m also part of IDC, which is Interdistrict Council. I attend biweekly meetings and it’s basically meetings with other schools around the district and we kind of plan big district-wide events and also kind of tackle the district-wide issues and I kind of voice the problems that are happening at MVHS. So those are two of the concrete guidelines I can put on paper, like ‘Oh, you have to attend this and this and this.’ But beyond that, as all ASB members are, I’m responsible for liasoning, so like guiding the class and the commission. I’m responsible for leading our Leadership class in general, kind of pushing along the agenda and acting as kind of like a branch between the office and administration and the Leadership class and the rest of the school. And then we have general school responsibilities, like we have rallies and do all that stuff. So we’re kind of behind the scenes of a lot of the events that happen on campus.

EE: What does a typical day in Leadership for you look like?

DZ: It depends on the time of the year, but generally in the beginning of class I guess we do announcements and what’s on the table. Depending on what day it is, sometimes we do planning, so our entire class is going to be involved in planning and finding ideas for the next rally or dance, and kind of hashing up the ideas. This week in class we’re planning all of homecoming, so everything from the skits, the rally, where the dance is going to be, to the dress up days, the lunchtime rally games and the food drives — that’s what we discuss in class. And then otherwise, we have a lot of work time, where we break off and each commission will work on what they need to do, so within themselves they’ll work on food drives. ASB will discuss the rally games, we’ll make our own executive decisions and then we’ll go out and check on everyone else.

EE: What made you want to become ASB president?

DZ: I’ve been in class office from freshman through junior year. I guess during my time as class officer, there were a lot of things I could control within my own class, but there were a lot of things I was frustrated with or wanted to change from an entire school perspective. Basically, I thought [ASB] would be a great platform to voice my concerns but also represent my class and the rest of the people that I know. So it’s a good way for me to bring more action, I guess. You can do so much as a class officer within your own class, but as ASB you’re like elevated, and you have the ability to create change.

EE: What does ASB mean to you?

DZ: I feel like [creating change] what our ASB is really about, like we want to change a lot of things, as with every ASB. But it’s kind of just like bringing our own perspective and finding how you can benefit MVHS and bring about change. We’re excited for the new year, there’s lots that we want to implement, so there are a lot of initiatives that we’re taking. We’re trying to reform Leadership Council, I’m working on a MVHS app along with a bunch of other Leadership ppl and a bunch of ppl from our school. There are just a lot of things — like today, on our motion, we have something that’s going to change Leadership Council and make fundraisers easier. So expect a lot of change. We’ve seen like changes to our campus in terms of construction, changes to our administration in terms of principals, a lot of things have been changing so our goal is to bring about change in terms of student life and the MVHS experience, not only the construction and the administration.

EE: What’s your main goal this year as ASB president?

DZ: There are a lot. Beyond the general ‘Oh we want to incorporate more people and we want to put on new events that people will actually care about,’ there’s things like the bathrooms need repairing, the guys need stalls or whatever this and that. We should have recycling, we should put up signs in the parking lot that will help move along the traffic, because a lot of drivers are frustrated with the parents clogging up the exit paths and stuff like that. So just kind of paying attention to a lot of the issues that we have. I think we’re all very excited to take initiative and tackle all the issues we’ve seen because we’ve been here for so many years and there are lots of things we don’t like. So we want to address those. That’s all I can think of right now, but I’m sure there are much more.