On 4 December, SAC’s Outreach Committee held their first meeting of the school year. Started at the end of the last school year, the Outreach Committee is run by the grade representatives and chaired by the junior and senior representatives as a method of involving them in SAC. Its purpose is to promote SAC and club events through the committee’s members and bridge the gap between SAC and the student body. In addition, at meetings, the Outreach Committee will address students’ concerns through a “What’s your Beef” session. Taken from Supercouncil, “What’s your Beef” is intended to help SAC answer questions as well as take any suggestions on how to improve. New this year, SAC will also begin an online form that will allow students to voice any issues with SAC anonymously.
Not including SAC members, there was a turnout of approximately ten students. Khalida Elsadati, the Senior Representative, and Zainab Bokhari, the Grade 11 Representative, led the meeting as they summarized the school events coming up within the next month, notably the Christmas Show, school sweater sales and spirit days leading up to the holidays.
Following this, the students present began to bring up school issues concerning them. The first topic was concerning the decrease in SAC funding for clubs. Because SAC is now responsible for paying for students’ student cards, SAC’s budget for club funding has drastically decreased. However, as this issue pertains to the entire school board, =not only Garneau, they cannot change this. Khalida and Zainab suggested that clubs fundraise to supplement their minimal funding as well as attend SuperCouncil meetings to bring up the issue there. Another suggestion for SAC was to run a sexual harassment awareness campaign in order to empower females, similar to what the Girl Effect has done in past years. These suggestions will be discussed at upcoming SAC meetings.
According to Khalida, “the meeting was successful, because we got different opinions out there. We got new ideas on how to tackle certain issues.” In the future, she predicts that more members will join through advertising of the Outreach Committee on social media.
