After a week of campaigning Surge were named Student Union winners!

Campaigning by five student groups started in earnest, this week, as each hoped to be named the Island School Student Union representatives 2017-2018.

Each party; ROYAL, RAVE, SURGE, PLUS and FLIP pitched their manifestos and ways in which they can best represent the student body at a whole school assembly on Tuesday 27 Sep 2016.

At breaks and lunchtimes throughout the week students took to the playgrounds in their party’s t-shirts distributing sweet treats with messages from their manifestos.

On Friday 30 Sep SURGE won the election following a student vote, beating their closest rivals by one point.

The groups and their manifestos

ROYAL (Reaching Out to Young Aspiring Learners) plan to; make changes to the school environment and the school community by creating a system that allows for easier teacher-student communication during breaks. They will focus on the issue of waste reduction, host movie nights and introduce a student-led secondhand sales and a student microwave system.

RAVE (Rebuild A Vibrant Environment) hopes to “rebuild” the school community through specific manifestos: improve the school wifi, bring back chocolate croissants, create more outdoor shelters and a phone charger borrowing system, host an brand-new Island School electronic sports league and a wider variety of inter-house events, provide new basketball nets, and to provide tampon/pad and paper towel dispensers in the toilets.

SURGE (Strengthening Unity and Revealing Greatness in Everyone) are campaigning to make Island School a better place by creating an Island School app available to all years, an inter-year mentorship program, hosting inter-house arts competitions, a rent-a-ball system and by creating a SURGE cup to raise money for charity.

PLUS puts forward four main manifestos: to work closely with Wanbo to reduce waste and to make a positive change to the Island School environment, to improve Timeouts by hosting various activities each session, to host a brand-new Student Expo to celebrate the achievement of the student body, and with the school’s approval, create rain shelters around the school.

FLIP (Feels Like Its Passion) decided to change things up a bit this year. Instead of aiming to achieve specific goals, their manifesto aims are to connect students with their interests, lay the foundations of individual passions, involve students into communities, and to provide an interactive and welcoming learning community to aid students at Island School.

Article by Megan Man & Daanyal Ebrahim