Taking The Lead State’S High School Councils Meet At East Valley

Student leadership has taken on a whole new dimension in the past few months for East Valley High School senior Cyndie Hulett.

The 17-year-old learned firsthand how to plan a convention for more than 1,000 people, including organizing lodging, meals, workshops and entertainment for them all.

On Friday, Hulett got to see the results of her hard work as 1,005 high school students from around the state streamed into East Valley High School. They came toting duffels and sleeping bags for the annual Washington State Student Council Conference. The three-day event runs through Sunday.

The event is held at a different high school each year and comes to Spokane about once every decade. The conference helps students improve their leadership skills and build school spirit.

“We worked 14 hours yesterday,” said Hulett, who is among a group of student leaders from seven area high schools that helped plan the event. “It’s been harder than I expected. I’ve learned how to be organized and that you really have to commit yourself to get anything done.”

Hulett and fellow student Dave Marlow are serving as co-chairs from East Valley. An additional pair of student co-chairs from Central Valley High School also served on the central organizing committee with staff and administrators from both high schools.

“You have to go through obstacles and call people 100 times,” said Marlow, East Valley’s Associated Student Body president. “We first had to find as much free stuff as we could.”

Among the freebies, every student received a goody bag filled with a conference T-shirt, folders, pens, candy and other items. The students also rounded up donated materials to make activity bags for needy children as part of the conference’s community service project.

Today, the students will assemble the bags, which will include coloring books, puzzles and other activities for young children. The bags are being donated to area agencies, including hospitals, elementary schools and crisis shelters.

But by far the biggest challenge to organizing the event was finding host families for all the students, organizers agreed.

“We’ve had to get on the phone and call everyone in our school and ask students, parents and family friends,” Hulett said.

The families not only host the students for two nights, but also are responsible for feeding them four meals.

Central Valley senior Jen Schmitt, who also helped organize as a student co-chair for her high school, said she’s thinking about making a career out of event planning.

“This has been a great experience,” she said. “This is the kind of work I want to do.”

Schmitt said the biggest challenge was overcoming her fear of public speaking. After frantically rushing around all day Friday to attend to last-minute details, both Schmitt and Hulett donned formal gowns and took to the gymnasium stage to kick off the conference and address the 1,000-plus cheering students in the audience.

The pair delivered a flawless introduction and welcomed one of the conference’s keynote speakers, Richard Santana, a tough-talking Latino gangster, who arrived on stage sporting baggy pants, shades, a trench coat and red bandanna. During his hour-long talk, Santana peeled off his gang attire to reveal a mainstream outfit - a shirt, tie and pair of slacks.

Santana, a Harvard graduate who speaks to students across the country, challenged students to critically assess their own perceptions of other people, and to make sure that as leaders, they reach out to all students.