The votes are in! Juniors Julia Velasco and Kyle Sikes are Free State’s student body presidents as of May 2.
Julia Velasco, a junior, runs for the Free State cross country and track & field teams, works as a photographer for the journalism staff, is an NHS officer, and a proud member of Link Crew. In her free time, Velasco enjoys reading, baking, and running.
Kyle Sikes, a junior, has been an active member of StuCo for three years now, a part of the Free State cross country team and baseball team. Sikes has participated in Model UN which he received an award for as a sophomore. Sikes is a part of Link crew, NHS, and NEHS. In his free time, Sikes enjoys hanging out with friends on the track team, playing baseball in the summer, and going for walks.
As the newly instated co-presidents the first actions they take will be to get organized and have everyone on the StuCo team know what their goals are, ideas for the community, and make sure the StuCo team knows how to run things smoothly.
Velasco and Sikes have big plans for the coming year to improve the Free State community.
“Another thing that we want to incorporate, this is kind of my favorite idea. I really want to have a mental health week,” Velasco said.
Velasco and Sikes really want to change the way the student body runs right now, by focusing on the students mental health and well-being.
“I want to spread awareness about mental health and try to help the students as best as possible,” Velasco said.
Along with helping the student body’s overall well-being they would also like to find new ways to help the community outside of Free State.
“I think really just working to help better the community in ways that we haven’t before we’ve talked about potentially like adopting a charity to donate to and fundraise for, and so we’ll think about trying to find a way to make that work,” Sikes said
Sikes and Velasco said changing the community within Free State to be more supportive and comforting to the student body is one of their main goals for the presidency. Here are some ways they hope to accomplish this.
“The first thing I would want to change is to have the hallways be more appealing and like during Valentine’s Day, when we hung up a bunch of hearts. That was a really cute and fun idea, because it spread joy throughout the school without necessarily having to do a lot,” Velasco said.
As well as making everyone feel comfortable, these co-presidents also want to find more ways to appreciate the student body. “Trying to find new and different ways of appreciating students, both inside of StuCo and just throughout the entire school, I think could go a long way into making people feel seen and valued and appreciated,” Sikes said.
Velasco and Sikes said being co-presidents is important to them because of seeing how Student Council was run their freshman year. “I saw Jake Chun and Evie Stull running Student Council, and it was really just some of the most fun memories I have at Free State. I’ve always wanted to be able to recreate that for other people and give people fun memories, like we’re really working towards a good cause,” Sikes said.
“Trying to make sure that if I’m StuCo co-present, or even a part of StuCo, that I’m making sure that people outside of the classroom are feeling like they can go to Free State, and feel like they have a place, and like they can talk to anybody in that council and genuinely have their ideas heard,” Velasco said.
