Keira Beller elected Agenda Chair, Elliot Serure and Eliana Kerendian to lead Fairness
Dani Kunin and Evan Beller elected SAC co-chairs; several races were close
NEXT: In voting held right after last Friday’s debate, Keira Beller became the third incoming Agenda chair in a row to have served as vice chair first.
May 10, 2022
Keira Beller has been elected 2022-23 Agenda Chair, defeating 11th grade Agenda representatives Eli Weiss and Jack Metzger and becoming the third straight Agenda vice-chair to win the committee’s top position.
The election was held on Google forms just at the end of a roughly 40-minute debate during Friday’s Town Hall. It was also the third year using a “ranked choice” voting system, where students had to rank each candidate in order of preference.
Elliot Serure and Eliana Kerendian defeated fellow juniors Jaden Silver and Sean Silver to become leaders of the Fairness Committee.
Current SAC Vice-Chair Evan Beller and fellow junior Dani Kunin will become the new co-chairs of the Student Activities Committee, after defeating current SAC representative Avi Litvak and junior Hannah Nili
For Agenda Vice-Chair, Rami Melmed defeated Shira Elyaszadeh and Mordechai Heller.
For Agenda Secretary, Olivia Petlak bested Ariel Shapiro.
For SAC Vice-Chair, sophomore Chaim Cohen defeated Zane Mendelson, Chana Light and Adi Liebenthal.
For Agenda Secretary, Mikayla Namvar defeated Keren Tizabi and Eitan Alon.
Keira said in an interview Sunday that she hopes students will bring proposals for policies next year to Town Hall for action.
“I hope that people just don’t kinda see an issue and let it slide, and actually take action,” Keira said Sunday. “I really want to encourage that, because one thing I really love about the school is how we can take action in a lot of cases.”
Jack Sanders, who led Agenda this year, and last year’s chair Kate Orlanski ‘21, both had served as vice chair the year before.
I hope that people just don’t kinda see an issue and let it slide, and actually take action.
— Keira Beller, incoming Agenda Chair
Outgoing Agenda Chair Jack Sanders and 2020-21 chair Kate Orlanski also were serving as vice chair when elected.
The ranked-choice voting system assigns points to votes based on how many candidates are in a race. For example if three people were running, a first-place vote would be worth one point, a second-place vote two points and a third-place vote three points.
Whichever candidate ended up with the fewest number of points won.
As usual, a Boiling Point representative was present while the votes were counted, and was given access to the tallies on the condition that the story not say how many votes each candidate received.
This year, Fairness leaders gave the Boiling Point permission to say which races were close. The election for SAC Secretary was close, as were the races for SAC Vice-Chair and Agenda Secretary.
Also, in one race, the candidate who received the highest number of first-place votes did not win the election.
The election took place in two parts. Last Monday, May 2, candidates for Agenda secretary and vice-chair, Fairness secretary and co-chairs, and SAC secretary gave speeches or presented videos. Only SAC candidates were allowed to create a video instead of doing a speech.
Voting for those positions took place immediately following speeches on Monday, though results were not announced until Friday. Two-hundred-thirty-two votes were cast Monday.
On Friday, candidates for SAC vice-chair and co-chairs presented their speeches or videos.
Once those concluded, Agenda chair candidates took to the debate stage to discuss their plans for the Just Community. Two-hundred-seventeen people voted on Friday.
For the post of Fairness secretary, sophomore Malia Nagel was one of five candidates, four sophomores and one freshman, including current Fairness Secretary Adam Harkham.
Keira also hopes Town Hall continues to be a “safe place” where people can speak.
“I hope that we can have productive and good conversations and good communication between students also between faculty and students,” Keira said, “and if any issues arise we can discuss them and talk about them in a comfortable manner. And I hope to also get students thinking about new and different ideas and topics.”
