Q&A: SGA Candidate Cole Yaffee

As the elections for SGA President rapidly approach, the Devil’s Advocate interviewed each candidate to gain a greater understanding of why each is running for the position.

Devil’s Advocate: Why are you running for this position?

Cole Yaffee: I have always wanted to run for this position since I came to Stanton, I have always been in leadership positions, even in middle school, I would always run for stuff like this. I am Vice President of the Junior Class right now and through that vice presidency of the junior class, especially, you do a lot of stuff like plan prom, and planning prom is pretty crazy and we have a lot of other projects going on. That experience has encouraged me to run for SGA now, and now I have a lot of experience under my belt and I want to lead this school.

DA: What other projects are you working on?

CY: We were doing the prom, we have another project and we are not sure if are going to do it or not, but during AP season we go through a lot of plastic bottles, it’s ridiculous, you know, we recycle and all that, but we want to get cups for everybody and we have a lot of money saved up for the Junior class and we thought it would be cool to give our whole class cups, and you know, especially to use with our new water fountains, everyone would have reusable cups.

DA: What motivation do you have to run?

CY: Especially for SGA president, I was inspired actually by my friend Sudarshan, he was only a freshman and he ran for SGA and won as a historian, so, I mean he is like one of my best friends, and that inspired me to run for SGA president and Sudarshan actually had a big hand in SGA this year, and that really inspired me to go out there and try and give it my all.

DA: What Ideas do you have for the 2019-2020 school year?

CY: Oh boy, I have a lot of scattered ideas, a lot of small stuff. I have this tiny little notebook with my ideas, and here are a bunch of the main ones. I want to have one place to have all the volunteer opportunities, so I want to create a twitter account, maybe Stanton Volunteer Opportunities, and we will get all of the clubs and all honor societies to dm us and we could blast all of the volunteer opportunities to the account. I think having one central place for all of the volunteer opportunities will be so helpful because there isn’t really one place for all of that and if you want to find some volunteer at the end of the year, last minute, you just gotta look and ask a million people to try to find something. And I also want to have an AP review, like online. Our class last year, we do this AP review where we have this huge thing of notes on like google docs for different APs for different classes like AP Art History, AP HUG, AP Psych, and that stuff genuinely helped me pass a lot, especially AP US History, because that study guide helped me.

DA: What do you think of the Stanton community currently?
CY: I love the Stanton community currently, that is where I am running at. I love everyone at Stanton so much, its crazy. I love my class, I love being an underclassmen, I love the seniors too, it will be sad to see them go. I love the community we have right now. The only thing that I can think of currently that needs to be improved is the divide between the different classes. We had a class government group chat with SGA and all the different classes right now, but it’s like not active at all, no one uses. I want to make that active and post stuff, like “What do you think about this”. I also want to have monthly town halls, and I really encourage every student government officer to come to that, so that will be the place where we all communicate and get on the same footing and I think that is the one thing we can improve, communication between all the classes.

DA: What is another way you can improve Stanton as an environment for the students?
CY: Well, one of the main things at Stanton is mental health. I almost left Stanton in sophomore year because I was doing so bad, and I was just totally done, I was about to leave Stanton. But then, I kinda had this moment and I realized I want to stay here because I love everyone here so much and I wanted to really kick it in and that was when my mental health was at a low, but I learned a lot of different things to help with that, so I think that improving mental health week next year would be a really good way to improve the environment because mental health week last year was a start, but I think we could really improve that with more speakers, maybe not treat it as much as a joke as people were saying, like not having dress up days ,that was kinda weird, involving the teachers more and having more activities during the week that are more helpful.

DA: What experience do you have being a leader, or just experience in general?
CY: I was Junior Class officer Vice President for this year and that has given me a lot of experience in leading my class, I have now worked with SGA, and like all the different classes, and I know how they all work now. Especially with planning prom, I know how tough it is to plan something now, especially something as complex as prom, it takes a lot of work, it is not something that just happens overnight. That will help me with planning thing like the winter formal and homecoming, and stuff like that, so experience like that is pretty vital especially when it comes to being in the SGA.

DA: What qualities should the president have?
CY: You should be caring to everybody because you are the SGA, and should care for every class fairly, you need to have a genuine interest and care for every student here and in every class. Someone asked me something, and I am going to respond to them. I am going to treat them like they are the only person in the world. You also need to be determined and follow up on your ideas. You can say whatever you want, but you have to follow up on these ideas and make it happen as much as you can. Caring and Determination are the biggest things you have to have. Also, you just have to have good and new ideas. A good president should leave this school better than how they found it, is what I think.

DA: What advantages do you think you have over the other candidates that makes you more qualified?
CY: I was obviously in the junior class  officers, so I have a bit of experience, with planning prom and stuff like that, working with the other officers. Sameh also has that, so I am not exclusive on that. But, I also have the advantage of-I have been thinking about this for a long time so I have a lot of different ideas for this thing. My platform is going up and I mean I have this notebook of just so many just small little ideas that I couldn’t get to right now. I think that my advantage of thinking about this way, way beforehand, jotting down notes all year and caring about everybody individually will really help me in this election.

DA: How about your weaknesses?
CY: It is one of my strengths and my weaknesses that sometimes, I don’t know how to say it, get too over excited while I will have a lot of ideas. I just need to focus on honing in and perfecting one. Like I said, I have a bunch of different notes throughout the year, and I have a lot on my plate, so that is like my weakness, that I am jumping into all of these different things, I don’t just have one sole thing. But that is my weakness, I just have a bunch of stuff going on and I need to hone in and focus on one thing and do that.

DA: if you had to vote for one other candidate, who would it be and why?
CY: I would vote for Sameh Arsalla. We are best friends and we are both running for it because we both want it. I don’t doubt that he wants it a lot, and I have worked with him as junior class officer, so I know we have that same determination to improve the class. Just from firsthand experience, I would choose Sameh Arsalla.

DA: Why should people vote for you as the 2019-2020 SGA President?

CY: I think people should vote for me because I think if there is somebody who truly, truly cares about Stanton, it is me and I have a lot of ideas and I want to leave this school better than I found it. My main goal is to make this SGA as  active as possible. Some years SGA just doesn’t really do anything, they just stay dormant, they just exist. I want to make sure SGA is the life and soul of this school. I want to make sure they are involved in everything, helping any way they can with all these different ideas I have to. I just really, really want to get SGA involved this year.