The Student Voice Committee is a team of students who want to promote student advocacy. The committee hosted an open discussion in the LMC collaboration room during all lunch periods on Oct. 20. The open discussion gave students a chance to talk about their concerns about safety, health, and bullying and provide suggestions on how to improve the school. 

The Student Voice Committee wants to achieve positive change for the students. According to junior Hannah Widd, one of the committee co-chairs says their club is dedicated to making a change in school advocacy. The discussions allowed the co-chairs to understand what the community at Metea is doing well, and what could be improved. Safety, health, and bullying were subjects that were mentioned with the recent bathroom issues, and school fights. 

“Anytime we have a discussion, our plan is always to take any of the ideas we see occurring a lot and to do something actionable with them,” senior Amara Saleem said. 

Amara Saleem, another co-chair member for the committee says that whenever they host these discussions their goal is to take the ideas, and make a list of actionable things they could do to improve the school. 

The committee’s goal last year was focusing on equity. Saleem defined that equity is the ability for everyone to have access to resources they need to succeed. For students, that did not look the same to everyone. 

Saleem said that they created a survey last year to find more feedback from students. Over 1400 students filled it out, and with the information the committee was able to send a list of equity recommendations to the teacher leadership team. 

Since school is in-person this year, the committee hosted the discussions. Saleem and Widd said that all the discussions went well. They were expecting the conversations to be shorter, and less in detail but their expectations were wrong. Students actively participated in the conversations, and provided feedback to what the school could change. 

“It came up multiple times that we should bring back Mustang 30,” Widd said.

Back in 2019, before the pandemic, Metea had Mustang 30 on Wednesdays after the second period. Mustang 30 was a dedicated time for students to do things like catch up on homework, study, talk with a teacher, or just hang out with their friends for 30 minutes. It was students’ decisions on how they wanted to spend that time. 

However this year, the school has implemented habits lessons every other Tuesday after second period, as well as the Physical Education department sharing SEL lessons. 

Saleem said that the committee has already talked to their sponsor Donald Pankuch, the social studies department chair about their ideas. According to Saleem, the committee has come up with a small list of concise ideas on how to improve the school advocacy. They have already sent an email to Dr. Echols this past week proposing their ideas.