With only a week until the election, candidates for Forum Council president and vice president took to the Craft Theatre stage to tell fellow students about their platforms at the annual FoCo Town Hall.
The event took place during lunch on Feb. 12, 2025, and kicked off with the presidential candidates: Nic Villamor, team Andrew Rooks and Alex Smith and team Piper Cooke and Mallory Towers. They began with introductions and brief explanations of their goals. Then they answered questions from both the current FoCo leadership and the audience. These questions ranged from how candidates planned to address certain issues to what their favorite Kerrytown purchases were.
The candidates had prepared for these questions, and many had notecards with them, but what several candidates found was that talking freely allowed for a more authentic feel.
“We didn’t want to really rehearse and have a note card because we wanted to be relatable,” Rooks said. “We wanted everyone to feel like we were being natural, being ourselves, being human.”
Similar to Rooks and Smith, Villamor also found this sense of ease, even when he dropped his flashcards, getting an encouraging laugh from the audience. The fun questions and overall energy contributed to the event being a lot of fun for Villamor and the other candidates.
“Going into it, I sort of felt that it was gonna be really scary and that people would be judging me, but then I realized that a lot of them were even laughing,” Villamor said. “It was just fun.”
In terms of the more typical content of the town hall, building a greater sense of community was a common theme. Rooks and Smith’s first value in their “SUPER” acronym is “student-focused”: the importance of bonding as a community. Villamore echoed this in his first moments on stage as well, tying it into his focus on diversity. Cooke and Towers spoke on making sure all student voices are heard.
Afterward, the vice presidential candidates took the stage and continued to highlight the importance of strengthening the community through things like grade-wide or even school-wide events. These bonding events were present, especially in the cases of candidates Oliver Jacobson and Sophia Almubrak-Daniels, and the other candidates — Ava Griffith and Autumn Klus-Salsbury —as well.
Another common topic, especially among the vice presidential candidates, was getting feedback from as many students as possible through things like surveys. Almubrack-Daniels and Jacobson both spoke on the importance of polling students and getting their opinions on issues and their potential solutions.
On the topic of representing a diverse student body, Griffith discussed the importance of maintaining a representation of entire forums in FoCo and how talking about issues within forums can make sure more voices are heard. Klus-Salsbury referred back to what she said in her opening statement on her connections with many different groups throughout the school.
“I think I’m able to find other people outside of my group and connect with them and listen to what they have to say,” Klus-Salsbury said. “Just listening and trying to get real personal engagement with a lot of groups who don’t feel represented.”
While there were many shared themes across the candidates, there were also things that set them apart, which will likely determine the result of the election on Thursday, Feb. 20th. Students will vote in forums, and the results will be released soon after. Candidates will continue to campaign throughout the school as both they and CHS students await the election results.
