The LHS Student Council is an oddly mysterious organization. Every Ad-Room attending student has a role in deciding who is elected to the Council.  But what happens after the “Free drinks on me” signs are down? What does the Student Council even do? For adviser Jennifer DuBois, the answer involves many activities that make LHS a better place.

“The job of Student Council [is] to promote a fun school climate. We do that by doing different activities like dances, tournaments…homecoming tournaments [and] Mr. LHS,” said DuBois.

LHS’s Student Council plays a sizeable role in coordinating many of the annual events that mark the school calendar.

“Most people don’t realize that Student Council does every single bit of the Homecoming week. We do Winter Formal. We do Mr. LHS; we are the group who orchestrates that,” said DuBois.

Elected classmates do not just plan a few events a year that may or may not be attended by many students. Another one of the Student Council’s goals is to increase participation of all LHS students in their schools and their communities. This was one of the reasons why sophomore Kinsey Capaldo joined last year.

“You see a lot of people who are not involved and I wanted [them] to be able to be in things that are fun,” said Capaldo.

The Student Council tries to accomplish wider participation by putting on events with broad appeals, such as movie nights. However, the goal of increasing participation also extends to the community at large.

“We also want our school to be willing to give back to the community too,” said DuBois. “That’s why we do different drives like…Hoodies and Footies so that our student body is aware of the need of our Sioux Falls community.”

The Student Council is organized in order to accomplish each of its goals. Members of the Council elect chairs of three committees, and each one focuses on a specific goal of the Student Council.

“We have a community service committee, a dance/entertainment committee and a school service committee,” said DuBois.  “So when they meet as small groups, they discuss ideas that they would like to do at Lincoln and then as a small group they can iron out the fine details and then they bring it back to the full Council. Then as a Council, we decide if this is something we would like to do.”

As they work towards creating fun events and increasing participation in both the school and the community, the Student Council brings together kids of different ages and friend groups.

“That’s a really neat thing about this crew of kids,” said DuBois. “You bring 30 kids together, and some of them are really good friends outside of the Student Council, but…a lot of them aren’t. But in here we’ve developed a really close family. We try to do activities to bond together, and that’s really fun because you get what I call 32 of the best kids in the school.”

Thanks to Ava Leonard, Noah Johnson and Madalyn McQuistan for providing additional information and perspectives for this story.