You may have seen her around the halls or heard about her from other people, but do you really know who student council president, Galilea Lechuga is? Here is all you need to better know Lechuga.
Lechuga is a senior at East High School. She is 18 years old and was born Nov. 14, 2004. She’s student council president and is in many sports and clubs here at East such as Science Bound, Varsity Swim, TS, Gifted and Talented, Scarlet Squad, Government and SOS. But what does she do?
“As student council president, I run the meetings, talk to adults, I have to be a leader and think on my feet especially during meetings. I have to lead groups and you know find recourses and reach out to people. I basically have a really big leadership role,” Lechuga said.
This is what her personal role is, but what is student council and what do they do?
“Student council is basically a few cabinet members and then two members from each grade, we have the president(me) the vice president, the treasure and our secretary those are the main senior cabinet members and then we have two senators from each grade,” “So far we have been coming up with events and plan things for the school like homecoming, spirit week, prom, the assemblies and we focus on making East a better place and finding things to fix around the school and stuff,” Lechuga said.
As student council president she had to have a lot of goals in mind to make East better.
“When I was running for student council president, I had a lot of goals I wanted more students to have school spirit and I wanted to have student projects around the school like art pieces and I wanted us to be more inclusive and in general make the school nicer. I think most of those have come true, like I’ve definitely seen more school spirit especially with the contests we do, and I think our school is pretty diverse and inclusive and I run a few campaigns to keep the school clean and trying to get more trash cans outside and try to recognize janitors,” Lechuga said.
Now that you know who she is and what she does you may be wondering what will happen when she leaves, and East has a new student council president but here is a message she’s leaving behind for East’s future president.
“My advice for the next student council president would be I hope you are able to work with a good team, and I hope they actually have passion for it and that they have good leadership skills because they will learn it’s not that easy controlling a crowd and not that easy being listened to especially since we’re all the same age and they’re just kind of like ‘well who are you to tell me what to do we’re like the same age’. and I hope they don’t get too cocky about being president. You have got to stay humble and be super passionate. I do wish them the best because becoming president is one of the best things I’ve accomplished at east, and it’s been special for me,” Lechuga said.
With being student council president comes lots of struggles and stress and stress outside of school can affect the way you interact with school Lechuga has learned a lot about this within the past few years.
“100 percent a lot of stress, sorry if you’re like wanting to be president… but I want to be honest I have a lot of stress and a lot of responsibility and I feel that builds some stress because I feel like I’m kind of a big role model to not just myself but the school and outside of school. But it’s a lot of stress because I don’t want to let anyone down,” Lechuga said.
Outside of school, Lechuga still faced a lot of challenges that helped her become who she is today.
“Outside government, it has been a year already since my dad has passed away due to brain cancer and the past year has been really difficult for me and even last year when we found out he was sick it was just so hard seeing him suffer, and like all the pain of him being gone, cause I’m like a daddy’s little girl so it has hurt me a lot and it has hurt us like financially, emotionally, mentally. and it’s just so hard losing a parent especially since I was so close to him. It really took off like a lot of motivation for me and made it hard for me to go to school and want to do the work. It hurt me a lot, but my teachers have helped me a lot by making me passionate again and wanting to go to school,” Lechuga said.