For a brief period at the end of the 2020-2021 school year, Grant Yoon (‘23) was working double duty. As a sophomore, Yoon was serving as one of his class’ vice presidents. As a rising junior, Yoon is also entering another vice-presidential role — this time, for the entire school. This overlap in Yoon’s positions is representative of how his earlier experiences are shaping the new vision that he’s bringing to school-wide SGA.

When asked why he wanted to run for and serve in his new school-wide role, Yoon said, “Making SGA something that people are excited about, making it something where they feel like they have power with what happens in our school — that’s why.” As a leader of the Class of 2023 sophomores, Yoon helped to create the Student Voice Committee (SVC), a class organization focused on uplifting students’ input on school issues.

Yoon was not alone in creating the SVC, and he is not alone in exemplifying how the upstart group’s creation last year is now having a major impact on the future of school politics and government. Gina Liu (‘23) was also elected to a school-wide vice-presidential post, largely on the back of her role in creating the SVC. Both Liu and Yoon have promoted the idea of possibly expanding the SVC, which began as a sophomore-class-only project, to reach students in every class. The idea of promoting students’ voices is central to Yoon’s work in student government, both directly through the SVC and indirectly through his approach to other issues.

Yoon said that as a student leader, he’s gotten better at “prioritizing what people actually want, as opposed to what I, in my little bubble of the world, want.” As an example, Yoon said that he advocated for the continuance of having several 12-minute breaks in between classes this past year because they were supported by students at large, despite the fact that he personally would have preferred one longer break in the middle of the day. He hopes that this populist approach will serve students well and help improve student government at East. Yoon said that he’s heard about some students’ negative perceptions of SGA. He wants to change that, both by changing students’ perceptions and by changing SGA itself, making it more responsive to what students are looking for in their leadership.

As Yoon moves forward in one of East’s top student positions, he doesn’t want to be doing so alone. He said that members of student government are always excited when those outside of SGA get involved, and he encouraged students to do so.

“If you want to try and change the way that things happen in school … you can always help.”

This article is the first in a series that will profile each member of East’s incoming school-wide student government, as well as candidates in the upcoming class elections. Keep an eye out for more like this!