From March 29 to 31, IE students will vote in their new student government. One of four groups running for this position is Team Catalyst, composed of: Donovan Schar Davis, Marc Garrigós, Charlotte Wayaffe, Lilian Andres, Sam Ferdinand, Desislava Aleksandrova, Isabella Ochoa, and President Johanna Jakobi. Although the team is predominantly European, it is diverse within that continent. The team is also quite diverse in terms of degrees, and almost gender-equal (with a slight female bias).
Team Catalyst’s top proposals include: filtering IE’s events communications to avoid information overload, allowing students to take 20% of classes online, reworking class schedules, and building a stronger connection between students and the administration. In March 28’s Student Government Debate, Team President Jakobi talked about how students receive countless emails every week, and develop a reflex to ignore most of them. She believes that streamlining this information will lead to a greater sense of community, as more students attend events and socialize.
The team’s proposed class schedule reworks focus on flexibility for students. With these changes, Team Catalyst hopes to give students more opportunities to go on vacation, work part-time, or to be “super sick but not COVID.” Jakobi spoke more about the student-administration connection in her interview with The Stork. She explained that, in her view, “once [that is] built, it’ll be a lot easier to address all of the other things.” She also expressed her concern that many students are not aware of student government in the first place.
In March 28’s Student Government Debate, Jakobi addressed some issues her team had with post-COVID exams. She said online exams have given students many opportunities to cheat, earning unfairly high grades. Team Catalyst plans to mitigate this by changing the format of the exams, with Jakobi giving the example: “You can’t cheat on an essay.” Throughout the event, the team president often returned to the idea of “guidelines,” and of utilizing IE’s resources more efficiently, rather than simply making more investments.
Voting starts on March 29. Those interested can check their IE emails for notifications and instructions.
