By Tahja Smith — By late August student council finally had the advisers they were so desperately looking for. After last year’s advisers resigned, animation and graphic design teacher Paula Hinchliffe and business teacher Amanda deFays stepped up to the plate and became the new advisers.

Student Council starts much of its planning before the beginning of the school year. Not having an adviser brought hardships to the students.

“We got off to a rocky start just because we didn’t have advisers,” Student Council President Nathan Blaydes said. “But we’re finally settling down and getting everything going.”

A Student Council adviser has a lot of requirements as the adult leader for the program.

“After learning what all was involved in that we had to decide if we wanted to do it because there is a lot of work,” deFays said.

With the new advisers, student council has a lot of events planned and new secret additions to the dances.

“We have some ideas that we [de Fays and Hinchliffe] want to use so we try to get kids to understand this is what we’ve done in the past but maybe we can get kids open to new ideas for the future,” deFays said.

The new advisers want to make sure the program is student led. They get more of a say and control in what happens.

“It’s more student based and it’s more the ideas and events that students want to do instead of us doing what they want to do,” Blaydes said. “I think it will represent the student body better than it has in previous years.”

There are a lot of changes for dances, student council meetings and more differences planned as students propose their ideas.

“We’re not going to necessarily do things just because they were done last year or every other year,” deFays said. “We want to add in the things we find meaningful and exciting.”

So far the only permanent events that are for sure happening is homecoming and prom. Homecoming is October 11 and has a big top theme. Prom’s location is currently being set up. There is a big surprise planned for prom this year.

“I’m really excited about prom. I won’t say too much but its going to be something completely different and it should be really exciting. It’s going to be awesome,” deFays said.

Student council is full of changes for this year and the new advisers are the reason.

“I like them [the advisers] a lot. They’re very active and energetic and they bring kind of a new atmosphere to the meetings,” Blaydes said.

[Updated Aug. 7, 2017: This article has been reformatted for consistency.]