Last Monday, students headed to the gym to attend an assembly in which candidates for 08-09 Student Council co-presidents delivered their speeches. Fellow students lined up on both sides of the hallway leading to the gym, handing out stickers, candy and crackers, in hopes of bribing others to vote for their preferred candidate. During the week posters had sprung up everywhere in the school, promoting the candidates. Two groups ran – MLK, composed of juniors Mythili Prabhu, Lisa Yoon, and Kelly Grogg, and the team of juniors Ben Mackey and Matt Lee. “I felt that Ben and I could help make Student Council even better,” Lee said. “We were not on Student Council when we were freshmen and sophomores, so we figured that we had some fresh ideas.” Mackey and Lee’s speech was, to say the least, out of the ordinary. They warned students of the inevitable upcoming zombie invasion. “We were sitting around, thinking of what to say in our speech and, as a joke, I said it would be funny if we did a zombie speech,” said Lee. “We wanted our speech to be less boring and issue-focused, since we remembered sitting in that gym in the past and having to suffer though some pretty long, boring speeches.” Last Wednesday, freshmen, sophomores, and juniors voted for who they wanted to lead their school next year. Mackey and Lee, the victors, announced the results to the student body later that day. They have big hopes for the upcoming year. “We hope to try to get more freshmen involved in Student Council, since this year we only had two or three,” said Lee. “We also want Student Council to be more aware of what is going on in the school and not let anything like Success Study Hall slip by again.” Mackey and Lee hope to accomplish next year what Student Council has been trying to do for the last few years – get new bike racks, install electric hand dryers, and have new murals around the school. When asked what new ideas he and Mackey specifically had, Lee declined to reply, explaining that he had not discussed it with his cabinet yet. (The cabinet consists of Propaganda Director Spencer Botine, War Tzar Jamison Disalvo, and Head of Security Matt Saxton.) However, the two do know what they do not want to happen next year. “I just hope we don’t stoop down to the level of making ‘Beat Marshalltown’ t-shirts,” Lee said. Mackey and Lee are succeeding this year’s Student Council co-presidents, Sam Bird and Daniel Park, who have had a very successful year. They introduced and sponsored new events such as the Abana Banji run and Green Week, while continuing to hold past events like Winter Madness and Crush Cans. “We have a pretty big legacy to live up to,” said Lee, “but Mackey and I are confident that we can succeed.”