Kaylee Davis

Writer

Continuing their skills in leadership through the 2022-23 school year, the MHS Student Council (StuCo) attended their 82nd Annual State Convention.

At the yearly convention, students attend general sessions with guest speakers, split out into breakout sessions, and also attend mixers to network with other leaders in the state.

The StuCo State convention hosted speakers: Aaron Davis, Dr. Jill Garcia, Andrew Davidson, Philip Dituri, Erik Scott and Generation Why, the speakers’ goal was to inspire and educate students on how and why they should get involved in their communities and share leadership experience in person.

Sophomore Trace Ribble attended all three days of the event and experienced the guest speakers inspiring messages first hand.

“The guest speakers were great. Their message was essentially to include everyone, and to look out for those that may be bullied,” Ribble said. “Aaron Davis was my favorite, though. He taught us that things won’t always be easy, but we need to persevere.”

After having the opportunity to listen to the guest speakers, student council members split up to attend smaller sessions with speakers of the event afterwards.

Junior Joshua Parsons is a first year student council member and attended the state convention in order to learn ways to become a better leader.

“I enjoyed getting to meet all the new people and bond with them at the convention,” Parsons said. “There was also an amazing list of guest speakers present.”

The state convention is not the first way the student council has collaborated to help their community and student body this year.

The Marlow High School Student Council kicked off their Marlow Outlaws Reaching Out to Others (MOROTO) fundraisers with an auditorium shirt sale and Halloween coin war previous to the state convention.

The Coin war was a competition between the four high school classes, taking place from Monday Oct. 24 and ending on Thursday, Nov. 2.

The coin war had pennies and dollar bills giving the class positive points and silver coins giving out negative points.

The contest resulted in a victory of 3,266 points for the sophomore class, a final score of 6,087 points.

The senior class achieved second place with 2,821 points, the junior class came in third with a score of negative 2,534 points and the freshmen class came in last with negative 4,383 points. 

In years past, the MOROTO fundraiser has raised money for organizations such as the Disabled American Veterans and the Marlow Samaritans, and raised nearly ten thousand dollars some years.

The success of the fundraiser has grown significantly since its beginning, changing from a small fundraiser to help nonprofit organizations to a schoolwide event, raising money while keeping students excited and engaged.

New games as well as old will be played during MOROTO week, raising money to donate to this year’s recipients, the Charis Pregnancy Center.

Sophomore English teacher and StuCo advisor Ann Field has been in charge of MOROTO week since its start in 2018.

“We started doing MOROTO week because we saw that other schools had great success in bringing their student body and community together for a common goal during their philanthropy weeks,” Field explained. “We begin preparing in late July when we have our Outlaw Ambition retreat and we spend a lot of time coming to a consensus on the recipient.”

The full week of celebrations will take place from Feb. 6 to Feb. 10 and will hold both new games as well as old in order to reach new heights in their fundraising endeavors. 

Junior Emma Samples recently took charge of the student council president position, taking on this role for the 2022-23 school year.

“Moroto week is going to be fun this year,” Samples said. “There are going to be a lot more participation activities that will get students more in the MOROTO week spirit.”

The student council will continue working toward their goals and raising funds as they continue with the school year and growing as a team, with their next event being their Random Acts of Kindness project taking place on Nov. 13.