October marks the seventh month in the tenure of Andover’s 2024-2025 Student Body Co-Presidents Nate Liang ’25 and Saraya Angbazo ’25. Over the past summer and this Fall term, Liang and Angbazo have been working on four core objectives: reforming All-School Meeting (ASM), streamlining club organization, expanding room visitation policies, and adding “Rec Spaces” around campus.
Liang described how the recently implemented “Club Hub” addressed one of his and Angbazo’s main objectives to make clubs more accessible to students. He outlined their work in integrating Club Hub into the club system at Andover.
“One of the recommendations of the Andover Anti-Racism Task Force was to streamline clubs, especially in the area of [Community and Multicultural Development] (CaMD). That was something that Mr. [Christopher] Capano, [Director of Student Activities], and other people dealing with clubs had already thought about before… Saraya and I thought it would be a good idea to host a meeting for all the club leaders to ensure that every club moves over to that,” said Liang.
In addition to centralizing clubs, Liang and Angbazo have successfully implemented changes to ASM. Liang detailed their efforts in reshaping ASM after hosting a student forum and discussions with Linda Carter Griffith (LCG), Associate Head of School for Equity, Inclusion and Wellness, and Reverend Gina Finocchiaro.
“Last spring we hosted an ASM forum along with LCG and [Reverend Gina Finocchiaro]. We were in charge of managing the attendees in the forum. The vote for the ASM [being] biweekly went to the faculty, so we weren’t directly involved in choosing that. But we were able to review with LCG what students wanted in terms of speakers… Through the forum, people were able to go and voice their opinions as well,” said Liang.
Regarding the pair’s ClubHub initiative, Ella Kowal ’25 noted that while it has helped increase club engagement, the transition away from using email lists and Canvas pages could be more gradual.
“It might be good to make the transition [to Club Hub] a little bit slower instead of being encouraged to switch to Club Hub right away because a lot of us are still getting used to the platform,” said Kowal.
Similarly, Adrian Perez ’27 expressed how Club Hub allowed him to pursue his interests and better manage his extracurriculars compared to the previous system of how clubs were managed.
“In my Freshman year, I signed up for a lot of clubs, and I ended up just giving up on [most of them] because they didn’t match my interests. Now I know what clubs I really want to be in with Club Hub and was able to sign up for more clubs that are in those interests,” said Perez.
The Co-Presidents have also participated in increasing engagement among the Andover community through school-wide events. Lily Liu ’26 highlighted the recent Cluster Olympics, which Liang and Angbazo helped coordinate with the Cluster Co-Presidents. She is also excited for the return of Oasis Spaces instituted by last year’s 2023-2024 Student Body Co-Presidents, Ryan Lam ’24 and Eleanor DeHoog ’24.
“The Cluster Olympics [was] definitely a highlight. It’s something that if I had that my Freshman year, I would have found Andover to be a much more warm and welcoming place. Definitely having the Oasis Spaces and hammocks back would be really nice. Those [were] a really nice addition to campus last year, and it’s good that they’re continuing these traditions while adding new elements to [campus] life in general,” said Liu.
Liang and Angbazo shared their plans for the rest of their term, including expanding dorm visitation talks and establishing a yearly agenda for ASM. Building on the Oasis Spaces initiative, they also plan to implement “Rec Spaces” around campus as places for students and faculty to socialize.
“In terms of our [sleepover] initiative, we’re trying to open up the talk about visitations in general, especially in the winter time, [when] Seniors get privileges like closed-door visitation, which will make the conversation around visitation a lot easier. We’re hoping that will be the stepping stone for a conversation that’s going to last multiple years,” said Liang.
Angbazo continued, “Posting [a yearly] ASM schedule and creating more buzz around ASM, and bringing more fun activities inspired by the Snooze-The-Blues events last year to the community block that we have on Fridays, those two are probably our next big items on the to-do list. Soon, we’ll [also] be starting to work on our Rec Spaces initiative.”
Editor’s Note: Nate Liang is a Digital Editor for The Phillipian
