As First Quarter draws to a close, some students may be getting ready to start proposing their Agora classes for Agora Week in mid-February.
However, there’s been a change in how the Agora committee selects class proposals this year.
Each year, the committee gathers “[in November] to go over all of the class proposals and … decide which ones get through and which ones are legit,” says committee member and Uni sophomore Praachi Mudar.
According to Uni Latin teacher and three-year Agora Week sponsor Brian Lauthen, members of Agora committee used to be decided by “just who showed up.”
“We [had] noticed it’s been growing and growing, which is good. But last year, we noticed there were a lot of people in our meeting … [it was hard] to try to discuss classes well enough with that many people.”
In a Sept. 5 email to students, Lauthen wrote that to be a member of Agora committee candidates were required to formally run and be voted in by fellow students. To run, students were required to email Lauthen with “a couple of sentences of why … [they] want to be on the committee … [along with] what qualifications [they] may have,“ as the email states.
On Sept. 8, students were emailed a link to vote on their top 3 Agora Committee class representatives. Voting results were released on Sept. 11.
Being an Agora committee member comes with perks. Along with free pizza at the class selection meeting, members get to have the first pick of what classes they will take in the coming week. According to Mudar, “There are so many cool classes to be a part of.”
Lauthen says, “We wanted to make it smaller. We [also] wanted to make it more equitable between the grades. Sometimes, you might have, in the past, a bunch of freshmen, maybe hardly enough seniors. So we wanted to make it more equitable between the different classes.”
“I think it’s really awesome that students get to teach something they have an interest in,” he adds. “[It] gives a break from normal, everyday classes … It’s just nice to take a break right there [in] February … [and] to have something to look forward to.”
