Wearing their bright yellow shirts proudly, Link Crew members walk throughout the school, ready to interact with freshmen on campus.
Link Crew, an organization that helps acquaint freshmen with high school, meets once a month to discuss upcoming events and plan new activities among its members. The student commissioners responsible for coming up with these ideas, Seniors Arsheeta Kumar, Howard Leong, Daniel Lin, Serena Lin, Miriam Soliman and Katherine Tao, have been preparing for the events since last spring.
This year, Commissioners planned a separate Club Day and Sports/Other Activities Day reserved only for freshmen. Along with Dragonflicks and Peer Listeners, there will be clubs and organizations coming to persuade freshmen to join their activities. Even though these events have never been attempted before, the commissioners have high hopes for a positive outcome.
“Our goal is to get freshmen to participate in school activities,” said D. Lin. “It’s a great opportunity for them.”
Freshmen Club Day happened on Sept. 26 and Sports/Other Activities Day will take place on Oct 3.
One of the commissioners’s most well-known events is Freshmen Orientation, an event that involves showing freshmen around the school and playing games within small groups. During this event, the Link Leaders lead the freshmen in 64 Squares. Played by jumping on square pieces of paper, the objective of the game is to find the one safe path by choosing squares that are deemed “rocks” instead of “turtles.”
“The most important aspect of Freshmen Orientation is 64 Squares,” said Leong. “The goal of the game is to teach freshmen that life is a journey.”
Before becoming a part of the leadership program, each of the Link commissioners went through their own freshman experience as well.
“I used to be a really shy girl, so when I first came into high school, I was really scared,” said Tao. “But on the first day of Orientation, my Link Crew leaders were so nice and enthusiastic that it made me want to be like that towards other people.”
Some of their first Link Crew experiences inspired current commissioners to begin helping others get adjusted to a new school, while others revealed alternative reasons for joining.
“I didn’t want new freshmen to experience the same hardships I had,” Leong said. “People said Link Crew was a place where you could make a different in school, so I decided that was where I was going to make my difference.”
The commissioners believe the program is a good way to allow students to connect and interact with each other.
“It’s kind of fun to know somebody older than you,” Soliman said. “It allows freshmen to see that they’re not alone in the school.”
The leaders responsible for overseeing Link Crew, Advisors Mr. Riley Saxon and Mr. Nathan Slaymaker, both have positive opinions of the commissioners.
“All of them are very capable,” Mr. Saxon said. “I couldn’t have asked for a better group of commissioners.”