Junior Ethan Sauerberg has been elected ASB President for the 2017-2018 school year.

Other results from the March 20 election included junior Cassie Nguyen selection as ASB vice president, junior Erin Neustrom as ASB Secretary, and Katie Clare as ASB Commissioner of Social Affairs.

“I’m really excited to be in charge of Leadership next year,” said Sauerberg. “It was definitely a difficult election. My opponent, who’s Leah Bahramipour, is definitely someone that I respected and it was hard to run against her, both in terms of votes and in terms of actually running against her because I consider her a friend.”

Bahramipour could not help but be disappointed in the results, though she has confidence Sauerberg will be a good leader for the student body. “I had spent all my career working towards this goal and it was upsetting not winning, but I think Ethan is a good candidate and he’ll serve the school well,” said Bahramipour.

Sauerberg ran for office, in part, because he felt he could help with the transition in Leadership as current adviser Dino Petrocco hands over the reigns to next year’s new adviser, Lindsay Webb-Pepploe.

“I thought that we needed someone who is gonna be prepared to not be afraid to lay down the law and make people do things, but also someone who is kind of ready to just change things as opposed to sticking to what we’ve had in the past. Especially with the transition of teachers it’s going to be important, so I decided ‘Well, I should go for it then,'” Sauerberg explained.

Sauerberg focus will be on developing more school spirit, which includes increasing attendance at football games. “We feel that the school spirit hasn’t been as high this year as it could have been and we’re hoping that increased Red C gear and more incentives to come to games, and then, therefore, having higher turnout will really make next year more fun,” Sauerberg said.

One of the challenges for Sauerberg may be leading a class of relatively inexperienced students. “[It’s] mainly because of the sophomores in the class now that are trying to take action and get things moving,” said senior Brett Smith. “I definitely think that there’s a good and a bad, there’s definitely the inexperience and the youth of that, but it’s gonna pay off at the end.”

While Sauerberg said he is ready for the changes that a new adviser may bring to the Leadership program, he would also like to see many traditional activities brought back. “We have a lot of good ideas from before that we want to bring back, a lot of the positive things that we had in the past such as food trucks and just make next year hopefully more fun than it’s ever been,” said Sauerberg.

After 14 years as the Leadership adviser, Petrocco felt is was time for a change.  In 2017-2018 he will return to teaching social studies full-time.

“I definitely am going to be sad because Petrocco’s been an iconic Leadership teacher, but I think changes may be good for the Leadership class,” Bahramipour said.