Brahmas elect new leadership for upcoming school year

Renee Elefante, News Editor|May 13, 2019

Diamond Bar High School students probably noticed the sea of flyers and posters posted around campus recently. Voting for next year’s class officers ended on April 26 with Christopher Lin defeating Jennifer Nie, who had been the class of 2020 president for the past three years.

Michael Cheng, who ran unopposed, was chosen for the fourth year in a row as the vice president. Meanwhile, Rachel Yang, Eugene Liang and Eryn Lau all ran unopposed and were elected secretary/treasurer, social chairperson and historian, respectively, for the fourth year in a row as well.

Lin, who is currently helping with planning this year’s graduation and preparing a speech for the ceremony, hopes to increase school spirit by creating other spirit days like Wavecheck Wednesdays, where students would wear do-rags (scarves that are worn on their heads). For his campaign, he collaborated with junior Kyle Kato to create a music video and raffled off eight do-rags that had his name on them to students who re-posted his campaign flyer on social media.

“I wanted to have an impact on this school,” Lin said. “I didn’t want to be forgotten…A lot of my friends encouraged me to do it also.”

According to Activities Director Jenna Van Horn, about 1,159 students voted in the elections, yet ties required a run-off for both the sophomore and freshman voting. 20.3% of juniors voted while 39.9% of both sophomores and freshmen voted. 660 sophomores and freshmen voted in the run-off election.

For the sophomores, Daniel Min and Phillip Ma maintained their positions as president and vice president, respectively. The class of 2021 also voted Aileen Park for secretary/treasurer, Christopher Tran for social chairperson and Momoe Tamida for historian.

Min said he wants to plan a successful prom next year and boost school spirit. To do this, he wants to improve the posters used in rallies and hand out bells or other items that students can hold at the rallies. While campaigning this year, he created skits on his YouTube channel, MrMin, a parody of MrBeast. He also passed out lip balm that had a sticker of his caricature.

“It was a lot more friendly [than last year’s elections],” Min said. “There was no slandering and everyone was following regulations, so it was a clean race.”

Freshman Akash George was re-elected as president, while Allen Wang was his vice president. Theodore Chen was voted secretary/treasurer, Carissa Wu was chosen as social chairperson and Alan Zhang was re-elected as historian.

George hopes to make next year’s prom tickets less expensive through the school’s Saturday Bingo games and numerous fundraisers. He also hopes to increase the class of 2022’s spirit by motivating them to wear green during the rallies. Currently, students who post photos of themselves and their friends wearing green on Instagram are entered into a raffle with gift cards as prizes.

“I want people to know that I actually care, and I’m not doing this just to do it,” George said. “…I want to do it as well as I can.”