Meet the Candidate: Natalie Goldstein ’18

Meet+the+Candidate%3A+Natalie+Goldstein+18

1. Choose a leadership quote and in a short paragraph explain how it applies to your “style” of leadership and why.

A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves

— Lao Tzu

In a leadership position, I tend to listen to people for feedback and do everything I can to incorporate that feedback into how I lead because in my eyes, a leader fails when they do not accept input from their followers. However, like any human being, as a leader I cannot possibly implement every piece of constructive criticism directed towards me. Therefore, before I do anything concrete, I do my best to consider how often a particular aspect of my leadership has been scrutinized so that I may best tend to the needs of the people.

2. As a student council member, what important goals would you have for Student Council? For Archer?

Across the board, I see participation as one of the most vital ingredients for both the success of Student Council and the student body. One such element of this consists of strengthening communication coming from both Student Council and the student body, without which improvements of student experience could not be bettered. Presenting more surveys to the student body, particularly face-to-face rather than online, will easily allow us collectively to accomplish this goal.

Student Council Executive Board candidate Natalie Goldstein’s yearbook photo.

3. What are your plans for increasing school spirit and participation at Archer?

I propose the addition of several new events to the repertoire of Student Council, including Cultural Appreciation Day, a day dedicated to celebrating cultures outside of the Archer community, and annual (or perhaps even more frequent) school-wide assassin games. Additionally, to heighten spirit for more competitively charged events like Spirit Week and, conceivably, the aforementioned school-wide assassin, strengthening student unity within classes could manifest a healthy competitive nature between grade levels and consequently promote considerable growth in school spirit. In conjunction with this, I suggest that to build more school-wide togetherness, families, a point of Archer pride that as of late has begun to fade into the community’s periphery, should be reborn in a glorious fashion by bringing compatible personality types spanning all grade levels together on a more frequent basis.

4. What role(s) do you think Student Council should play at Archer? Is Student Council currently fulfilling that role? If not, what changes do you propose to make it happen?

Student Council should act as a vessel for the wants of the Archer community within reason. As previously mentioned, if elected to be a member of Student Council, I intend to strengthen communications between Student Council and the community as a whole through the use of surveys in order to better the student experience at Archer, particularly face-to-face. Additionally, Student Council should do its best to listen to the ideas expressed by the Archer community and implement the practical ones it is able to.

5. Why do you want to be on Student Council, really?

In all my years here, I have found it difficult to be an active member of this community. Before I came to Archer, I went to a school where school spirit was stigmatized, and, afraid of being a social pariah, I swallowed my thoughts of spirit for a chance at fitting in, all of which was not helped by my deep-seated timidness. In the past year, I’ve come to realize that I have no reason to be afraid anymore because I have a home in Archer, and I see this as the perfect opportunity to express how I truly passionate and spirited I am about this wonderful school.