Manhattan High School Student Council officers for the 2026-27 school year were announced on April 23 in an election headlined by unopposed races, poor turnout from the junior class and record-high turnout from freshman and sophomore classes.
In the Student Body, juniors Katelynn Sunnenberg (president), Makenzie Kotschwar (vice president) and Sophia Hoeme (secretary) were elected in unopposed races and sophomore Nathan Chen beat out junior Ellis Lander for the position of treasurer.
Sunnenberg says her main goal as StuCo president is to bring students together.
“I want to host more opportunities for the student body, because I feel, as of right now, the student body and StuCo are a little bit separated,” Sunnenberg said. “And I want there to be just little fun, either fundraisers or just get togethers where we can unify it a little bit.”
Sunneberg outlined what events she thought worked well this school year that she would like to bring back.
“I definitely want to bring back Club Volleyball,” Sunnenberg said. “[And I] want to bring back just encouraging the sophomores and freshmen to host another dance.”
With most officer positions unopposed this year, some students observed the lack of options as they voted in advisory on April 22.
“It’s like voting for Kim Jong Un,” one student said.
In some positions, students actually had no one to vote for, as there were zero applicants to be the secretary or treasurer for the Class of 2027.
“We only had one person turn in an application for any of the Class of 2027 offices [before the original deadline] and that was Olive [Zhang], president of the class,” StuCo sponsor Dustin Duntz said. “And so I extended the deadline out… And so then at least we got a vice president [Ciera Williamson] and got some reps.”
The secretary and treasurer for the Class of 2027 will be determined at an end-of-the-school year StuCo meeting. Elected Class of 2027 representatives Lander, Finn Nelson, Madison Stanard, Samantha Troyer and William Schmidt will all be options to fill the positions.
“We’ve got a couple of people interested in both of the positions, I think,” Duntz said. “Two of the people interested have some experience with StuCo.”
While just 197 students from the Class of 2027 (juniors) voted in the election, over 300 students from the Class of 2028 (sophomores) and Class of 2029 (freshmen) voted in their respective elections.
“I don’t know that we’ve had 300 votes before in any of our class elections,” Duntz said. “I think we had more votes from the freshman and sophomore classes than we’ve ever had before. So we had a really good turnout there.”
The Class of 2028 elected Chuck Fuemmeler (president), Kelby Ryan (VP), Dombagaha Pathiranage Ometh Sethula (secretary) and Gerin Krush (treasurer). And the Class of 2029 elected Elle Shamburg (president), Khegan Mothershed (VP), Joy Baker (secretary) and Ella Xin (treasurer).
“It seems like it’s a really solid group,” Duntz said.
