The Manhattan High Student Council hosted their first major event of the year with the Student Council Regional Conference yesterday.

The StuCo Regional Conference included several high schools from across central Kansas who came to Manhattan High to learn more about leadership and swap ideas. The last time MHS hosted the conference was in 2015, so many new StuCo members from other schools were seeing the school for the first time.

“I think a lot of the smaller schools loved seeing our school,” StuCo sponsor Leslie Campbell said. “They were overwhelmed by the size. I think they just, they had a blast.”

Guest StuCo members were separated from the people from their school upon arrival, helping them meet others and learn more about other schools. This was done to encourage cooperation and bonding between schools in attendance.

“It was fun in the beginning when we were splitting them all up, because you just got to meet a bunch of different people from different schools and kind of see people try and get out of their comfort zone as they just talk to random people,” Senior Class vice president Blaise Hayden said.

Students were then ushered into Rezac Auditorium where they were introduced to the MHS student body officers and listened to inspirational speaker Michael Cuesta. Cuesta is a youth speaker who gave the speech “You Are Greater Than,” which aimed to inspire students with his own personal story. StuCo’s presentation also included a performance from the Pops Choir.

MHS StuCo members were in charge of running the event, managing everything from check-in to snack breaks. The full preparation and execution of the event was left to them, which made the Regional Conference sort of a trial run to see how they would work together to pull it all off.

“I think that this year is going to be a really good group of people,” Junior Class representative Elizabeth Chapman said. “I know student council and we’re going to get a lot of stuff done.”

This is just the first of many events StuCo has planned for this year and while it is going to be a busy year for them, they look forward to the things that they will accomplish as a team.

“I’m excited about my student council this year, they’re very enthusiastic,” Campbell said. “I hope that they learned a lot from running the conference and it should be a great year.”