Students elected the head, senior and junior prefects for the 2018-2019 school year this month.
Kevin Chen ’19 and Ryan Stanford ’19 will serve as Head Prefects, and Lucas Lyons ’19, Loyal Terry ’19, Caroline Cook ’19 and Vanessa Payne ’19 will be the new senior prefects.
Sebastian Li ’20, Michael Lehrhoff ’20, Grace Burton ’20 and Jaya Nayar ’20 were elected as Junior Prefects for their class.
Junior and senior elections took place in the Rugby Theater on April 18 and 19, respectively. Unlike in previous years, students voted for any four candidates regardless of gender.
While the data was not used in this election, the data collected will be used to determine if the voting process should be modified for future elections.
Current sophomore prefects Grace Burton ’20 and Jaya Nayar ’20 ran unopposed for the two female junior prefect positions.
Because they were already recognized as prefects for next year, Burton and Nayar did not speak to their class.
“I’m so grateful that I get to serve my peers for another year,” Nayar said. “I hope [my class] will feel confident that I can make changes at Harvard-Westlake to better our community and make their lives a little easier. I love it when people in my grade come and talk to me about things they want to see get implemented at Harvard-Westlake because their ideas are the ones I build off of.”
Li, Cook and Payne secured their positions directly after the first election, and Lehrhoff, Lyons and Terry won following votes received in a runoff race.
“I’m so excited to welcome all of the new Prefects to the council, experience a great year of conversations with so many new, diverse perspectives and work on projects I already love working on as well as find new initiatives to be passionate about too,” Cook said.
Each candidate delivered an opening statement, answered an unprepared question and responded to the prepared question they had been working on about their qualifications for becoming a prefect to an audience full of their peers.
“I’m so unbelievably excited and honored to have been elected,” Stanford said. “Prefect Council has been such a big part of my life and I can’t wait to represent the school as a Head Prefect. I’m really looking forward to working with Kevin and bringing my ideas to fruition next year.”