CALEB NICKERSON
FORT COULONGE
April 24, 2019
The student parliament at École secondaire Sieur de Coulonge (ESSC) held their official inauguration ceremony on April 24 in the school’s auditorium.
Each of the 11 students were called forward on the stage to receive a medal and a handshake from their principal or vice-principal. Several teachers, local officials and even MNA André Fortin spoke at the event, congratulating the group on their work getting elected by their peers.
Former student Prime Minister Colin Lebrun spoke about the importance of the work that the student parliament does, including the continuation of his work revising the school’s cell phone policy.
Fortin congratulated the group on their election and noted that with two female co-Prime Ministers, the group has more female leadership than the rest of Canadian legislatures.
Staff instructor Martin Roy said that the parliament is based on the Vox populi program, which provides tools for schools in Quebec to mimic their provincial elected body.
“It’s only the fourth year we’re doing it here,” he said. “All schools in Quebec need to do a student council, this gives us the opportunity basically to copy what they’re doing in the National Assembly.”
“It’s a way, not only to organize ourselves within the school but to learn about the process in real life,” he continued. “We try to copy what they do in real life, so there are 125 [ridings] … we kind of do the same thing but ours are our classes.”
Roy added that one major accomplishment of the current council is their work on cell phone and electronic integration in the school, which was originally spearheaded by Lebrun.
“Four years ago, he was elected Prime Minister under the action of working on cell phone integration in school,” he said. “We were not able at that time to allow it, but it took four years of work until the school board accepted our idea.”
Current co-Prime-Minister and Secondaire 5 student Chloé Desjardins explained that the new policy lays out clear rules about when and where mobile electronics are allowed at ESSC. They had to run their policy by the school brass to ensure that everyone was on the same page.
“We had a lot of work and research to do, but it worked out well,” she said. “If you go in gym class in dressing rooms they’re not allowed … In classes of course, they don’t want to take the focus off studying, so those were the main things.”
The students were elected and have been working together since September, but Roy explained that due to his medical leave, the official ceremony was postponed.
The elected students and their titles are as follows:
Evan Rebertz-Laroche – Co-Underminister of social and student life
Jacob Danis-Labelle– Co-Underminister of social and student life
Nicolas Monette – Minister of the environment and Underminister for activities
Gabriel Macron – Minister of parties and activities
Cédrick Morissette – Treasurer
Patrick Pépin – Secretary General and Minister of social and student life
Penelope Pomminville – Minister of communications
Heidi Newberry – Assistant Secretary
Yanick Garneau – Deputy Prime Minister and French youth representative
Chloé Desjardins – Co-Prime Minister
Victoria Larivière – Co-Prime Minister.
