As the votes for the year have been cast and tallied up, juniors Noble Cox and Emiliano Martinez are ecstatic to have been elected as the co-presidents of Bowie’s student council for the 2024-2025 school year.
Envelopes were given to each of the five presidential candidates after elections on April 30 with the status of the polls inside, Cox and Martinez hastily opened their own in anticipation of the results.
“It really was nerve-racking, I was walking home that day and I stopped and sat on a bench because I couldn’t take it anymore,” Martinez said. “I was going to wait to go home and open the envelope with my parents, but I couldn’t handle not knowing.”
Cox and Martinez met during their freshman year and have stayed close friends while running together in cross country and hanging out in the same friend groups.
“We’ve already been communicating well,” Martinez said. “I feel very excited for next year, it’s going to feel like working with one of your closest friends.”
Cox and Martinez are both looking forward to being co-presidents next year and already know how to work well together since they’ve been friends and known each other for so long.
“Emiliano’s been one of my good friends since we met,” Cox said. “So, it’ll be a pretty fun time to get to work together.”
Last year, Cox decided to run for student council office after his world history teacher and Bowie’s student council sponsor Alejandro Garcia talked him into attending a meeting. Cox felt welcomed into the program and decided to run for vice president. He was then elected as vice president of the Homecoming Game for the 2023-2024 school year.
“Mr. Garcia told me to show up one afternoon and I did,” Cox said. “I really liked the environment and helping with yard work around Bowie.”
Garcia has been involved with Bowie’s student council since he attended the school as a student. He has since taken over as the lone sponsor of the program for the past two school years after previously working alongside fellow US history teacher, Wendy Uzzle. Garcia’s former high school world history teacher turned colleague, James Ellerbrock, was also the sponsor of the student council program for 31 years. His time with the organization began in 1988 when the school opened, and continued until his retirement in 2019. Ellerbrock inspired Garcia to become a teacher and wanted him to sponsor student council when he returned to Bowie as an educator.
“To be in charge of this program after I watched my former colleague do it for so long and lead the school in such fun and cool things makes me want to maintain that legacy and build upon it,” Garcia said. “I want there to be a Bowie of the future, and I want that to be where our legacy goes.”
Student council has grown immensely at Bowie in recent years, as evidenced by the number of vice president candidates more than doubling from last year’s 10 candidates to this year’s 28. 15 of those 28 candidates were voted into office for the 2024-2025 school year and will each be holding different positions with different responsibilities throughout the school year.
Harrison Austin and Camila Tellez have been voted as co-vice presidents at large. Arun Gandhi, Shivani Latha, and Megan Tran are co-vice presidents of teacher appreciation. Haden Barnett and Gabby Bochey are co-vice presidents of Bowie’s Got Talent. Carson Ledford and Carlos Ortiz are co-vice presidents of the renewed dodgeball tournament.
“The plan is to bring back our dodgeball tournament which we haven’t had in years since the pre-COVID world,” Garcia said. “That was a fun school wide event that hundreds of kids would get to participate in, and we’d get to have a Bowie dodgeball champion of the year, which everybody loves.”
Liz Luck and Valeria Portilla are co-vice presidents of community engagement. Parker Snow and Declan Stockdale are co-vice presidents of the homecoming dance. Noah Dougherty is the vice president of the homecoming game. Reed Watts is the vice president of yard work.
“The passion I saw from the students running encourages me about them leading student council next year,” Garcia said. “The election went great, I’m so happy that so many people came and participated and wanted to try out to be leaders.”
Student council is trying to bring back some traditions Bowie used to organize, and the program is also wanting to be more involved in helping the community next year.
“We’re trying to do more community activities,” Martinez said. “I feel like this year we lost that and through the COVID pandemic we lost a lot of connections.”
