At the start of the school year, the new All-School Council introduced its plan to focus on students’ mental health during an ASM by offering support in ways the Marlborough community has not seen before. 

This year’s All-School President, Athena Schnabel ‘23, has dedicated a large part of her time to focusing on inclusivity at Marlborough and its connection to students’ mental health. She plans to create new bonding activities that can accommodate those who have sound sensitivities and are neurodivergent. 

“My main focuses for this year include creating community-based activities like a homecoming, along with grade-level and all-school bonding activities where new students and just students, in general, can feel like they are in a supportive community,” Schnabel said. “In this initiative, we would make these school events more compliant for those who have sound sensitivities that are often associated with neurodivergence because these loud over-stimulating events like Homecoming are not always suitable for everyone.” 

Another one of Shnabel’s primary goals is to amplify the voices of transgender and nonbinary students to make the school environment more comfortable for them.

“My main goal is to target issues of unequal representation for our trans and non-binary students surrounding gendered language and other issues,” Schnabel said. “I will be making a committee of trans and non-binary students so they can talk about what they think can be improved, and, of course, they can do this anonymously.”

Within the student council, a new position called the Wellbeing Representative goes into effect for the first time this year. The purpose of this position is to center on students’ mental health.

“I wanted to create this position where students could go to a trusted peer that they elected and not feel intimidated to talk about something mental health wise that is important to them,” the All-School Co-Wellbeing Representative Nicole Hopmans ‘23 said.  “My main goal is to communicate it [the importance of mental health] to the administration so we can build upon students’ needs regarding their mental health.” 

Shnabel and Hopmans both hope to make mental health initiatives more accessible for students to get involved in as they are currently in the brainstorming process. 

 “It doesn’t need to just be the really passionate students or the leaders who can get involved because we really want to hear from everyone,” Hopmans said.