SAN JOSE, CALIF— Silver Creeks Associated Student Body (ASB)  continues to find success planning for the school year despite the activity directors leave which has left them with less creative freedom, struggles with administration, a reduction in time available to prepare events along with several other challenges.

Like all school years, this one is looking to be filled with lots of fun activities and events for students to attend. These range from in-school rallies to Creekchella. Also as usual, ASB is the group in charge of making sure these events happen and operate smoothly. 

What is different this year however, is that their activities director, Peter Chu, has not reported to Silver Creek this school year. As a matter of fact, Chu has been gone since May of this year. His disappearance has been greatly felt in the school and especially to those in the Associated Student Body.

The role of an activities director is crucial in ensuring events like dances and “Groove 4 Kids” are planned and actually happen as it is meant to. Him being missing has resulted in large changes being made in the way ASB as well as leadership as a whole is ran this school year. 

ASB member and secretary for the class of 2025, Jenny Thach, can attest to the drastic alterations. “Chu would go the extra mile often staying late and basically lived at the school” Thach said about the activities director. She continued by speaking on how ever since Chu has left, they have not had the same freedom as the administration has been more controlling and restrictive which is piled on to of already not having the guidance of Chu.

Homecoming was the first large scale event that is being held this year. This year’s theme is “Once Upon A Dream: A Wish Upon The Stars”.  It occurred Saturday, Sept. 28. This is a date much earlier than the previous years which was held late in October. The team that is in charge of events like Homecoming is a separate section of leadership that is named “Events”. 

That section has also struggled according to Thach. That is due to several reasons including not having a person to open classroom I-2 which is where they would usually operate to paint and otherwise create sets for these events. While it has created obstructions in the way of the preparation of Homecoming, there was reassurement that the senior prom next year will not be impacted. “Class office has been working on prom since the summer, even though it was hard without Chu’s guidance through all the logistics, we’re confident it will be successful,” she said.

Members of ASB and leadership for this school year 

Photo credit: Chloe Tang & Jessica Van

The students are not the only ones who have been affected as several teachers have had to substitute in the roles that Chu usually fills. This includes Phi James who is primarily a history teacher but has stepped up as Activities Director. Along with James, the upperclassmen have also had to take up a sort of guidance role when dealing with the underclassmen in leadership and ASB. As Thach described it, they “have to showcase how to operate events that are meant for hundreds people, work shifts, etc”. 

For the time being, it seems as Chu will not be returning back to his role as activities director anytime soon. This new system that leadership has been forced to adapt to, while not perfect, has allowed them to continue holding and operating the fun events and spirit weeks that they are known for. As Thach put it, “there are things we aren’t confident in when we operate our events or set rules for our class and we try our best to adapt”. In spite of the fact that leadership may not be anywhere near the same it was this time last year, any person none the wiser would not be able to tell as they have continued to operate at the same rate.