Every Elder man’s typical daily school routine is initiated nearly the same way everyday: the announcements. This year the students as well as faculty and staff have been blessed with the friendly good mornings and broadcasting of senior communications officer, Michael Groh.

However, the recent elections have produced new core members of student council thus leaving the underdog Mark Smith as communications officer when the smoke cleared. Due to the lack of campaigning and the overall humorous character of Mark, his victory came as a bit of a surprise to his opponents and the rest of the school.

Following up Antonio McCloud’s drawn out pitch for communications, Mark waltzed up to the podium with all of the confidence in the world and delivered a speech to remember.

Unlike the other candidates, Mark was not constricted to any guidelines of following a structured speech on printing paper. Rather, he delivered with nothing else but a microphone and his brain. This may have been why his deliverance seemed so genuine and downright funny.

I was able to catch up with the winner, Mark Smith, and he was gracious enough to provide his personal insight regarding his speech and new position. Concerning his speech Mark stated, “Really I just went up there and expected to just speak my mind, and that’s exactly what I did. I was going for absolute brutal honesty, and it turned out people thought it was funny.”

One aspect of Mark’s speech students enjoyed was his mention of a possible twitter account designed for impersonation suggestions. Mark explained, “Basically I will set up a twitter account and anybody can tag the account with a person to impersonate. It can range from a student, a teacher, and even celebrities.” He continued to tell me he would except trying to impersonate noises as well.

While Mark’s speech may have been funny and convincing enough for him to win office, the motivations for Mark to run for communications were blurry. As he mentioned in his speech, he has not been involved in student council before, and the his appearance in clubs is spotty. So why did he want to run?

Mark replied, “I’m not exactly sure, but when I found out my friend Nick Maurer was running, I figured I had to give him some competition.” He further explained, “But then Nick dropped out of the running so I thought, ‘Hey I could actually make this something really fun’ and bring some excitement to the announcements in the morning.”

The new communications officer also recalls a moment in which his announcing skills were brought to the surface. In Mr. Pope’s class Mark mimicked a basketball announcer for a few minutes strait during a presentation. Mark remembers Mr. Pope being “extremely aggravated” and upset at Mark for “putting on a show” during his groups’ speech.

More importantly, Mark described what he would change with morning announcements saying, “It’s always the same thing every morning and to be honest I have a really hard time even staying awake during the announcements. I’ll be energetically waking people up every morning and maybe they will listen.”

Another candidate for communications officer was Antonio McCloud. Similarly to Mark, Antontio was another fan favorite who won most of his supporters over from his honesty and amusement.

“I was pretty salty when I found out I didn’t win because I thought everyone voted for me. I am glad for Mark, but I think a lot of people voted for him jokingly.” Antonio continued, “All I can say is you all missed out on an outgoing guy that would have brightened your morning.”

Another candidate who fell to the almighty Mark was Owen Plagge. Owen admitted, “I was a little upset, but I was not too surprised. It might be a change for Mark because he sleeps through the announcements most mornings.”

The current communications officer, Michael Groh, vocalizes, “I’m really going to miss the position. You would be surprised though about how nervous you can get when you first start announcing, but I’m a veteran now.” Concerning  Mark he expressed, “Even though Mark through out a few jabs at me during his speech, I think his sense of humor will really benefit him as well as the school every morning.”

The head of student council and English teacher Mr. Reiring only sees positive outcomes for the future as he stated, “His sense of humor will be great for the morning announcements as well as the possible video announcements as well. I’m extremely excited about the new student council core lineup.”

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