Junior Caucus: Margaret Mikhalevsky and Yashna Patel

RECORD: Mikhalevsky and Patel have leadership experience both inside and outside of student government, as Mikhalevsky is the current Sophomore Caucus Co-President while Patel is the Chief of Staff. Outside of caucus, Mikhalevsky is the Vice President of Stuyvesant Spectrum, is on the Student Leadership Team Subcommittee for Inclusivity, and was on the Planning Subcommittee for JProm to gain experience on the logistics of the event. In addition, Patel is the blood drive coordinator for Stuyvesant and works with the New York City Blood Center to advertise and host donation events.

DYNAMIC: Despite the fact that Patel and Mikhalevsky are running together for the first time (Mikhalevsky has run separately for the past two years), they have a close working relationship, fostered by countless events and planning sessions that the two have gone through.

The two are also clearly in reverence of each other, which shows great promise, as building off of each other’s strengths often plays a hefty role in the relationship between caucus co-presidents.

PLATFORM: The Mikhalevsky-Patel ticket revolves around their four bases: advocacy, community, growth, and teamwork. Their focus is to help students overcome the overwhelming stress of junior life, which they will do through their policies on college readiness, their maintenance of a close partnership with the college office, and a plethora of unique events such as Luna Park, Dunk Tank, and a schoolwide Quiz Bowl tournament.

Ample prior experience and detailed planning of policies make Mikhalevsky and Patel stand out from other tickets, while unique events promise an engaging year to the sophomore class. Their work-focused relationship ensures that the caucus will be professionally managed and productive throughout the year.

What spearheads the Mikhalevsky-Patel ticket is its priority of making JProm more affordable. Mikhalevsky-Patel has a clear and detailed plan of how to achieve lower ticket costs. With the price of JProm in 2022 being the lowest yet, $80, due to savings from last year’s junior caucus, it would be very strenuous to attempt to top that price reduction. However, Mikhalevsky-Patel presents a very detailed and realistic approach, emphasizing the unique partnership it currently has with PayLite.

Mikhalevsky-Patel states how, from its current experience with event planning, Stuyvesant does not allow monetary transactions within school, nor does it fund events that take place outside of Stuyvesant. With its current partnership with virtual payment platform PayLite, Mikhalevsky-Patel expresses how that creates a huge advantage for them compared to other tickets, as they would be able to start fundraising and outdoor event planning the moment they step on caucus, rather than spending extra effort finding other partnerships,.

PayLite allows for fundraisers dedicated to JProm to occur outside of Stuyvesant, and the two plan to request allocations from the Parent Association and Alumni Association at the beginning of the year. Mikhalevsky-Patel also hopes to further promote these events through social media accounts, as well as the creation of a TikTok account.

Many of the ticket’s planned college readiness resources are not entirely new from those provided by previous junior caucuses, but Mikhalevsky-Patel also proposes many more resources catered to juniors, including its drivers’ education program, personal finance series, and scholarship spotlights.

With previous leadership experiences and a great dynamic between Mikhalevsky and Patel, the Mikhalevsky-Patel ticket embodies both creativity and feasibility within its policies, setting a clear path for the grade on what steps the ticket would take to reach their goals. Thus, The Spectator endorses this ticket.