With more than a quarter of the student population dispersed across the globe, the Remote House Council aims to help remote students, returning and new, feel included in the Kent community and organize fun activities for them. 

The newly-established council was entirely the students’ idea; six students—Andrew Song ‘21, Tiffany Chan ‘22, Megan Jirakulaporn ‘22, Jess Zheng ‘22, Emily Yuan ‘23, and Isabelle Yang ‘24—reached out to Ms. Salatas, asking if they could be part of their dorm House Councils as remote students. The mostly on-campus House Councils are student-led groups that emphasize unity within dorms and allow students of all forms to be a leader, and these students wanted to bring this unity to our remote community. 

Yuan ‘23, a member of the Remote House Council, noticed the imbalance between the number of fun activities hosted for on-campus and off-campus students. “I want to show new students around the beautiful campus that all of us have lost a couple of months with,” she said. She remembers how some new students in her advisory group haven’t really made any friends and how they feel lost, so she hopes to help the new remote students with their transition to Kent School and to make them feel like part of our community. 

Despite some troubles finding a time that works for everyone, they’ve been brainstorming many fun activities, some of which are already underway! They’ve reached out to students asking for short welcoming videos to the new remote students and set up several social media accounts on Instagram and WeChat to act as a scope to Kent life. The members are currently thinking of asking on-campus students to vlog their daily lives throughout the academic day so that everyone can enjoy campus life, and they’re contemplating assigning returning remote students to new remote students to help them feel more connected to the Kent community at large.

As their advisor, Ms. Salatas is incredibly proud of the six students. “From the time they reached out to me and came up with the Remote House Council to being very engaged and getting all these things done with the current circumstances, I’m very impressed,” she says. She is certain that with the leadership of these six students, the connection between remote and on-campus students will be stronger and the Kent student community will feel whole again.