Many clubs at Quartz Hill High School are centered around community service, holding canned food drives, clothing drives, and the like. Some even make postcards for the elderly. For most of these, this is the only initiative the club pushes for the entire school year, besides the standard club activities like the Car Show and Club Rush. For others, the club sits stagnant, only used as filler on the college applications of those who signed up and showed up for club pictures. Some, however, shine above the others for their continued initiative in their community.

The Student Action Committee (or S.A.C.) is responsible for many of the large-scale political events that have happened at Quartz Hill High School over the past school year. S.A.C. is a community-service oriented club with a non-partisan focus on world politics.

S.A.C. first worked with the school administration and the history department to bring students out of their history classes and to the library to mock-vote. The purpose of this event was to make students comfortable with voting in an effort to encourage them to vote later in life. In total, 950 students were brought out to vote that day, one-third of the entire student body.

Next, the Student Action Committee came into contact with the Katie Hill and Steve Knight HR CA-25 Congressional campaigns, both of whom were interested in organizing a student forum at the school through the club. The student forum’s purpose was to increase communication between candidates and their future young constituents. Each candidate scheduled their own, separate forums on different dates. At each, the candidate gave a small speech about themselves, then opened the floor for questions from students. In a contentious midterm election, the opportunity for students to speak to candidates that they had only previously heard about through smear campaigns online was invaluable.

The Student Action Committee also held a student forum for Assembly District Delegate Tom Lackey in February of this year.

In terms of community service, the S.A.C has volunteered for the remodeling of two community gardens in the Antelope Valley. The first community garden of the two was the Elm Avenue Community Garden, located on the Boulevard, that provides fresh vegetables to the veterans’ senior center nearby. The second was located in the Cedar Ridge Apartment Complex, a lower-income apartment complex whose residents use the produce to make healthy cooking.

The Student Action Committee has pushed past the typical droll of the high school club over the course of one year. Looking forward, S.A.C. plans to expand its success into other schools around the valley. The Student Action Committee is a club to watch for, as it continues to make its name in the coming years.