Read a brief overview of the past few weeks as written by the Heads of School.

“Legacy is not what we do for ourselves; legacy is what we do for future generations.” This was a quote I’d shared at my initial induction speech and has continued to be an underlying motive that drives both myself and the Senior School leadership team for this year. While Vice-Captain Isaac Klomp will go into more detail about what our council team has managed to achieve in the semester of schooling so far, I’d like to share our other pursuits as the senior school student leadership team of 2021.


Firstly, networking. A big aspect of the leadership process is networking and discussing with other student leaders to learn of their challenges and own unique initiatives, ideas that could potentially be implemented within our own school system. Furthermore networking opened the possibility of collaborative projects with other schools. After the student leaders meet up between Santa Maria and Aquinas leaders late last year, I also had the opportunity to engage in an online forum with other Edmund Rice school leaders across Australia to discuss addressing the issues of the environment and mental health, among other themes, to bring back to our own Colleges. Recently Isaac and myself were invited to the first meeting of the UWA Young Leaders Council, which bought together over 30 leaders, each with their own leadership style, challenges and perspectives, which proved invaluable in exploring aspects of the College that we as students had the potential to have further impact in.


Beyond the council organised and run events and activities, the student leadership team has also worked on a few projects that lie beyond the confines of a single council and address a problem or a demand in the school that we had identified. The first of these projects was the Esports competition held in late Term 4 last year, and more recently on the 25th of June, the student leaders of both Aquinas College and Perth College hosted a primarily student-run Trivia night social for our Year 10 students. Despite the monumental task that was organising the many intricacies of a social event, we leaders realised the importance that an extra opportunity for our younger boys to socialise would be, and to provide them an enjoyable night was a heartwarming result. And that’s without mentioning the $1500 we’d raised for the Class of 2021 Bursary Scholarship Fund!

I joined ACTV at the beginning of the year, and since then I have put out two ACTV stories. We are challenged with finding entertaining b-roll footage and then putting it all together. This is my personal favourite part, as you finally get to see the story really come to life. So far, I have edited the stories on a simple editing software, but soon plan to move onto a more advanced editing software. Mr Bowyer has been helping me edit these stories, as I am relatively new to the style of a news report. For the story to look good, and not bore the audience, the most challenging bit is filming the right clips. Mr Bowyer has really helped me with this part, as he has taught me about the rule of thirds and what is an interesting shot and what isn’t. The great thing about ACTV though, is seeing the final news report. This can easily be accessed via the Aquinas College YouTube channel.

The Sustainability Council has had their hands full with many ongoing initiatives throughout late 2020 and early 2021. We have gradually established a variety of sustainable initiatives inside and outside of the College campus. As a result, this year we have been steadily growing a list of ideas and initiatives to carry our own established legacy.

For the past couple of months, the council has been heavily concentrating on three main ‘campaigns. Firstly, the reestablishment of the ‘Containers For Change’ has been of top priority. Following the liquidation of our previous recycler, GreenBatch, our council is fully responsible for readapting the school to the new government system. As a result, several members have been directly involved with Containers for Change representatives, to form a revitalised advertising campaign and reskinning of our strange green/purple bins. Too few students are unaware that the typical choc milk and Up & Go containers are eligible for the 10 cents scheme. As a result, the boys have been working to address this. Furthermore, the boys have planned to launch an official collection depot on school grounds for external community members to recycle their waste. In Term 3, our council will appear at Middle and Senior School assemblies to reaffirm these recycling changes and possibly announce this new depot for recyclable materials. This would be a significant feat as no other environment or sustainability council has been able to safely label the school as a developing ‘green’ school. Of course, a large reputation cannot be achieved in one year, but we believe that we are taking the right steps in placing the college on the map.

In other news, the Sustainability Council has also managed to hold three successful sausage sizzles for all staff and students, with the funds assisting our council’s initiative to invest in more classroom rubbish and recycling bins, to fulfil the lack of bins in the many classrooms around the school. A particular highlight being the Senior School Production sausage sizzle, where our council was able to pull off gourmet-style Bratwurst hotdogs. Apart from seeing Sam Yeow devour 10 large hotdogs, this experience has taught the sustainability boys organising, management and grilling skills! A tremendous thank you to staff Ben West and Megan Monks for playing a large role in these initiatives. Funnily enough, the council has now been marked as the ‘Sausage Sizzle council’ following its success!

The Sustainability Council has also been hard at work in planning a city-wide Eco Conference in our very own College Hall. Taking place in late September, the boys have been assisting behind the scenes with Catholic Earthcare (Caritas) to organise a summit for representatives of most Catholic schools around Perth. This summit would provide a significant opportunity to meet lots of peers with similar interests, fast track some development of students in the council and boost the profile of the council and its objectives. This would allow Aquinas College to be able to share what we are doing, and there would be several projects from others that we can pick up and promote to our school leaders. Moreover, in conjunction with the Justice Peace and Advocacy council, some Aquinians attended the Australia-wide ‘School Strike 4 Climate’ march in the Perth CBD. This excursion allowed the boys some exposure and education to the issue of climate change and informed them about the government’s current position on the issue.

Looking forward, the Sustainability Council is looking to establish two more initiatives for the rest of the year. The first initiative reaching into the House competitiveness, where each house will compete to fill their designated recycling bin with eligible materials; slowly installing good recycling habits. Furthermore, the council is also looking to pair up with Waste Wise to promote efficient waste systems within the college grounds. This organisation would also allow us to visit Methodist Ladies College in a bid to gain inspiration from their well-developed waste system that has been integrated within their secondary school.

Finally, the council is looking to be involved with Second Bite. For those of you who do not know, Second Bite is a not-for-profit organisation that is dedicated to collating and redistributing foods to those who need them. Fresh produce like rhubarbs and cauliflower, which would normally be sent to rot if not bought, are now provided to the poor. Hence, we would like to see how the College can assist, considering its location to the weekend farmer’s market and Coles supermarket.

Overall, I am proud and appreciative of the ongoing efforts by all staff and students that have cooperated and coordinated a myriad of events. As a result of this, I hope we can develop a nourishing external reputation, as well as, a guiding legacy for future Aquinians to follow.

The Advanced Science and Biotech excursion involved 25 Aquinas students from Years 9 and 10 who took part in the Rotary Science and Engineering challenge. This competition aimed to expose the students to hands-on work that is present in many fields of engineering and to inspire them to pursue a career and future in a particular field that interests them.

This day was no ordinary competition, in that it didn’t involve the usual paper and pen, but incorporated creative ways to explore and deal with topics and issues that are present in our modern-day world. The competition consisted of a variety of different challenges, from making our own hovercrafts to finely crafting a bionic hand. This challenge allowed me to find a passion for the field of engineering and opened my eyes to the vast array of programs our school has provided us. and gave me an insight on how I should not take these opportunities for granted but to get involved with them as a doorway of opportunities will arise.

The teams that we placed forward into this competition would all agree that the day was a major success and the experience and amount of knowledge we learned, with the help of Mr Hitie, was insurmountable. Jonathan Vinci, Nishok Nimalan, and I were tasked with building a hovercraft out of limited resources and had to complete seemingly impossible challenges with it. Not only did our hovercraft fail multiple times, but it persisted to deflate and malfunction every time we attempted the challenges. When finishing the challenge seemed impossible, we managed to put our creative minds together and construct a new hovercraft from our scavenged materials. Only through our teamwork, resilience and determination were we able to push through and complete this challenge with a respectable result.

I believe this reflects perfectly on the values we learn at the college and what we need in our daily lives in order to strive for excellence. With the help of staff such as Cyril Hitie and Megan Monks who made this whole day possible, we were able to be exposed to real-life scenarios and problems that would help us prepare for our future careers.

Strategy. Intellect. Persistence. In other words, the game of chess. You are a General and the pieces are your army. White calls, Black responds. The armies dance, they court each other with invitations of capture and victory, secret traps to ensure a swift checkmate. On the chessboard, if we played every second till the end of the Universe we wouldn’t finish all the possible games. In other words, it's the best sport on the planet.

Chess is a sport, not as we understand it of the body, but one of the mind. It is the only fair sport. Every other one has an element of chance, cross country runners can be helped by a tailwind, a tennis player could sneeze at the wrong moment, but only in chess is your skill that determines all. No matter how bad your luck is, in chess, you can still triumph. The whole game is completely down to you and the other player. The only element of chance is the colour of your pieces, which to an experienced player should have no great impact.

Recently at Aquinas, a school where we have traditionally supported sports of the body, there was a refreshing break in the normal routine. In our recent Tuatha Chess championship we had a duel of some of the best minds in the school. School captain Naveen Nimalan and Captain of the chess club Jared Healy were among some of those to pitch their wits against each other in this timeless game. In my own match against one of the best in our school, Caleb Verbruggen, I personally experienced the emotional rollercoaster one can go through during a game of chess. In the early stages of the game, my opponent made an opening blunder that I quickly seized advantage of, ensuring a material advantage. The game pressed on and I maintained my advantage until one fateful move I forgot to hit my clock, one of the worst mistakes a chess player can make, for losing on time is still a loss. Caleb sat there with an appearance of thinking, I assumed I had put him in a hard position and did not realise until I was severely down on time that I had not hit my clock and, as such, I was losing precious time. I slammed my hand down on the chess clock, my opponent swiftly made his move he had just spent the last few minutes on and the game went on. Up on material but low on time, panic set in, I didn’t think and then I blundered, I gave up the material advantage that I had. I panicked more, I lost more pieces until… there, on the chessboard, one last move that could save it all. He moved his King to face mine and I advanced mine towards his, he did the same likewise, noticing a second too late. Stalemate, that old “cheap and dirty” trick to weasel a draw out of your opponent, when your King has nowhere to go but it's not under attack.

That game not only showed me how a match can swing from hopeless to salvageable in an instant, it not only showed me that I should never give up after making a mistake, but it also taught me another valuable life lesson: don’t make hasty decisions in a panic. I am sure we have all been victims of an unsavoury decision made in haste, and this game is a perfect example of that. Chess not only engages our minds, it not only teaches us to think creatively but it is an important tool for learning life lessons. Within those 64 squares is a whole world of possibilities, it is not only a game of mind but that of life, all of us, general of ourselves, making moves every day of our lives in search of a win at the end. The Tuatha Chess competition has not only given us students an enjoyable time but it has given us all valuable lessons to take away, whether it be not being careless or not rushing or any other variety of lessons chess can teach us.

Play the opening like a book, play the middlegame like a magician and play the endgame like a machine. Advice not just for chess but for life. Play your adolescence and childhood with the advice of books, play your adulthood with surprises and strategy, play it brilliantly and almost magically, and when you are old and nearing the end, be like a machine through the pain, to endure what bad is there for the good in old age yet left to be lived.

Men’s Health Week was started by the United States Congress in 1994, for the goal of heightening awareness of preventable health problems and encouraging early detection and treatment of disease among men and boys on a community and even global level. The council wanted to celebrate this week, as it is often that students overlook and rarely open up and learn about mental health. To celebrate Men’s Health Week the Wellbeing Council planned a series of events through tutor: Meditation, yoga and even an assembly, as well as a fundraiser for Beyond Blue. This allowed students to engage in activities and learn about ways to develop stronger mental health, as well as directly helping fund an Australian mental health and wellbeing support organisation.