An Exposé: How The NV Council Really Sprouted

Clearing up the misconceptions

The EWIS New Vision Environmental (NV) Council is currently a high-school student-led committee living by its slogan “Think green, live clean.” The council aims to reduce the EWIS community’s negative impacts on the environment through educating and motivating the student body. The NV Council has accomplished many commendable acts, such as their donations, the Kirirom charity event, the school thrift store, and the enlightening conferences.

Despite these achievements, I walk the halls listening to whispers about the true nature of the NV Council. Nevertheless, I brushed them off. Until this April 4th.

As the days leading up to the NV Summit neared, these whispers grew and soon amalgamated into restless questions. How did the council even start? Who founded the council? Why is it called NV? Is Pieter Van Vaerenbergh's hairline receding?

And so, I decided to investigate.

The True Origins

Many of us assume that the NV Council was founded by Sophie Sinclair, Travis Clarkson, Pieter Van Vaerenbergh, or the school board, but this is a misconception. After interviewing two current 9th graders, Alexia Bone and Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bagley, I was surprised to find out the plagiarism the NV Council was built upon.

The two, now freshmen students, claimed that their 6th-grade service learning class was tasked with creating a project that would help the community, which developed into the now, NV Council. After the class was split into groups, the two students got their brains into gear.

Alexia Bone stated that: “Lizzie said ‘What if we made an environmental council for the school?’ And after getting confirmation from Ms. Sophie that the project didn’t have to be a one-off, Lizzie and I got straight to work. We spent hours making a presentation, I made a whole animation to market it and a logo and we made a name and everything”.

To answer one of the questions previously stated, the name 'New Vision' was constructed due to a misunderstanding. Elizabeth expressed that "It was originally supposed to be called Envy, short for Environmental. I think Ms. Sophie misheard me and wrote down NV, so we had to come up with a meaning for the acronym."

After compiling their masterful work, their group had to present their idea to the school board of directors in order to get it initiated, and they succeeded. “Lizzie and I had worked ourselves to the bone, yet we still planned everything for EWIS’ first ever Environmental Day and we made all the games to play.”

Following the Environmental Day, the two innovators were faced with injustice. Their hard work was stolen, “The council was sticking around, so me and Lizzie tried to sign up for power roles within the council but were told no as we were too young even though we’d started it.” Ms. Sophie allegedly thought that "Having two 12 year-olds in charge of a council wasn’t a good idea" said Alexia, despite them proving to be capable enough of managing an Eco-Festival and pitching the idea. The very council the two girls founded was now only available for high-school students to participate in and it got rebranded.

Throughout history young girls have been forced into silence after their work had been maliciously miscredited. Now, we see this happening in our own school, “We got zero credit for it, our ideas weren’t listened to, we got our hard work stolen and no one even knows we made it all.

”It's time to give Alexia Bone and Elizabeth Bagley the credit they deserve for founding the New Vision Environmental Council.