Candidate Statement:
Hello Peddie,
My name is Thomas Kim, and I am a junior running to be your 2026 Vice President. The reason why I am running is because I believe I can become a great VP and serve my school before my time is eventually up. For me, my ideas for what a VP should be are quite simple: support the co-presidents effectively, actively listen to the concerns of the student body, and run engaging community meetings.
While the co-presidents can seem very scary with that prestigious title, the VP is like “the guy in the chair,” having the ability to connect the student body to the higher ups. A good VP should be receptive to hearing student complaints and suggestions, help plan and execute said plans to keep initiatives moving forward, and work hard to really make all students feel represented.
Another ability that the Vice President must have is the ability to run community meetings, turning that time into an enjoyable one that students would enjoy. To many, and even myself at times, we have all witnessed a handful of “boring” or “uneventful” community meetings across our Peddie careers, trying woefully to stay awake while sleep overcomes our tired bodies. If a VP is able to turn this infamous time into a good one with funny and enjoyable laughs, that’s a pretty good VP if you ask me.
Through my various experiences of school collaboration work, endlessly long lifeguard shifts, and having a first hand account of being on a dreadful Peddie soccer team that suffered a whopping 1-15 one season only to transform, with the change in coaching and attitude, to a respectable record of 11-6 the very next season, I believe the development of my leadership skills and learning to face difficult challenges position me to be a pretty good VP. I am committed to being a reliable and hardworking member of the student government, and would be incredibly honored to serve as your future 2026 Vice President!
Sincerely,
Thomas Kim
Governing student council and the school will take a good portion of your time, what other activities both in and out of school do you plan on participating in? How will you balance them?
Hmmmm, that’s a great question. Being a student-athlete for the majority of my life already, I would say I am pretty accustomed to how to balance many different activities. Some of the activities outside of school I also plan to continue would be my club-soccer team, some volunteer work, and the many other clubs I signed up for during the club fair. In order to balance these activities, well, the solution is sacrifice. Yes, I love grinding FIFA ultimate 24/7, but with understanding the concept of importance, I will definitely drop these activities to prioritize the important ones.
What qualities do you possess that makes you a good role model and representative that will allow you to be a leader of the entire school?
I believe I am an understanding and relatable person who can connect with the majority of the student body. I also consider myself a strong leader who understands what effective leadership looks like. After experiencing our soccer team’s transition from a 1–15 season to a much stronger record, I learned the importance of accountability, teamwork, and leading by example. I strive to bring those same leadership qualities—communication, reliability, and motivation—to every group I’m part of.
What ideas do you have for change and how would you implement these ideas? What would you like to continue?
Some ideas that I would like to implement would be improvements to Community Meetings. Like I stated in my candidate statements, I believe Community Meetings need to be improved upon to create a better atmosphere at the Peddie school, and with the VP literally running every community meeting, that is for sure their responsibility. A plan I have would be to implement more trivia based games between competitors, implementing gradually increasing punishments to whoever misses the most amount of questions, kind of like those videos on TikTok. Believing trivia is the best game to unite a massive audience, I think it would be a pretty fun addition.
