ASB introduces Trojan Points award system and new election process using Five-Star Students program

September 17, 2016

Mr. Kevin McCaffrey scans a student ID card to record Trojan Points (Jenny Li)

By AKBAR AMIN
Staff Writer
The Associated Student Body introduced a program this year by the company Five-Star Students that includes Trojan Points, a new rewards system for students participating in school events, and a new voting process for ASB and class council elections.
“Mr. McCaffrey ordered the Five-Star Students program [over the summer],” Boys Sports Commissioner Kevin Yahampath (Jr.) said. “[It allows] us to easily account for students at events and calculate a variety of statistics based on those numbers.”
The Trojan Point system involves a scanner that scans student ID cards and records points for each student. In order to accumulate Trojan Points, students have to bring their student ID cards and get them scanned by an ASB representative at a school event.
The purpose of Trojan Points is to motivate students to attend more school events and activities.
“[We] wanted to introduce a system of points that would reward students for participation in school activities and events,” Yahampath said.
There is no exact system of calculating how many points are awarded per activity, but it is known that the points vary on the event. “Different types of events are assigned different point values,” Yahampath said. “For example GOWs are typically assigned 4 points each, while the typical Trojan Army Day is only given 2 points.”
The prizes for Trojan Points have not been finalized yet, but ASB has released a rough idea of what the prizes can range from.
“Since this is a new system, we are still working out the details for the rewards,” Yahampath said.“But prizes can range from anything small like a UNI lanyard or sunglasses, all the way up to one of the grand prizes like a personal parking spot and free parking permits!”
Another feature of the Five-Star program is a voting system that was recently tested at the freshmen council elections. Students during the election process voted through their phones on the Five-Star Students voting website, and students who were not able to vote at the time could vote until 7PM that day.
“We just did freshmen elections with the Five-Star system. It is super cool because everything is online, and you can see candidate’s names, picture and number when you vote,” said ASB Vice President Dillon Sun (Sr.). “It requires an ID number and last name to eliminate voter fraud, and we were able to set it up so that only freshmen have access to vote. We ended up having 61% of the freshmen vote.”
The point and voting system was proposed by the current Sports Commissioners, Kevin Yahampath and Celine Nie (Sr.), and was put into action with the help of Mr. Kevin McCaffrey (Physical Education Dept.).
It is not clear if Trojan Points will continue next year, but if it is successful this year, it will likely be continued. The freshmen council election process using Five-Star was a success, and will most likely be used for ASB and council elections in the future.

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