Grace Weekes ’27 Elected as 2026-27 Student Council President

Earlier this month, the Lawrenceville community elected Grace Weekes ’27 as the 2026-27 Student Council President. In her campaign, Weekes expressed hopes to strengthen student connections through school-wide events, sit down dinners, brother-sister sports teams, and all aspects of student life at Lawrenceville.

President of the Stephens House, girls’ varsity tennis player, leader of the Groove for Good Lawrenceville Community Action Project, and founder of the Hutchins Review, Weekes is involved in many aspects of student life at Lawrenceville. Even before she entered Lawrenceville as a Second Form student, she was looking forward to running for Student Council President. Weekes recalled sitting in the red seats of the Kirby Arts Center on Discovery Day with her parents. Andrew Boanoh ’23, the 2022-23 Student Council President, spoke about Lawrenceville’s community to prospective students. His evident “passion about Lawrenceville and our community on campus” was one of the main reasons Weekes came to Lawrenceville —she “really aspired to be just like that.” Since her first year at Lawrenceville, Weekes has been taking note of ways in which community is fostered while also recognizing weaknesses in student connections that she hopes to address.

In her opening statement during the April 9 Presidential finalists’ debate, Weekes began by asking for a show of hands of how many Lawrentians could name every single person in their Form. The sparsely raised hands reaffirmed the issues at the center of Weekes’ platform, which called for schoolwide events where students can get to know each other despite the physical separation between the Lower, Crescent, Circle, and Upper Houses. For instance, one of her central initiatives is a schoolwide sit-down dinner, which she described as “the drive of her campaign.” Inspired by similar events at other boarding schools, Weekes wanted to bring dinner traditions to Lawrenceville, where students will have the opportunity to “sit with people that they may not know as well, eat together, and spend a nice night together.” Weekes anticipates that planning an all-school event twice a term may be her most ambitious initiative. She is excited to work with the rest of the Student Council and the Deans to create an event “centered on building community and connecting with each other” and “[making] it happen.”

In terms of sports teams, Weekes took inspiration from the dynamic between the girls’ varsity field hockey team and the varsity football team; she plans to pair “brother and sister” sports teams schoolwide and assign two teams to each other every term. Drawing on her first-hand experience playing on the tight knit girls’ varsity tennis team, Weekes greatly appreciates these inclusive communities. Thus, she advocates for students to meet people outside of their immediate social circles, bridging the gender divide on campus through genuine connections.

One of her immediate goals is to put up lights at the Big Red Park and promote games throughout the Crescent Houses. While there certainly are technical challenges to this initiative, for Weekes, putting up lights would allow students to spend time with each other for longer — whether that is playing pickleball, beach volleyball, or basketball or listening to music with friends. Although Lawrentians are often swamped with busy schedules, Weekes believes that these initiatives will be accessible by “taking mundane and everyday events” and turning them into something special. She elaborated that “all Lawrentians go to dinner each night and have to play a co-curricular sport,” so these initiatives will not become an extra thing to check off the to-do list, but rather a “fun way to allow students to spend more quality time together.”

The role of Student Council President often comes with the pressures of representing Lawrenceville’s diverse student body. For Weekes, the position is not solely about initiating her ideas but also serving as the “voice of all Lawrentians” and ensuring that “all Lawrentians are as proud to be a Lawrentian as [she] is.”

“I want to be a person that students are able to approach and voice their opinions and ideas, and I will do my best to make those initiatives happen,” Weekes concluded, saying, “I [am] very excited for the upcoming year, and I hope that everyone is as excited as I am.”

Watch an interview with Weekes on L10 News. 

For more information, contact Lisa M. Gillard H'17, director of public relations, at lgillard@lawrenceville.org.