For Boulder High senior Audrey Bahintchie, serving on the Student Advisory Board for BVSD afforded her the opportunity to represent students of color and immigrants and serve her community.

Audrey was born in the Ivory Coast, in West Africa, and speaks French as her first language with English as her second. She is also working on mastering sign language. She said that as an only child, she has a myriad of hobbies to fill her time but spends a lot of her time doing community service.

Besides the Student Advisory Board, Audrey is also in the Black Student Alliance, the Youth Opportunity Board, Rotary Club, and Zonta International, a service organization focused on the rights of women worldwide.

“A lot of my extracurricular activities have an aspect of community service and are related to my core values: diversity and inclusivity,” she said. “I really strive for trying to make a change. After high school, I plan to go to college to get a degree in psychology and medicine. I want to become a family physician.”

 “I really strive for trying to make a change. After high school, I plan to go to college to get a degree in psychology and medicine.”

Audrey Bahintchie, Senior at Boulder High School

The future Dr. Bahintchie said her experience on the Student Advisory Board was valuable and remembered advising the BVSD School Board that students need counseling that goes beyond academics.

“Once, we talked about how we feel about reaching out to our counselors in our school and I said that I don’t feel comfortable reaching out to them because we’ve been taught to look at them as academic counselors and not someone you go to with emotional baggage or if you’re feeling some type of way,” she said.

Audrey added that emotional and therapeutic counseling is needed all the time for students and not just after a national tragedy such as the fatal King Soopers shooting in Boulder.

“Although we came together after that and the counselors were there to help us, I asked that the school district acknowledge that we have counselors to help us with our emotions around these big events like the shooting, but that service isn’t available to us as regularly as it should be,” she said.

Audrey said her time on the Student Advisory Board during the COVID-19 pandemic has shown her how considerate leaders and administrators must be of all perspectives and situations before making a decision.

“It’s really hard to try to see how inclusive you can be and take all the different types of situations and scenarios under consideration and how changing one thing could affect everyone,” she explained. “I definitely gained a respect for our administration and how difficult it can be to decide what happens within our school system. It shows how much of an impact students can establish and enforce when they talk with trusted adults and mentors so we can create a better atmosphere for all of us.”

“I definitely gained respect for our administration and how difficult it can be to decide what happens within our school system.”

Audrey Bahintchie, Senior at Boulder High School

Besides getting her degree in medicine and psychology, Audrey also hopes to continue advocating for her communities. She will be attending CU Boulder in the fall.