McKessie Taylor McKessie is the president of the science club at East High and a member of the school's national decathlon team. Taylor is a feminist and admires many important women in history. She is also shown to have a wide range of knowledge, including anything from computers to the daily lunch special in the school cafeteria. In the first film, she is shown as finding the school's athlete as tribal. She is also impressed at the intellect of new student Gabriella Montez. Articles of Gabriella's academic achievements at her old schools are placed in Taylor's locker. Although Gabriella did not slip the articles in the locker, she agrees to join the decathlon team at Taylor's suggestion. However, when Gabriella's interest begins to turn to the school musical and Troy Bolton, Taylor teams up with Troy's best friend, Chad, to make sure they can keep their friends away from one another and focused on the prize. While Chad and his basketball teammates explain to Troy that they will not win the district championship game if he is involved with the musical, they film him saying that the musical and Gabriella are not important. Taylor show Gabriella the footage and she is left heartbroken. Realizing the magnitude of what they have done, Taylor and Chad work together again to make sure Troy and Gabriella make the musical callbacks. Taylor's role in the plan is to set off a chemical reaction that would result in the evacuation of the national decathlon. At the end of the film, Taylor is asked out by Chad. In High School Musical 2, Taylor, Gabriella, Chad, Troy, and their friends are hired at the Lava Springs country club, owned by the parents of Sharpay Evans, the school drama queen. Taylor is the first to notice that Troy is changing and being pulled into Sharpay's world. She tries to convince Gabriella that Troy is no longer the nice guy she fell for. In High School Musical 3: Senior Year, Taylor is editor of the school yearbook. While she will attend Yale University and study political science (with the goal of becoming President of the United States), she pushes Gabriella to accept an early orientation at Stanford University while joining the others for a last spring musicale. Taylor is portrayed by Monique Coleman in the first three films of the series. Coleman had previously auditioned for Disney Channel. Other