ASB/Class Elections

Who are our ASB officers? What are Class Officer’s plans for our school? What impact will they have? These are many questions left unanswered to the majority of our student body.

 

ASB elections were canceled due to lack of candidates. Some might think that having elections when we know who will win is a waste of time, but what does this mean for student voice?

The RAL constitution states in Article 2 Section 1 “There shall be Executive Officers elected by the ASB…”

What does this mean for our ASB Constitution? Is it just a piece of paper? Or does it actually mean something?

It may be interesting to see how a Junior Class President who could not organize a Junior Carnival will fair as ASB President.   

“This Friday (May 15^th) there is going to be a change in procedure for class elections.  There has been a class assembly held in the past.  This year however, we are going to skip the assembly portion of elections and just have a ballot election during 2nd period.” This was apart of an e-mail sent to school staff by our leadership Advisor.

This new change in the procedure in the class elections is making leadership more of a popularity contest than ever. Not only do we not know what each candidate stands for but we are now voting blind, unaware of qualifications or accomplishments. We have the right as a student body to know our officer’s plans for our school.

Now that ASB elections are gone, class elections consisting of students voting completely blind, and not even a ghost of a student council we have lost any true form of democracy in our school. With such a trend it is not too far fetched for RAL to completely irradiate elections all together next year, further separating Leadership from the majority of the student body. 

Beyond the cancellation of elections there is a deeper problem. This problem is the lack of student interest in leadership. I believe this problem is caused by students not knowing what ASB/Class officers do or the power that they hold.

So what can you do? I urge all underclassmen to run for office next year.  Show the school that there is a sliver of Democracy left in our school. Finally make sure that the people who plan events that are important such as Prom are responsible people that will make the effort and are truly trying to improve our school rather just doing leadership for college applications.