by Abigail Facundo
There is a need within the American school system to have some form of government outside the school faculty, so we need student-run governments. While it is important for students to have a voice in what happens within their schools, the system can be occasionally questionable.
In most school governments, there’s a school president, a vice president, a secretary, and a treasurer, very much like the American government.
At The Chicago High School for the Arts (ChiArts), the student government is elected by the student body — students are emailed a Google Forms sheet, asking who they think is the best candidate for each position. Votes are tallied up and results are announced on the PA system the day of the election.
But before getting this email, most people in the student body have no idea who most of the people running are. There are no public debates or speeches made by the candidates. The most the students know about this election comes from posters candidates hang around school. The most campaigning a candidate can do is to tell their class, “Vote for me I’m running for blah blah blah.” When it comes time for students to make a vote, they’re either going to vote for a friend or whomever had the most interesting poster.
In our current U.S. government, the way that we know about our representatives and their beliefs is through speeches and speeches But at ChiArts, how can we know if our choice for student council is the right one? In all honesty, we don’t. We have no idea if we made the best decision for the student body or the worst.
