This is our fourth installment to our featured stories about student participation in schools from Spring 2023.
Student Council has also been impacted by the lack of participation in extracurriculars. While there is high involvement by underclassmen, Juniors and Seniors have less representation. In contrast to last year’s Seniors who had high executive and general council participation, the upperclassmen this year have less members in student council.
The limited interest in taking on executive board responsibilities has led to less candidates amongst the upperclassmen. In fact, many students ran uncontested in last year’s election. There is less interest in holding officer positions, and as a result many responsibilities are falling on the same members rather than completing tasks through collaboration in a large group. However, the executive board has still been successful in organizing school events and running pep rallies despite a decline in involvement this year. Attendance at these executive meetings have been very high, with almost every officer attending every single meeting so far this school year. A Senior student council member comments on the improvement in attendance.
“We definitely have done a good job in attendance this year. Most members come every Monday and as a whole we’ve done a much better time at being on time which is great.”
In general council, there is also limited involvement in Juniors and Seniors, whereas the underclasses always have a high turnout on Tuesday mornings. In fact, there is only one current general council member for the Seniors. Thankfully, there is higher involvement for the Junior class. Meetings with higher turnouts tend to be the ones deciding dance themes or spirit week days, as there is an incentive for participation. When students have the chance to be heard and contribute to exciting school events, involvement is high. Student Council has focused on representing the student body as a whole, so during Homecoming Week their goal of having a higher representation of the student body was achieved.
An explanation for lower participation amongst the Senior Class could be attributed to COVID. A freshmen during COVID comments on their involvement in student council that year.
“I went to a couple meetings my freshman year, but most of our meetings were online though and we didn’t have a homecoming that year so I wasn’t able to contribute much.”
As Freshman year is an opportunity for students to branch out and explore certain extracurriculars, Seniors never had this opportunity due to the restrictions COVID had upon in person meetings and school events. As a result, there never was high participation for this class.
Although limited involvement for the upperclasses is unfortantute for Student Council, Senior and Junior members have high hopes for next year’s participation as the Sophomores, Freshmen, and Early High-Schoolers have high demonstrated interest.
