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Source: UWCSEA Dover
By: Anonymous
The Student Council is a long-standing school tradition designed to give the student body a voice and opportunities to attain higher positions of power in school. Yet regardless of the school and grade involved, from what I’ve heard, the electoral process almost always plays out as a popularity contest. Observing UWCSEA’s election last year was all I needed to confirm my suspicions.
As an FIB, here are my thoughts on the topic. The structure of democracy depends on the election’s candidates and their allure to the general public. Their promises may appeal to voting students, but it is their popularity and personal connections with voters that guarantees their success.
To be clear, just because a person is popular does not mean they are unsuited for a position on StuCo. On the contrary, the strength of their connections with their peers may give them a deeper understanding of problems students have and ways to fix them. Their peers are also more likely to trust them with their problems.
However, I think improvements can be made to the electoral process, perhaps by introducing an anonymous voting system where candidates run under pseudonyms to prevent students from voting with personal biases. This would also embolden students who are keen to run but unsure whether their popularity will carry them through. Of course, this system would remove personal connections between candidates and voters and enable the former to fabricate false personas, making it difficult for voters to differentiate fact from tact. This calls into question the dependability of those voted in.
Even after landing a position in StuCo, the best students can expect is text on the library steps. To be sure, this raised awareness of our school values of diversity, inclusion, and justice. However, the student community already knows this mantra by heart - the school puts much emphasis on it in PSE and mentor time. The library steps only serve as a reminder of what we have been pre-programmed to understand. Their redundancy has prompted me to think twice about their underlying purpose. Rather than benefiting students, could the intention here be to simply show off to our school’s many ‘outside’ visitors?
Sure, StuCo may be working on initiatives like destigmatizing mental health, but most students are actually already aware of the implications of such focuses. What StuCo needs to offer is a formative or clear course of action. If it were prepared to take more tangible action, we might have the chance to really make a difference. For example, organising with Heads of Grade a day completely dedicated to mental health, where students have the chance to go to different booths, learn about mental health issues, or speak to a counsellor. StuCo candidates repeatedly emphasise their wishes to “make a change” or “make lives easier, promoting a less stressful environment”, but in the end, not much change is felt by the majority of our community. Ask anyone in school uninvolved in StuCo, and it is likely most will respond doubtfully.
There are improvements to be made to StuCo’s electoral process. Only trial and error will allow us to land on the most suitable process for our school, and in doing so best support students and the wider community. A question which remains is whether popularity and running on substantial policies are always mutually exclusive at our school. If so, how can we prevent the former from overriding the latter when voting gets underway?
Disclaimer: The initial idea behind the library steps was developed by the HS leadership team. StuCo was involved in selecting statements featured on the steps.
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