Student council is an effective staple of the school. Especially during the first quarter with all the homecoming planning, student council is as important as ever. Some opinions differ, however, with claims that student council doesn’t do anything important for the student body as a whole. These claims are less than accurate.

To attest to the commitment of the members, the class councils have mandatory meetings early every Thursday morning. Meetings are run by the elected president, vice president and faculty adviser for each class. This doesn’t include the constant meetings and planning between Inter-Class Council members. For homecoming week alone, all members came in to decorate the school for hours during the weekend and spent countless morning meetings to divide and conquer the decoration of different sections of the school. All the representatives brainstormed ideas for medieval themes, and then teams of four people decided on one (such as a marketplace) and planned. They scanned websites for the best deals for the school when purchasing the materials, collected boxes, built the scenery, found fake necklaces and fruit and talked to the musical director to ask about props. All this is planned in small, 40-minute increments and carried out outside of school on the students’ own time. Then after this set-up, the students come back on the Saturday morning of homecoming to take everything down and put up an entirely new set of decorations. This clearly dispels any idea that the members aren’t committed or don’t do anything with their time; the proof of the work is right in front of everyone’s eyes. Even seemingly smaller events, like the Halloween Fun Fair or any candy-gram service at lunch has the planning and work of members of student council behind it. In my experience, everyone participates because they care about the school and their jobs, and they volunteer their time for the betterment and fun of the community. All members hope this feeling is worthwhile; direct recognition isn’t always present because it isn’t the point of the work. This may mean less classmates are aware of the work but enjoy what comes of it.

As far as the council is aware, the student body is largely happy with how homecoming is handled. Did you know that Games Day wouldn’t exist without them? This year, the junior members of the council forwent their own participation in the games and cheering with their friends to supervise, announce, referee, run games and commentate, not to mention the Thursday morning meetings that are dedicated to planning the assembly down to the minute.

There is a lot of dispute over the elections themselves and how certain students may not feel like they’re being heard. Students are invited, encouraged and expected to approach student council, especially those higher-ranking officers with more influence, with any concerns, comments or suggestions for the school. This is the purposeful function of an elected student council, to be the voice of the people, especially in planning activities for them. That’s not to say that more outreach can’t be done in situations where a student can’t access a member, which is an important point that has been brought to the council’s attention. This article is being written because a representative was told that students were unhappy. This student council has taken all practical suggestions and incorporated them to the best of our ability, and it is important to remind the student body that while the council is elected to submit the ideas of their peers to the administration in a concrete way, ideas including drastic changes to the uniform policy are not considered rational. On the contrary, if a student doesn’t bring any ideas or concerns to the attention of student council or doesn’t run for election, nothing can be done. No government, student-led or otherwise, could function with the only representation being every single person present in a room, shouting various ideas without a way to filter good from bad, effective from extraneous. Who would make decisions? If it’s a direct democracy with no central leadership, voting by a majority on every decision like they would for an election, then who would facilitate the simplest things like the meetings or gatherings of this large group? That would be a leader, and that leader would then be defying the rules of this leaderless congregation. Where is the accountability of every member to speak their mind or carry out the actions voted upon? That being said, the power of the students lies in the hands of other students. Student council, rather than a regime that needs to be toppled, is a proud and hard-working institution of the school that deserves its support.