Student Council: Power and Disillusionment
By James Simanowitz
It is widely accepted among the students of this school that they don’t have a lot of power. We can complain, vote for Presidents, and propose ideas. But the teachers, the parents, and the administration, in other words the adults in the room, have the final say. This is wrong. We should be able to make decisions about our school, it’s better for us as future democratic citizens and it’s better for our school community. The Student Council has improved, we are currently more productive than at any point in recent memory. Still, there are three immense structural factors that hold us back.
A lot of students just don’t understand how the Student Council works, which has to be our starting point. The student body elects two Presidents and 72 class representatives. These 72 representatives make up the Student Council Parliament, which elects representatives to bodies like the School Conference, Educational Directorate, and Verein. The Parliament also develops and organizes projects. The Parliament splits up into committees dealing with Structural Improvements, Finances, Anti-Discrimination and more. The whole Student Council as well as each of the committees meet once a week. Anyone who is interested can just start working on a project. This means we have 72 people, who should all in theory be coming up with ideas to improve the school and then putting them into action. This would mean 20+ student council projects each year. But this doesn’t happen, not enough people are sufficiently motivated, and the question is why?
- We have almost zero continuity in leadership
With one exception we have never had a President serve more than two years, meaning a large chunk of the first year is spent learning how to run the SC, which admittedly is difficult even with the right experience.
- Representatives who do care are busy with other responsibilities
Almost everyone in the SC who has a leadership position is actively engaged in other activities like NHS, BERMUN and IDEAS. Often these are the most qualified students, yet they just don’t have time to do as good of a job as they could.
- We don’t understand the power we do have
We don’t have as many votes as parents or teachers on the most important bodies of our school, which can rewrite curriculum and school rules. We have money and the good will of the school. But we don’t use our positions because students think the SC can’t change school rules, when in reality all we have to do is convince 4 other representatives on the SK.
The Student Council has become substantially more productive. However, if we want it to continue improving, we need everyone at this school to understand how the Student Council works and how much power it actually has. Otherwise our self-diagnosis of powerlessness will become a self-fulfilling prophecy and might threaten the progress we have made.
