The Student Government Association (SGA) is a key part of introducing high schoolers to how government elections work at a basic level. It is designed for students of each grade level to elect representatives to work on suggested improvements and changes to problems they see within the school. However, having too many people running takes away from the SGA’s potential to provide valuable experience for those in charge and actual benefits in students’ lives.
One day, I was sitting in my chorus class listening to some conversations around me. One specifically stood out to me: I heard how one student in the class was planning to run for SGA secretary. This caught me off guard, not because he would’ve been a bad candidate, but because in my mind, I questioned whether we needed more additions to the current competition.
Student government should have a limited group of people running for positions, otherwise, it has the potential to lead to a loss of attention from voters due to overcrowding from so many people running. People should ask themselves the question, “Am I willing to commit to this?”
However, this question doesn’t only pertain to the topic of SGA elections being too crowded. It’s also related to the problem that some candidates don’t even run for the sake of making improvements to the school. Rather, they run because it would look good on their college resume or make them look cool to their friends. Due to the fierce competition among students to get into good colleges, anything that could boost their chances of getting accepted will be taken advantage of. Thus, being a member of the student government wouldn’t hurt, plus it might earn respect from colleges.
This doesn’t help the issue of too many people running for SGA because the focus shifts toward not what students will do as a representative, but how to stand out in college applications. Students also might run for a position just to obtain power, while not wanting to do the work.
There are many other opportunities students can take advantage of to separate themselves from their peers and gain useful experience. Some examples include volunteering, getting a job, taking rigorous classes and being on sports teams. So the concern is not about limiting students’ opportunities in high school or preventing people from running for SGA, it’s about making SGA better.
People can be very unreceptive to change and may think that it is too much work. But if there are issues with our current system, students and staff need to listen and do something about it. At the end of the day, SGA is meant to be an organization that involves students in government while creating new experiences for students, such as participation in government and making serious decisions. Let’s make sure that we achieve this goal.
