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The RMHS Class of 2024 will not be holding class office elections, while grades 9-11 did begin elections on October 3.
The class of 2024 had a grade-wide election during their sophomore year where everyone interested in class office gave a speech in front of the entire grade. On the other hand, for their junior and senior year, class officer elections were held internally.
Social Studies teacher Ms. Sliwoski, one of the 2024 class advisors, described how class office elections have changed. “So we’ve really kind of transitioned to doing it internally among participants. So if you fill out the nomination form, bring it back to us–then amongst all of us, we nominate and do some voting.”
As to the reason for this change, Ms. Sliwoski stated, “The officers we have, have come back and put a lot of work in. And so we wanted to kind of be reflective of their efforts. And they’re kind of committed to this role in the class.” Many of the positions within the class office have therefore stayed the same since sophomore year.
This could be problematic for students that are interested in running for office their senior year. Senior Duncan O’Mara, a social chair for the class of 2024, stated, “There was an agreement to keep the same positions, so if new people came in they got social chair as well.” This system limits the ability for new candidates to effectively run for class office since there are no grade level elections. The internal elections favor people that had already been in the class office program for a while, and makes it difficult for there to be any changes to the higher offices like president and vice president.
For grades 9-11, students interested in running for class office must record and upload a speech to FlipGrid on why they would be a good candidate for class office. Then following this, there would be an election via Google Forms to select the members for class office. However, this system may be undergoing change in the future as seen with the class of 2024.
This senior class’s approach to elections may be the first step in changing the class office election system for years to come.
