On Friday, April 27th, the annual Class Officer Elections took place through online voting. For next year’s sophomore class, Michael Mora, Anthony Scarrillo, Joe Recto, and Marti Colasurdo were elected president, vice president, secretary, and treasurer respectively. Emily Jackson, Zeel Patel, Kithmy Wick, Kaitlyn Lewars were elected for the junior class, while Frankie Mastras, Melanie Torres, Karina Colon, Sarah Daniels were elected for senior class officer positions.

Shockingly, many positions ran uncontested, and students running for junior and senior class officers were unanimously elected. Why aren’t students interested in running for office? Is it simple disinterest, or something more? Students may have been discouraged to run because they didn’t want to create tensions by competing with a friend, says sophomore Zach Thurston. Or, as Vikaas Varma points out, they “don’t think it would be too helpful in their futures.”

However, holding a position such as that of class officer has many potential benefits, including leadership, responsibility, time management skills, and perhaps a little extra something to put on the college application. Sophomore class vice president Zeel Patel said that she “never really felt the need to run until [she] truly realized how much of an influence class officers have on school activities and events such as prom.”

In regards to the school environment after both elections, sophomore Tej Shah stated: “We are all excited to see what all of our officers will do this coming year, from school events to fundraisers, from board meetings to spirit activities, and we hope to see them succeed. After a successful past year, we hope to see continued success with the Student Government Association.”

Though we are certain that the elected class officers will put in their best efforts for the class, we hope to see more involvement in future elections. Perhaps they will be inspired by this year’s SGA elections; with multiple students running for each position, the SGA elections were more engaging as the candidates had more competition and therefore were motivated to introduce various creative ways to promote themselves. After a fierce week of campaigning, on Friday, May 24th, Gabriel Korish, Sarah Ramadan, Christopher Coulter, and Harshul Makwana were elected as SGA officers for the 2018-2019 school year.

The Student Government Association is a fantastic opportunity for students to communicate with their peers and have a platform to instigate positive reform. We hope that students take more advantage of this opportunity in upcoming years by running for class officer positions.