With the publication of this special issue, the results are in: That’s right, we’ve survived another Student Government election season at Lakeside.
The hallmark of Stud Gov elections are the speeches that occur beforehand. Irrespective of grade or desired position — from a prospective freshman representative to the future student body president — all Stud Gov hopefuls pitch themselves in the format of a two- to five-minute statement.
There is a certain value to this standard, especially in races for grade-wide representatives, where there are often tens of candidates jockeying for one of four coveted posts. In holding so many candidates to just two minutes or so of speaking, Lakeside ensures that we can efficiently move through elections in a single ACT period. As a result, candidates all tell you the same things — i.e., Who am I? What will I do for you? What experience do I bring? Then, they sit down.
However, by exclusively having these speeches, the Lakeside electoral process becomes too controlled by the candidates rather than the students. This dissuades student engagement with the candidates and produces an undemocratic imbalance in who has access to further information. For this reason, Lakeside should abandon its current system and opt for debates instead.
Specifically, each candidate would be conferred one minute to plainly state their platform and what they hope to achieve. Then, an open Q&A period would begin, where students would have the opportunity to pose questions to individual candidates or to the whole group for the remainder of the ACT period.
For one, a debate directly incentivizes student engagement with candidates. One of the most consistent frustrations I have each year while listening to the speeches is my inability to challenge the candidates on anything they say. Yet that assumes that I or other Lakesiders are even listening to the speeches. When candidates are allowed to throw out whatever they want without any real or public challenge from those listening, being an engaged audience member feels increasingly pointless. Instead of being encouraged to engage, students are relegated to the backseat.
By implementing a Q&A period, Lakeside would directly resolve this problem and encourage students to think critically about what the candidates are saying in order to formulate questions. Furthermore, the engagement such measures foster would be applicable for students post-graduation, engendering a body of alumni that is more invested in the electoral process overall.
Yet more importantly, a Q&A places the power of the electoral process back in the hands of the audience. The voter is inherently a check on bad politics and unrealistic promises. By allowing for discourse between the audience and candidate, we give them that power back — bringing the issues and concerns to the politicians, not the other way around.
Still, I recognize that, unlike elections on the national, state, or even municipal levels, the candidates in Lakeside elections are your peers. Accordingly, why not just ask individual candidates your questions after the speeches, when you’re in class together, for instance?
First, the format of Lakeside elections does not allow for such. With students given a window of just 24 hours to vote, there’s simply not enough time after candidates give their speeches for Lakesiders to approach them with questions. Hosting a debate would also publicize and democratize questions, benefitting both candidate and voter.
Even if we did assume sufficient time for Lakesiders to pose their questions to candidates between speeches and the polls closing, it’s probable that the people who feel most comfortable approaching candidates in a private setting with their queries are that candidate’s friends, not your average voter. On the other hand, a group setting where the primary purpose is to put questions to candidates would empower students to get their burning questions answered.
Nevertheless, let’s take this a step further and assume that not only is there enough time to ask questions after speeches but that students also feel comfortable seeking candidates out. In this scenario, let us imagine that a student (“Mondale”) has sought out a candidate (“Ronald”) after his speech, and after asking him a question, heard a response that was so shocking or so encouraging that Mondale changed her vote and thought that others should do the same. Unfortunately, what Ronald said is pure hearsay after that point, and it grows infinitely more difficult for Mondale to convince anyone else to change their vote. Thus, Lakeside students go to the polls without the whole story and elect someone whom they may have much more or less in common with than they believe.
Whichever way you slice it, the lack of a debate among Stud Gov hopefuls creates a privatization of information that’s harmful to both the voter and candidates. Conversely, by hosting a debate, students would not only have an avenue for their questions that feels more accessible than asking in private, but the public nature of the questions means that candidates would get the opportunity to be even more transparent with their voters — resulting in more honest election results.
Finally, a debate allows Lakeside students to assess candidates’ skills in other areas than in a speech. Notably, the exchanges that occur during Q&A sessions mimic negotiations and other relevant situations that a Stud Gov representative will have to navigate during their tenure. Moreover, in their responses to other candidates’ points, potential representatives also demonstrate how they would approach disagreements and reach consensus with fellow reps. Each of these skills are essential to any effective Stud Gov representative, yet aren’t tested in the current election format.
There is an argument to be made that the present structure of grade-level races doesn’t lend itself to the debate model: There would simply be too many people for any productive audience–candidate discourse involving multiple questions. However, I believe that this issue can be easily worked around for the benefit of having debates. For example, teachers could place a limit on how many candidates can respond to a question from the audience. Alternatively, teachers could place limits on the number of questions each candidate gets to answer based on how many students are running that year. The possibilities are many, easy to implement, and all allow for the value that the debate model brings.
Thus, let’s empower the voter, democratize electoral information, and allow students to test different skills in their candidates by instituting the debate model in our Stud Gov elections — for ninth-grade reps and presidents alike — in 2025.
