The recent Student Government elections for the 2024—2025 school year brought up discussions of the feasibility of candidates’ promises, the administration’s power in decisions, and how representatives interact with administrators. These can be hot topics at Lakeside, and it can be hard to get a sense of what StudGov’s responsibilities should be within our small community. To gauge how we stack up against other schools, I interviewed two juniors from two different high schools, Seattle Prep in Capitol Hill and Raisbeck Aviation High School in Tukwila. The Aviation student will be joining their school’s student government next year. Seattle Prep is a private Jesuit school, and Aviation is a public STEM school. Both schools refer to their student governments as their “Associated Student Body,” or ASB for short.
What is the structure of your ASB system?
Seattle Prep (SP): These are representatives for each grade, so there’s a freshman class president, sophomore class president, junior class president, and senior class president, and each president has two executives. And then for the senior class, there’s one big group for the whole school that has the student body president and two executives. I don’t think we have a vice president; I honestly don’t think I’ve ever heard somebody be called a vice president before. We don’t have treasurer and secretary positions, at least [officially]. None of us really know that much about the senior executives.
Aviation (A): We have the executive positions, so you have the president, vice president, the treasurer, and the secretary. And then you have miscellaneous positions, so there’s the event coordinator, stage manager (because we have assemblies at my school), the art coordinators, and then you have the one managing social media: the social media manager for our ASB account. And then you have a videographer, who films videos for assemblies and social media content; that’s actually my position next year on ASB. Then we have the Representatives for each grade. They’re called class senators, and there’s two for each grade.
What are ASB’s responsibilities?
SP: They’re mostly there for planning all of our events, like Olympic week for example, where faculty and students compete against each other in games like basketball, cake decorating, and more. Basically any kind of school event that’s either for fun, or for like cultural week. There’s a lot of scheduled ones around the school year. The recent one was Olympic weekend. I know they spend a lot of time planning that because that one was a really major one that happens every year. So. There’s a lot of planned events that happen.
A: They send out weekly emails to the class about news and stuff, to create class spirit. My school does this interesting thing, because we don’t have sports, so we have to find a way to have club spirit somehow. They’re called spirit points. So, for different activities or events during assemblies, we have the freshman against the sophomores and juniors and seniors, and whoever wins specific games gets prizes for the winning class. The senators try to raise spirit, and they’re also each in charge of a specific thing. The freshmen are usually in charge of the MLK assembly and the multicultural assembly. The sophomores are in charge of the spring fling. The juniors are in charge of prom. And the seniors are in charge of homecoming.
What is ASB’s relationship like with school administration?
SP: They advocate for the class, although I don’t know how good of advocates they are. You are supposed to be able to go up to a student government member and be like, Oh, I want this to happen. And then they can go to the administration.
A: Assemblies have to be passed by the principal. We also have a bookkeeper: She’s in charge of all the money and all the motions we pass. [Motions] have to get passed by ASB first, and then we have to show it to her, and then she’s like, Okay, you’re allowed to have this fundraiser; you’re allowed to spend this money for this event. That’s basically most of the stuff we do with admin. Or if we’re making new events, that’s probably what we would go ask them for. Like, it’s mostly for permission. They don’t do anything else. If you’re in a club, whether you’re in ASB or not, you still have to be able to talk with the bookkeeper because that’s where all the money stuff happens. If they have a motion, as long as the bookkeeper has access to it, they can spend the money. As long as the motion is specific. As long as it says the date, how much money you need, and the specifics of what it’s for, then you’re allowed to have it.
How do ASB elections work?
SP: It’s not just a speech; you can put together a speech inside of a fun video. It’s not only what they say in their speech, but also how they put together their video that sways how people vote. I mean, I would probably get swayed by [their videos]. They project the videos during assembly, and then we vote.
A: They have to submit an application, and it has to get reviewed. Once their transcript and everything is reviewed to make sure they have all the minimum requirements, then they start campaigning. The campaign is usually around one and a half weeks. Then they have to submit their speeches a few days before speech day. It gets checked over, and then they say their speech in front of the whole school. And then the school just does a Google form vote for all of the positions. There’s a lot of rules for campaigning. You can’t have people who are campaigning in your posters, and they all have to be checked by advisors.
What are opinions like around ASB?
SP: A common motivation behind running for student government is college applications. Sometimes people would do it just because their friends tell them to do it. We just kind of see them as regular people. It’s not like a huge status thing, it’s just kind of a thing that you do. People are like, Hey, let’s go, congratulations! Later on, no one really cares. You’re just proud if it’s your friend or something like that. It’s just really fun.
A: It’s very [school-centered]. So if your opinion of the school is negative, then your opinion of ASB will also be negative. But I have a lot of friends at ASB, so I’ve been able to see how hard they work, and what they’re trying to do is actually good. I think a majority of students can see that, but sometimes there are students who don’t really appreciate them as much, I feel like. But I would also say that ASB is quite cliquey. If you run once and you win, then there’s a good probability the next time you run you win again.
