In May last year, Mr. Guhirwa announced a revamp of the STUCO election system; anonymous candidates and a pair of representatives for each year alongside the traditional year 12 group were introduced to curb down on so-called “popularity contests” and to better exercise democratic values.
Come election season, the goal sought by this decision was not fully achieved. Candidates were anonymous on paper, although they duly announced their identities to all their classmates. Those who did not eventually did so to compete with the others, usually to no avail. Friends voted for friends and whoever had the most friends won, leaving those who were did not know the candidates no knowledge of who it was that was elected.
As a result, the candidates who won are virtually unknown by most students.
On the other hand, the introduction of 8 new “minor” year representatives has been widely accepted as a promise of better things to come. Particularly in years 9 and 10, more students are aware of school happenings than in past years thanks to their year representatives work on social media; WhatsApp being a popular way to get information out there.
But STUCO has been dogged by a continual problem: most older students simply do not show interest in STUCO. As year 11 representatives, Mohammed Alghunaim and I have been told repeatedly to get our year more involved. In trying to do so, we have revealed a strong feeling of disinterest just as present in our year as in years 12 and 13.
Voting is the big issue. STUCO needs the votes of students to decide on matters big or small. Whether it is regarding music choices for Friday breaks or a possible change in school timetables, not enough people offer their opinion or even realize they have one. The STUCO app, used now primarily for voting, has been widely seen as useless by many students, thus resulting in a small amount of students actually opening the app to vote. The worst voting rates are those of year 11, as STUCO often berates us for.
When asked why they do not care for voting, one year 11 student, preferring to be anonymous, replied, “our votes don’t really matter. Who cares about caff’ music or little surveys. If the matter is big enough to count as real change, we don’t actually have a say in it anyway”.
It is true that larger issues are not directly decided by the students themselves, but by school staff and parents. In the case of new timetables that favored a later start to the day for IB years, the students voted yes but the staff voted differently. The timetables will be changed, but not in the way that the students wanted.
The student continued, “We want to feel connected to STUCO. Not just getting a chance to vote every now and then.”
What the students want is a larger presence of Student Council. Starting with reversing the decision to make STUCO elections anonymous, which did more harm in suppressing the voice of STUCO than avoiding a popularity contest, and re-establishing a fun and exciting “election season” which adds a strong sense of school spirit (speeches, cupcakes, social media campaigns, balloons and banners, and so on once were the norm) STUCO can once again become the representation our students want. Worst case scenario: we know who they are.
