Since I have attended this school, Oakton never had open student government elections. They have always been restricted to the students that are members of the leadership class, and consequently, student government has fallen to the back of every student’s mind. However, this year, student government has gone through a major reconstruction, and any student can now run to be a class officer and also vote for who they want to represent their class. This decision to open up student government immediately makes student government more relevant to everyone in the school.

Student government has never been made a big deal at Oakton Everyone knew it existed, but not a lot of people knew who was representing them or how the leaders were chosen. This is partially due to the fact that only leadership students could run, and partially because there were no general elections where the whole school could participate, Of course, these decisions are understandable. Leadership students obviously have the qualifications to lead, and the logistics of a school wide election are complicated, but they also caused most of the students at Oakton to be indifferent towards all things student government. Now that everyone at Oakton will have a voice in the elections, students will be more invested in the elections, and they’ll have more interest in what is going on in the school.

The new student government structure.

The basic structure of this year’s Student Government includes officers for every grade and a leadership executive board who will have monthly meetings with our administration. The purpose of these meetings are to keep an open line of communication between the student body and the administration, so it is vital that the students there represent the voice of the entire student body, not just a select group. Said sophomore leadership student Olivia Yu, “I think that the new structure is better for the student body [as a whole]. We get a lot of new ideas.”

In order to be a class officer this year, hopefuls submitted an application to the leadership teachers and videotaped a speech that was broadcast to the entire student body. The desire of students to participate in student government is clear by the number of applications for president of the class of 2018. There are so many applicants that the speeches have to be broadcast on a different date from the other classes. Voting for freshmen, sophomores and seniors took place from September 30th through October 3rd, and all of the new class officers will be announced at the homecoming pep rally on October 14th.

The decision to open up student government enables more diverse opinions and ideas to come to the forefront in Oakton, and it also ensures that the students representing our school are who the people want to represent their thoughts and opinions. It also opens up opportunities to those who don’t want to take a class in order to have a strong voice in student affairs. This inclusive structure will be more effective at bringing the opinions of the students to administration and introduce a variety of backgrounds and viewpoints to student government.