Stop whining and start voting

However, students still complain about aspects of the school they don’t like such as: Snapchat is blocked on the wifi, the food doesn’t taste good, the parking lots are too crowded, and the gym wing needs air conditioning. They do not realize that the student rep has the power to influence these policies by representing the obvious needs of the student body, which aren’t always obvious to the School Board and administration.

A rough guesstimate is that only 600-800 of the over 2,500 eligible students (freshmen through juniors) at ETHS voted in the executive board elections, held the week of Apr. 24. That comes out to around only 30 percent of the student body voting.

The lack of interest in these elections is the fault of the administration as they are those who control what goes into the election process. Due to the current structure that is in place for voting, students do not realize the opportunity that they have when electing a Student Rep as well as other positions on the school. Consequently they don’t vote and the school doesn’t make the changes that the students are calling for.

Luckily, there are a couple simple fixes to make the student body more involved in the election process.

1. We need to have an annual debate between each candidate for the school board positions during one day of student gym classes of the election week.
2. We need to list the pillars of the candidate’s campaign under his or her name on the home access application voting screen.
3. We need to have laptops in each of the study centers and the cafeteria during election week to allow students easy access to voting.
4. We need to give students who don’t vote 5 detentions.

If we implemented these strategies to increase number of students voting in elections we would have a better run school as well give those seeking office and those voting a more practical experience and voting habits that would hopefully last a lifetime.

In addition to improving the quality of the school we could help conquer a national problem of the lack of participation of voting in national election. Only 55 percent of Americans vote, which trails countries like Belgium, which has a voter turnout of 95 percent.

If we gave the students more incentive to vote our school would make changes that the students need and the 400,000 dollar remodeling of the front of the school would have never happened.