Over this past month, middle school students ran campaigns, made speeches, and voted on a brand new Middle School Student Council! Introduced this year, the elections, and the council as a whole, were organized by middle school teachers Michelle and Alex. Their purpose in designing the Student Council? They wanted more representation, and indeed, a chance to build an identity for middle school. The new MS Student Council would tackle MS-specific issues as well as run events to foster MS bonding. And while a natural challenge to this new council is the existence of the Upper School Student Council, the amount of middle school students who attend meetings is in the single digits, and it's led by an all-high school Student Council. So, how did elections go? Let’s get into it.

As anticipation for the results grew, we asked some students what they thought about the Student Council elections. Many voters’ hopes and expectations seemed to focus only on events—for example, Vidit (8) especially wants MS-exclusive field trips and pizza parties in the park. Yet many of the candidates' positions and motivations were not so event-centric. Khushi (8) ran for Student Council (Communication Manager) because she wants to work with faculty and admin to solve MS issues. Additionally, she hopes to open up MS Student Council meetings to everyone, so “being part of Student Council [wouldn’t] affect things too much, because other people can help out.”

Some voters had mixed feelings about the whole concept. One source (7) feels that there doesn’t need to be an MS Student Council: middle schoolers could just join and serve as representatives in Leadership Team. A second source (8) expresses similar sentiments, saying at KLS, “high school is more of a community than the middle school” and often “not everybody is on the same page.” They feel that this, in combination with the relatively low number of candidates, will make the MS Student Council more “chaotic.”

Yet for the most part, voters are optimistic and looking forward to seeing what the new Student Council will do! And, as was the message of more than a few candidates, our interviewees all agreed that their votes were, at least partially, based on the campaign speeches. Vidit said he looked for specifics, appreciating when candidates “had a specific type of event” or named “what ways they’re going to improve an issue.” The first source was interested in the candidates’ previous experience and noticed that those with larger campaigns, which included posters and talking to voters one-on-one, seemed to have more popularity among their friends. Meanwhile, the second source voted more based on “how good [candidates] would be as a leader.”

8th Grade Representative: Ruhi Bollini

7th Grade Representative: Zaya Sinha

Communications Manager: Shanti Punn

Events Planner: Alan Leyfer