Student Body President Campaign by Ashleigh

Student Body President Campaign by Ashleigh - July 2018 Scholarship Essay

When students choose to run for student body president, many of them make promises that, realistically, class presidents don’t have the power to fulfill. Some people promise a change to school lunches, while others wish to change the amount of time students attend school. Ultimately, many of these reforms are said just to gain their classmates’ votes or these promises simply remain unfulfilled and the only positive outcome is that a student got to add “Class President” on their college resumé. However, if I would run for student body president at my school, I would hope to make a positive impact on my school and my fellow classmates.
The number one way I would hope to make a positive impact on my school is by improving school spirit activities and ways that students could participate in school events. Many teenagers believe that school spirit activities are boring and annoying, but I know first-hand that participating in school spirit activities makes high school more enjoyable and more memorable. An abundance of schools create spirit weeks in the days leading up to homecoming or significant sporting events and they consist of a different theme for each day and students are expected to dress up to match the theme of the day. However, some students may think that the different themes are “lame” or that they would be seen as “uncool” if they would participate; and sometimes, yes, the themes may be a little boring or childish. Most of the time, the themes are decided by the student council or the honor society, which limits the ideas and decisions to a small group of people. If I were to run for student body president, I would propose an idea to come up with a way that the whole school could vote or come up with ideas for spirit week and the most voted-on ideas would become the themes for the week; this way, every student’s thoughts become heard and all ideas are taken into consideration. Students who don’t normally partake in school spirit activities or spirit weeks may finally choose to participate if their ideas were heard and the week consisted of themes they actually enjoyed.
School spirit always seems like a small part of high school and people may think that a lack of school spirit doesn’t affect your high school experience. School spirit is so much more than that, however. Participating in dress-up days and spirit weeks isn’t just an excuse to wear crazy and unusual things to school; if you dress up to match the theme that was decided for the day of the big football game, your participation represents your support for your school’s team. As an athlete myself, I know how much it means to athletes when the whole school dresses up to support you. So, if I were to run for class president, I would make it a point to increase the amount of school spirit present in my school and change the way activities become decided, giving everybody a say and making everybody feel more included and welcome.