All four grades will be having class elections for student body presidents and vice presidents, as well as the student faculty administration (SFA) Monday, Oct. 18.
The setup for this year’s elections must conform to current COVID-19 guidelines set in place by the state. According to math teacher and elections coordinator Rachel Mingos, those guidelines led them to hold elections on Zoom.
“One of the limitations on this year’s elections is we can’t have an assembly in the auditorium with a full grade like we had in the past. We’re not able to meet in the gym for more than 15 minutes. So, we decided we wanted to do it remotely,” she said.
Sophomore ZZ Sayeed, who won her class’s election for president last year and is now running for re-election, said that last year “there wasn’t as much campaigning going around.”
The election “really just relied on your speech, or video, which is why I think I got elected, because of my speech,” Sayeed said. “This year I think it’ll rely a lot more on posters and just having yourself out there and introducing yourself a lot.”
Mingos added that she was glad that the live speeches would be reintegrated into class elections.
The students running for North’s student government this year are hoping to make up for time lost over the past year of virtual learning by hosting new class events and fundraisers.
“For this year, since we’re all in person, it’d be much better to go out of the box to really be able to show our class what we’re capable of and what we can accomplish together,” said junior Maria Sofronova, who is running for class president.
Last year, the freshman class, now sophomores, were the only class in the school to hold elections, which were entirely virtual.
According to Beals House dean Scott Heslin, the decision to not have elections for any other class was made in order to give the current student government members a chance to finish their term by hosting class events. He also said that class elections weren’t seen as a priority last year.
“We were trying to balance what were the most important things last year,” he added. “To be honest, we knew we weren’t going to have school-wide events. We knew we weren’t gonna be doing fundraising, and we kind of just felt like it wasn’t really a priority.”
