This election season, New Yorkers have followed the tense New York City mayoral race as each candidate outlined their plans and promises. From free buses to reforming Rikers Island, the candidates tried to convince voters that their experience and ideas were the best to lead the
city. On Tuesday, November 4, 2025, voters elected Zohran Mamdani over Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa to become the city’s 111th mayor. Now Mayor Mamdani will begin the work of following through on his campaign promises, and voters will be watching and will have the opportunity to hold him accountable for his work by the time the next election season rolls around.
Last spring, Haldane students elected their student council repre- sentatives for this school year. I was elected vice president of the Haldane
student body. I did not hang a single poster; I was not asked about my stance on a single issue affecting this school. Neither was my opponent.
Two years ago, when I first ran for student office, I did campaign. I organized my friends, hung up posters, and talked to students in the hallway. I spent afternoons poring over a list of every student in my grade, trying to decide who would vote for me and who I thought I needed to sway. It was fun, and I was elected Freshman Class President. However, I felt like the only one who had done that kind of work. The next year, I didn’t bother. I was still elected Sophomore Class President.
At Haldane, I am not an exception. It is the norm for students to either not campaign at all or, at most, just ask students to vote for them without giving them a reason why. This is a problem, and Haldane should change how it holds student elections if it we want representatives to reflect the wishes of our classmates.
First, it is useful to look at the way Haldane’s elections work currently. Every June, interested students in grades nine to eleven fill out a form to nominate themselves for the next school year’s student council. The form is simple. Students enter their grade and which class office they
seek: class president, vice president, secretary, treasurer, or representative. On top of these class positions, juniors-to-be are eligible to run for Student Body Vice President, and seniors can run for Student Body President, Treasurer, or Secretary. After students choose a prospective office, they submit a brief essay on why they want the position. This essay is read by faculty advisors, math teachers Kristen Peparo and Marilyn Granese, but it is not shared with the student body. Next, their names are put down on the ballot, and the vote occurs online via a Google Form in Google Classroom. Faculty advisors then tally the votes and announce the winners about a week later.
The problem?
Under the current system, students cannot truly make informed decisions on who they should support. The essay students write is not accessible to the student body, so the candidates themselves are not required to have any sort of platform that they share with students. In fact, it’s rare for prospective officers to campaign at all. While elections will always be, to a certain degree, a popularity contest, the system as it stands now ensures that students vote purely based on the name present on the ballot, not any sort of platform for school improvement.
I believe that the absence of meaningful and substantial opportunities to campaign and share platforms and ideas from our system of elections contributes to an environment where elected officers are not incentivized to do anything but the bare minimum. Student voters have few metrics by which to assess the performance of their elected representatives. Indeed, as Louisa Schimming and Kaito Kester’s reporting on page 1 of this issue of The Outlook indicates, many students at Haldane don’t really know what work the student council does. If we create an election system that bestows more responsibility on student candidates and makes them more accountable to the voters, it will incentivize students to work on more ambitious projects and initiatives that will improve student life on campus.
One of the ways we could address this problem is something that already exists in some Haldane
elections: platform speeches. In the Elementary and Middle Schools, students have a chance to hear speeches from each of the candidates arguing their platforms in front of the school, on posters, and in the hallways. The elementary school has an assembly, and the middle school candidates give short speeches on the announcements. Every student voter has multiple opportunities to understand the promises made by the students they will elect to represent their interests. The Haldane Outlook would be happy to give candidates a platform to share their visions for the school’s future. I concede that this does not mean the promised changes will ever actually get implemented (I remember fondly my peers promising strawberry milk for the cafeteria; it never materialized), but it would at least ensure that students know the promises of their candidates and could hold them accountable in the next election if they fail to meet them.
Another idea for strengthening the way our high school student council functions is to compose and adopt a constitution for our student government. Other schools of similar caliber to Haldane have those kinds of official governing documents. A constitution, approved by the majority of the student body and the Haldane administration, would set up lasting traditions for how the student council is run in a way that is more accountable to its constituents. Enacting a constitution would prepare us to join organizations like the New York State Council on Leadership and Student Activities, which offers recognition opportunities and can help student officers hone skills in civic awareness and team leadership through participation in activities at local, state, and national levels. Participation in the NYS Council, as well as the process of writing, enacting and amending a student council constitution would create opportunities for members of student council to practice the skills that are essential to leadership in a democracy: rhetoric, communication, teamwork, project management, compromise, working toward change, and reporting on accomplishments.
Our student government at Haldane currently does a great job fostering school spirit and organizing school events and fundraisers. The student council decorates floats for the Homecoming Pep Rally, they help decide themes for spirit week and red ribbon week, and they promote and volunteer at fundraisers and school events. These are undoubtedly important activities, but we could do more and we could do better. By reforming the election process to create meaningful opportunities to form and communicate platforms, student voters would be able to evaluate the candidates. By creating an official constitution, we could solidify the purpose of the student council, expectations for offices, and other procedures. Haldane can create a student council that more effectively reflects the school’s excellence. It’ll take time, and it’ll take more commitment than many student council officers are used to, but the results will be worth it, for all students.
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