Fresh and ready to lead the class of 2017

The class of 2017 now has its first group of leaders, a group that emerged from a heated election.

Serving as class president is Mitali Shanbhag, vice president Apoorv Kwatra, secretary Spring Ma, treasurer Peter Van de Vort and class representatives Elicia Chiu and Neehar Thumaty. 

The class of 2017 marked a new milestone for freshman student office, as 26 freshmen campaigned against each other for class positions, compared to the six candidates three years ago. 

ASB elections last year had only one position involving more than one choice for a potential candidate, and the only other position with more than one choice was determined by disqualification according to election rules.

Senior Robert Eng, who is on the Elections Commission and also was treasurer his freshman year, said that he is surprised by the number of freshmen running for office.

“I truly admire the quantity of aspiring freshmen who ran for class office,” Eng said. “It shows this class is in general motivated to become politically involved in their government affairs.”

Van de Vort said that his motivation to run for treasurer was that he was experienced from his previous term as treasurer at Redwood Middle School.

“I thought that because as treasurer there, I thought I could to a better job than [the other candidates] and serve the school better,” Van de Vort said.

Kwatra, on the other hand, said that his motivation was mainly wanting to be involved with the school.

“[When I ran for vice president,] I wanted to help make some decisions for the school and help organize school events,” Kwatra said. 

Kwatra said that he thinks that the reason why so many freshmen ran for class positions was to have some control over school events.

Van de Vort’s explanation, on contrary, was that many freshmen did it to discover what being in office felt like.

“I’m not sure [about others] because I didn’t know a lot of the competitors,” Van de Vort said. “Maybe they thought ‘It’s freshman year, I’ll give things a try to see if i like it; if I don’t then oh well.’ [The race for class positions] really sets up interests [in student government] for later years.”

Senior Jennie Werner, who was class representative her freshman year, also said that having multiple people run for a class position has its benefits. 

Werner said that she had moved to Saratoga her freshman year, and it was difficult to campaign as a new student. 

“I remember [three years ago] that I was new freshman year; I literally knew no one because I had not come from Redwood Middle School, and I thought, ‘Oh, I came from a different middle school, why not just try?’” Werner said. “I didn’t win, but I got to be [class representative].”

Werner says that the process of being elected as class representative had helped her get adjusted to her new school.

“In the process of campaigning, I got to make friends with people I didn’t know before and felt appreciated by my peers,” Werner said. “I guess that it’s nice for so many people to run because even if they don’t win, they can support each other for events like Homecoming.”