ASB class representatives an ineffective proposition

Newly elected student representatives in middle school are usually excited to represent their class at meetings and report back to their classes. However, throughout the course of the year, they often discover that their fellow classmates are more interested in their pencils than in the student council budget.

The same turn of events will likely happen to representatives chosen for ASB’s newly proposed policy, in which class representatives would be chosen in each second-period class to go to ASB meetings and report back with any important information. If approved, this policy will be put into practice either the start of the spring semester or the beginning of the 2013-2014 school year.

Five to 10 minutes will have to be taken out of class time every other week for representatives to give their report. This may not seem like a lot, but when a teachers time their tests to be exactly 95 minutes long, students count every second of time they get. 

Furthermore, if the ASB continues to run regular morning announcements in addition to the representative policy, the 10-minute reports would add up to about two and a half hours of class time every year.  That’s about one and a half block periods that second-period teachers would have to do without.

The information given during the report may also be uninteresting and irrelevant to students.  ASB Head Commissioner Shireen Kaul said that the point of the proposed announcement system is to raise awareness about what ASB does.  But if students are not interested in learning about ASB, representatives talking about it in class are not going to make much of a difference.

One of the reasons ASB wants to implement this new policy may be that they are afraid students think that the ASB is an insignificant part of our school.  But students who are actually interested in the influence ASB has on our school should just attend one of the ASB meetings to judge for themselves.

Another reason ASB might want to add these reports is to get feedback for issues such as what bid price would students be willing to pay for a dance or spirit day ideas.  But with all the latest technology such as Facebook and SurveyMonkey online feedback is easy to get and more efficient. 

If ASB really wants to prove to the entire student body the impact of their organization, they should just tack on a few more seconds to their Tuesday morning announcements to explain briefly any decisions made at the meeting on Monday night.  This is much more efficient because ASB officers are already making announcements to the student body every single day; why waste the time of students representatives and teachers?