ASB election faces decrease in participation

In an extremely close election for ASB president, junior Aakash Thumaty beat Luke Salin by just four votes after the elections took place in early April.

But the result of that narrow victory may not have been the biggest story. What was equally striking was the lack of competition for other positions such as vice president, secretary  and treasurer ran unopposed. Running unopposed were junior Nihar Agrawal, the new vice president, sophomore Spring Ma the new secretary and sophomore Mitali Shanbhag, the new treasurer.

One factor that may have deterred students from running for ASB is increasing popularity of YikYak, an app that allows people in the same area to post anonymously. ASB vice president junior Luke Salin speculates that the abundance of  offensive comments and derogatory insults toward ASB members on YikYak over the past two months have made ASB less attractive to potential members.

Another reason may be ASB’s early difficulties with leadership, Salin said. This year, the ASB heads were all new members, and the lack of experience caused confusion.

“It was a struggle because we didn’t really know what we were doing,” Salin said. “The fact that we didn’t have a strong leadership there made us decline and made less people want to run next year.”

However, sophomore class officer Mitali Shanbhag said these rough moments are simply learning experiences that will help them  set goals to improve for the upcoming year.

“It’s been difficult getting students to participate, but the past is the past. We’re looking at a completely different board for next year,” Shanbhag said. “Student government has set goals as to how we can progress from here, and I honestly believe we can do it.”

Activities director Rebeca Marshburn also believes that ASB will improve and is “pleasantly surprised by the increase in support and participation for ASB events” compared to last year.

“We burst into this school year with an absolutely phenomenal pep rally.  I would love to see more of these in future years,” Marshburn said. “This is where, I believe, that ASB and the commissions will have the greatest influence in raising the bar for future classes at SHS.”  

Even so, there are no quick fix solutions to this problem. Salin believes that the staff will need to prove that ASB is a group worthy of leading school culture.

“The more we are able to have strong moments, strong events, and strong classes, [participation] will definitely go up next year,” Salin said.