With many of the student government elections completed, many at Dimond are already looking towards next years representatives to lead the school forward.

The representatives elected for next year’s class of 2022 are Kitoi Agtarap-Oneil as Class President, Lauren Fletcher Class Vice President, Paige Martens as Treasurer, Sydney Wilson as Secretary, and Makaila Amundson as Class Representative.

The class of 2021 has elected Cameron Rollinson as Class President, Ian Cruickshank as Class Vice President, Treasurer Kadyn Osborne, Secretary Esther Cho, and Class Representative Noah Rygh.

The class of 2020 elected Denali Lincoln as Class President, Christianna McGee as Class Vice President, Loren Odoardo as Treasurer, SJ Parker as Secretary, and Mathilda Cerdeña as Class Representative.

Next year’s representatives for Executive Board are Student Body President Braelyn Rodgers, Student Body Vice President Kilee Horning, Commissioners of Spirit Avivi Cohen and Logan Fletcher, Commissioners of Publicity Kylie Durette and Kali Dey and the Commissioner  of Publicity Luis Sanchez-Ulloa.

However, before the elections many students and staff were willing to give advice and opinions to the then newly-running students, as well as explaining how Student Government Elections work.

Hahna Wood, the Dimond Senior Class President, said, ¨Each class has five class officers so you must be a part of that class to run for that position, and then the student body president and the student body vice president have to be seniors, but other than that the board is open to whoever.

¨But they have to go to a campaign meeting and get their 50 signatures from their respective class or if their on e-board anybody who’s a sophomore or junior. However, many students are running for positions from the same positions, making this an unexpected year for many candidates for government positions.¨

Wood added, ¨I think its is going to be interesting to run for Student Body President as there are three people who have all been in Student Government before who are running this year.

Lem Wheeles, a Dimond AP History teacher who oversees the Student Government, said, “Students who are interested first come to an informational meeting where we go over rules and the paperwork, and they then have to complete a application, basically just putting their basic information and getting a parent signature and approval for a student to run. They also sign, and their parents sign, to our code of ethics and social media policy.

            However, for many the next step in running for an elected position may be difficult.

            Wheeles said, “They have to gather 50 student signatures from their peers. If their running for a class office they have to get signatures from their class. If they’re running for an executive corp positions it can be ninth, tenth or eleventh graders, and they get a signature for the activities office verifying that they meet the minimum GPA of 2.0.

Many government positions are favored over others each year, as it is to be expected from these kinds of events.

A very specific kind or person tends to gravitate to student body positions, many of which have a specific plan for what they want to do in office.

Max Addington, a Dimond senior and Student Body Vice President said, ¨[These students] want to be more involved in the school. I think that overall people who feel like they have leadership skills want to use those skills to help make a change in the school.

The people who apply for Student Government also tend to behave similarly, with many people in the student body with similar interests flocking to join in the Student Government organization.

Addington said, ¨I´d say people with leadership skills, those that you see more involved in sports, fine arts, just more involved in the school in general, and those that are pretty outgoing at sporting events.

“The president position tends to have the most.” Wood agreed. “In my class a lot of people that happened, a lot of people of people running against each other.

“The Junior, becoming Senior, Class right now does have a lot of people who are interested in the school government.”

The time to sign up for Student Government, especially for incumbent Seniors, is running out fast however.

Wood said, “Packets are due this Friday [March 29th] and then I believe there will be one or two weeks of campaigning and then we’ll vote over two days.”

In conclusion, with many members of the student body either thinking of or joining in the race for Student Government positions, and the race for posts just beginning, this year’s election season may prove to be very interesting for all of Dimond.