The arrival of fall heralds many things: football season, crisp weather, and the promise of future holidays such as Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and eventually Christmas. Fall also signals the arrival of a much less amiable season- election season. The time to elect this year’s class officers are fast approaching, and through all the endless gossip existing around who is and isn’t running, and the plethora of debates among the upper classes on what their respective prom themes should be, you may be wondering, how does this all work?

The process begins with the application. During this process, students were able to access the application on the student information site, which was linked to Lafayette’s home page. Upon clicking the form, students were given a list of criteria they must meet if they aim to run. This criterion applies to all, regardless of grade level. Students first should have had a 3.0 unweighted GPA from the preceding semester. Furthermore, they must have requested approval from two teachers, who were subsequently contacted in order to weigh in on whether or not they believe the applying candidate would be a good fit for office. Freshmen were permitted to use middle school teachers, owing to the fact that they have only been at Lafayette for several weeks.

From there, it differs by grade, the positions that students could’ve applied for. For Freshmen and Sophomores, four positions exist, President, Vice President, Secretary, and Treasurer. One candidate will be elected to each of these positions. At the Junior and Senior levels, there are two President positions and two Vice President positions, in addition to one secretary and one treasurer. Seniors could also run for the position of SBDM representative. For those who weren’t compelled to any of those positions, applications for the executive board were also open. Any candidate who for whatever reason is either not elected or accepted to their desired position can opt to be made a member of the executive board. Applications for both the class office and executive board were closed to candidates on September 3.

According to Ms. Dill, one of the Junior Class election sponsors, there has been no shortage of applications this election cycle. “We have quite a few applications for the e-board at all [grade] levels.” said Ms. Dill, “…which is great… Roughly, there are over thirty applications for each of those [grades]”. Furthermore, similarly promising numbers were found for the other class officer positions, across all grades. “It looks like we have maybe five to ten for grade level, which is great, for each office.”

While that concludes the application process, there still remains more to the election process. Candidates were required to submit a brief campaign video, due September 8, and will be notified whether or not they are accepted to run by September 10. The succeeding week, the week of September 13-17, elections for all grade levels and all positions will occur.

After election week, each class will be left with a new roster of class officers. The duties of these newly elected officers will differ by grade. Ms. Ford, who sponsors the Freshman, Sophomore, and Junior classes, spoke on the duties of the Freshman and Sophomore class. “For the fall, we’re planning a Fall Festival, so the officers will be in charge of getting the word out, setting up a map of the Fall Festival, creating different events and then, we’re going to do a similar one in the spring.” In addition to this, the Freshmen and Sophomore class officers will also help fundraise, and work with the upperclassmen.

The duties of the Juniors and Seniors are somewhat different. “The juniors are in charge of prom.” Said Ms. Ford, “So they are in charge of things like decorations, social media, new ideas, t-shirt designs, etc… Juniors also do an ACT review class for the school and this year will try to take on an AP review day.” For the seniors, “Their big thing is graduation.” Ms. Ford said, “They’re really looking at speeches [for graduation] and organizing senior events such as Senior Sunrise and stuff like that.”

However, their duties don’t end there. “Are they someone who’s responsible? Someone who’s present?” Ms. Dill emphasized. “One thing that I think should go without saying, but maybe doesn’t, is that we really want people who are excited to be here working with us and working with the other students in the student body. We are looking for people with ideas. We have some ideas, but we really want to hear student ideas that we think will be more applicable on a student level.”

Class officer elections will occur the week of September 13-17. Links to the election SurveyMonkey will be sent out the same week, via email and Canvas. Following election week, announcements pertaining to the winning candidates will be made via intercom once the results are tallied up.cla