According to dictionary.com, “unlike a student council, which represents the students of an entire school, class officers typically represent only a single class. Whereas the purpose of student council is to learn about democracy and leadership, and to work in partnership with school management for the benefit of the school, the goal of class officers is to organize and facilitate activities for the enjoyment of their classmates.”

In theory, having class officers is a great idea and they would benefit the class immensely; however, having class officer positions in high school are largely about popularity. And in turn, not all voices of the class are heard.

In my experience, I’ve seen class officers only communicate with their friends when they’re looking for ideas for a class activity. Their friends are not the majority of the class. They should set up regular meetings to ask the entire class for their opinions.

It becomes a top heavy influence; ideas from students at the bottom of the popularity food chain never reach the top and communication becomes an issue. For example, when senior sweatshirts came out, not everyone received the ballots to vote for their favorite. They were all just randomly passed out at lunch and not given to everyone. I realize this might not be their fault and they just didn’t have a better way to distribute them, but some sort of announcement should have been made.

I think communication is a huge issue between all class officers in all high schools and the students. Social media is one solution; however, not everyone has a Facebook or Twitter, so that’s when communication gets blurred and only one part of the class is informed. For the future, I would suggest more involved and frequent class meetings, bulletin letters, surveys, and even have the class officers go to each senior TGA individually.

If there are going to be class officers, they need to communicate with all students. If they don’t, a student may be ill-informed or feel like they don’t have a say. We voted for these officers to speak for our entire class but it seems as though the French estate system from the time of the French Revolution might be making a comeback. Either class officers communicate with everyone, not just their friends, and get involved with all the other students, or we don’t have them at all.