Last week, student council elections were in full swing, with campaign flyers and voting talk taking over the school.

Junior Riley Cornell ran uncontested for Secretary, where she will do things such as take attendance at meetings and run the STUCO social media accounts.

“Elections give a great opportunity for students to take a bigger role within the council and within our whole school,” Cornell said. 

The election process is a complex and involved undertaking.

“We started off [by being given] all of our deadlines,” Cornell said. “We made our speeches and were able to start making campaign materials. Each person got $25 that we could spend on campaigning, so for me that went towards making posters. Then we delivered our speeches.”

In any election, a candidate’s contacts will be a crucial aspect when it comes to obtaining citizen’s votes.

  “We had to get 50 signatures overall, 10 from each grade and then 10 extras from any grade,” Cornell said. “The biggest part of running was just making sure you have a network of students that you convince to support you, and reaching out to as many people as possible.” 

It is also important that each candidate has selling points, meaning actions they promise to take should they be elected. For Cornell, this means building an organized and involved community.

“I want to make Olathe West the best that we can be, and work towards creating new events within Olathe West, and enhancing events that we had in the past that StuCo runs,” Cornell said.

Each student was shown the election speeches during AI, and voting will closed on April 22.  The results were announced at the end of the day Friday and are as follows:

President: Adam Geyer

Vice President: Allana Moore

Secretary: Riley Cornell

Treasurer: Kylie Krause 

Executive Chair: Matthew Miller