Artist: Michelle Deng
by: Sanjana Baldwa - Winged Post
After the Freshman election results were revealed on September 24, it became clear to students that male dominance was present in student council. Out of twenty student council members, eighteen are boys.
“Sometimes the student council is dominated with females. Ultimately the students are making the choice,” Dean of Students Kevin Williamson said.
Lori Berenberg (9) ran for class treasurer against two boys and two girls but lost.
“I think that although all the males are really qualified … there should be more girls in student council because girls need representation,” she said.
Senior class secretary Jackie Son (12) sees the male dominance but feels no offense to it. “There’s nothing wrong with [more males in student council]. It’s just that it would be nice to have more girl voices,” she said.
“It’s not exactly different [than having more girls], but then again, I feel like maybe sometimes like the female population of the school may be kind of misrepresented sometimes,” Jackie said. “Guys and girls tend to think differently about certain things, so on certain topics, it seems kind of unbalanced.”
Derek Huang (10), Sophomore class secretary, thinks that there would not be much of a difference with more girls on the council. “I never really notice there’s a huge gap between girls and guys in student council,” he said.
One problem that the student council has to resolve is the dress code policy which had several issues last year, especially for girls. “Girls relate to girls. A lot of members that are girls in student council definitely help us because we were struggling with that last year,” ASB President Andy Fang (12) said.
As for getting girls to have their voice heard, students think there are other ways to initiate change.
“A way to change it would be having more girl students come up to us two [female student council members] and really [voice] their concerns so that we can properly present them during meetings,” Jackie said.
“I think they can still get their voice heard if they’re not in student council itself by just being proactive and communicating with the student council,” Andy said.
However, there are some students who think that there should be another committee of girls who collectively bring their ideas to the student council and administration.
“Maybe there should be an extra addition of a few girls. Not as treasurer or secretary or president or vice president, but as input from a girl’s point of view, like an extra little council on council’s side kind of thing,” Lori said.
Williamson thought that a committee of this sort was unnecessary.
“I think the students have spoken. They’ve chosen who they want. They think the best people are for those positions, and I think they leave gender out of it,” he said. “Along the way, if girls are feeling that something’s being left out or missing, they certainly should bring it to the attention of the student council leaders, and we can go from there.”
The freshman elections consisted of ten girls and seven boys. Even though there were more girls running, four boys were welcomed to the student council. Williamson feels that the grades “have a majority of boys in the classes, so that may have some sense of why it is the way it is.”
ASB secretary, Sachin Mitra, (12) is unaware of the reason behind the lack of female presence on student council. “[A male-dominant student council is] not something we want to have, but it’s there, so we’re going to work with it,” Sachin said. “We’ve tried to keep an open mind and consider issues from everyone.”
