Palo Alto High School’s Associated Student Body is removing the position of class representative and requiring a semester of experience for the higher level positions.
Paly junior and ASB treasurer Paul Wang, who abstained from voting on this decision, stated that the main purpose was to encourage more competition during the election process.
“A minor argument was made that eliminating representatives would bring more incentive to join in the ASB class, as in the past two years, there have always been extra openings in commissioner positions,” Wang said.
According to ASB Minutes, the vote passed with a 28-to-1 ratio. In addition, according to ASB’s meeting notes, the executive board positions of president, vice president and treasurer must now have at least one semester of ASB experience to run for the primary election. According to Wang, this ensures that ASB is run by experienced students that can plan events effectively without having to rely on others.
“Having people qualified to plan the mechanisms of an event, organize and lead throughout the year is important, especially for large school events, such as New Student Orientation, Spirit Week and prom,” Wang said. “Having unqualified candidates only makes next year’s ASB worse, and has historically put the burden on the student activities director.”
Junior class president James Park says that the ultimate goal of these changes is to improve the future of ASB.
“Overall, we want to increase the efficiency in ASB so that we can hold more and better events,” Park said. “These changes are not meant to disqualify students from joining ASB, but to make sure that they have some experience with how we operate to make sure they can do the best work possible.”
