By Justin Hsieh & Karen Phan
The Fountain Valley High School (FVHS) Associated Student Body (ASB)’s Executive Council for the 2021-2022 school year was chosen without an election this year, a break from recent years’ tradition which leaders say was made given concerns of low turnout and the unique needs of preparing to return to school after a year of online schooling.
How Exec Elections Work
Since 2016, FVHS ASB’s Executive Council—which includes the student body president and vice president, and which leads and helps select the members of ASB—has been chosen in a process of multiple stages.
First, after students seeking to join the Executive Council submit an application, a select group of applicants is chosen to be interviewed by the incumbent Executive Council and the ASB advisor.
Of the interviewees, the incumbent Executive Council and ASB advisor then select a group of candidates to put up for election by the student body. The candidates are given a chance to campaign and deliver recorded speeches to the student body, after which students are able to cast votes online for five of the candidates.
The five candidates who receive the most votes become the following year’s Executive Council, and they are appointed to their respective positions by the incumbent Executive Council and the ASB advisor.
This process was used to elect the Executive Council last year, despite the fact that the Huntington Beach Union High School District (HBUHSD) closed its campuses on March 13 and suspended grading and instruction until April 2. ASB had candidates campaign on social media, posted candidates’ pre-recorded speeches on Instagram, and allowed students to vote from March 30 to April 1.
This Year
This year, however, the middle stage of that process was eliminated. Although applicants were interviewed by the Executive Council and ASB advisor as in previous years, no campaigns or elections were held, and the student body at large was not involved in any stage of this year’s Executive Council selection process.
Instead, the current Executive Council, the ASB advisor and three other staff members involved in the Activities Office (English teacher Todd Gruca, Activities Secretary Lara Smith, and ASB Bookkeeper Valerie Kearney) selected the Executive Council members from the interviewee pool.
After three days of interviews, followed by a weekend break, 2020-2021 ASB President senior Tara Lam said, the group “came back on Monday and…discussed who we thought was best fit for each role.
“And then after that, since Skon, [Gruca, Smith and Kearney] are the people working with the next year’s Executive Council, they made the decision of who should be on [the Executive Council] and then [afterwards the current] Executive Council made the phone calls [to the chosen candidates],” Lam said.
Three Reasons
This change to the selection process, proposed by ASB advisor and Assistant Principal of Activities and Athletics Dr. Kelly Skon and decided upon after discussion with the current Executive Council, was made for three reasons.
The first, according to Skon, was a concern that the COVID-19 pandemic and online schooling had reduced the level of engagement necessary to achieve substantial election turnout.
“We noticed in terms of the number of students that actually read the announcements, or that participated in our polls on Instagram, or participated in other virtual things that we’ve done—that there wasn’t a lot of turnout,” Skon said.
Student turnout was already a challenge in pre-pandemic elections. According to Skon, a total of 812 students voted in the 2020 Executive Council elections, 30% of an electorate of 2,667 non-seniors. That number was 494, 738 and 728 in the 2019, 2018 and 2017 elections, respectively.
The second reason Skon cited for not holding an Executive Council election this year was related to the senior-heavy composition of this year’s ASB.
“Twenty-seven of our students are graduating seniors, so that’s a lot,” Skon said. “And that, in a sense, means ASB is starting over again next year. We have one returner that has seen half of a regular year. So the idea of returners or students that have experienced a traditional year—that’s out of the window.”
That demographic fact contributed to the unique composition of the new Executive Council chosen this year, which includes two students who have not previously been members of ASB. One of those students is currently a freshman.
“[It] is very unique to have an incoming sophomore on [the Executive Council], but I think we kind of all felt like the stability that having someone who could potentially be able to be on [the Executive Council] for two or three years would bring [would help with] rebuilding that school culture that this pandemic has taken away from us,” Skon said.
That need to rebuild school culture when students return to campus fully in-person in the fall was the third reason Skon gave for the decision to skip the election stage of this year’s Executive Council selection.
“We’ve been gone for a year and a half, we haven’t connected like we used to as a student body; that opportunity to reset and recalibrate is unique,” Skon said. “In terms of thinking about the [Executive Council] and those students, we really wanted to ensure that we had the right mixture of students, the right leaders that could take on that task.”
The nature of that task, according to Skon, called for leaders with skills different from those traditionally selected for by an electoral process.
“The skill set that we were looking for wasn’t about someone capable of getting the most votes, rather the leadership skills required to take on the task of rebuilding our school culture from the ground up,” Skon said.
Skon said that to choose candidates with those qualities, it was important for the new Executive Council to be selected by people with an understanding of ASB’s roles and responsibilities—namely, the current Executive Council, as well as Skon, Gruca, Smith and Kearney.
“From the advisor [perspective], the big picture of what we’re trying to accomplish next year, we had to be very intentional about who our Executive Council would be,” Skon said. “Sometimes elections can be a popularity contest at school, and at the end of the day, the goal for next year is so important that it really had to be the current [Executive Council] and the four adults.”
Student Responses
Baron Banner asked 18 FVHS freshmen, sophomores and juniors to share their opinion of this year’s changes to the Executive Council selection process and the three reasons behind their implementation. Most said they believed an election should have been held, but that they understood the reasons Skon offered in explanation of the decision not to do so.
“Personally, I believe that the Executive [Council] candidates should have held elections for this year,” sophomore Ian Bui said. “[But] given the current state of our school right now, it is completely understandable why the current Executive Council and ASB advisor would selectively choose the next year’s Executive Council since they have hands-on experience and understand exactly what FVHS needs for next year.”
Sophomore Myla Chi expressed a similar mix of understanding and disappointment.
“I acknowledge that the ASB advisor and current Executive Council know exactly what qualities and requirements to look for in the candidates, but I wish that there was a way to incorporate their decisions with those of the students,” Chi said.
Freshman Leyna Nguyen, who said that the ASB campaigns held last year at her middle school demonstrated the difficulty of connecting to candidates during an online school year, said she agreed with the decision not to hold an election this school year.
“I’m pretty okay with the fact that we did not have elections this year because of the fact that most students are online and some students don’t really have a strong grasp on how school will operate in the coming year and the overall atmosphere,” Leyna Nguyen said.
Others, however, were less happy with the lack of an election. Junior Isabella Galiteva, for example, said that the challenging circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic made a student body election even more important than ever.
“It has definitely been an unprecedented year, but in such a context an effort should have been made to go above and beyond to ensure inclusivity and representation,” Galiteva said.
Sophomore Alexandria Tran expressed similar disagreement with the absence of an election.
“I honestly don’t think it’s fair that the Executive Council was chosen without election,” Alexandria Tran said. “Traditionally the Executive Council should go through an election process to allow students of the school to know the candidates and know who’s taking responsibility for our activities.”
While most students we spoke to said they did believe that ASB leaders were working to do what was best for the school, and that this year’s circumstances were undeniably challenging, our respondents were more divided in whether or not they agreed with the three specific reasons offered for this year’s lack of an election.
Some students, like sophomore Evelynn Pham, said that their personal experience with online engagement seemed to correspond to the concerns about student turnout which led ASB not to hold an election this year.
“It’s definitely been a difficult process this entire year, having to deal with the lack of participation within the student body,” Pham said. “Being a part of four clubs this year, I’ve definitely seen a difference in how things work, and how many people actually seem to care… but it really isn’t [students’] fault, and I think ASB really took that into consideration this year.”
Other students argued that student turnout could remain steady in an online setting, or even be improved, so long as active steps were taken to promote voting.
Alexandria Tran and freshman Rebecca Do, for example, both suggested that candidate campaign videos be shown and students be given time to vote school-wide during a designated class period. Several students, including freshman Jessica Jang, said that social media could be a tool in promoting participation.
“In my opinion I think the people who wanted to run for ASB [Executive Council] should’ve been responsible for getting people to vote for elections even though everything has been online,” Jang said. “But even if things were normal, everything would still be campaigned on social media.”
Another student who highlighted the role social media could play in facilitating election turnout was Galiteva, who argued that given students’ increased dependence on online platforms during the pandemic, social media might have been more effective than normal years in getting students to vote.
“With all of us being online and constantly checking communications, it seems to me that it would have been easier to have broader online outreach effort[s] that would have reached more students who, like me, would have appreciated the opportunity to participate,” Galiteva said.
Other students suggested that low turnout in a school election wasn’t itself a problem.
“For the first reason, I feel as long as there are enough people voting, then the total number doesn’t matter as much,” sophomore Zuri Sherry said. “The smaller portion of people that vote are the ones that care about the outcome.”
Sherry, however, also pointed out that student decisions in an election might not best reflect the big-picture interests of the school, and suggested that therefore in a year where choosing the best possible leadership was essential it would be reasonable to leave selection in the hands of ASB leaders.
“I feel like the current Executive Council understands what our school culture needs more than anyone,” Sherry said. “The next Executive Council has a really large task at hand, and not everybody that votes in a school election does so deliberately—voting for your friends, choosing someone random, et cetera.”
Freshman Caroline Ngo expressed a similar sentiment.
“I trust the judgment of the ASB Executive Council considering their experience and the large task of having to restart school culture,” Ngo said. “I believe that they would choose the people most fit for the positions; they would do the best job leading school activities and events.”
Freshman Dat Nguyen, on the other hand, argued that the results of an election would faithfully reflect the needs of the school, even in a year with uniquely specific demands on its leaders.
“The last [reason] seems the most bizarre to me because if you have a skill set capable of getting a plurality of students to vote for you, you would have the abilities needed to be on the Executive Council,” Dat Nguyen said.
Freshman Kelly Tran, however, said that as a freshman whose experience of FVHS and ASB has been entirely virtual, she didn’t feel sufficiently informed to cast a meaningful vote in an Executive Council election.
“I feel unbothered about the fact that we did not have elections this year,” Kelly Tran said. “Without any standards to base my votes on, it would be pointless for me to participate in elections because I will most likely make unconfident voting choices. Ultimately, the absence of elections this year does not affect me.”
In Comparison
There is precedent for the selection of FVHS’s ASB Executive Council without the participation of the student body. During the 2013-2014, 2014-2015 and 2015-2016 school years, there were no Executive Council elections. According to Skon, however, another such no-election streak is unlikely, as she expects ASB to resume holding elections for its Executive Council next year.
“I would think the plan would be to have elections next year,” Skon said. “I can’t foresee [in] the future that there might not be a situation like [that of 2013, when there were not enough qualified candidates for an election], but I don’t see that happening. We had over 64 people apply overall for ASB [this year], which is a lot more than we’ve had in the past. So I don’t foresee us skipping out on elections.”
This year, however, the decision to not hold elections for ASB Executive Council set FVHS apart from the other schools in the HBUHSD. Edison, Huntington Beach, Marina and Ocean View High Schools have held ASB elections for their 2021-2022 Executive Councils, and ASB elections are planned to take place this school year at Westminster High School.
“I feel that not having elections this year was understandable because this year had been a crazy year with so many changes,” junior Kelsey Hoang said. “However, it was kind of disappointing as well because we were the only school that didn’t have elections. We could have easily had elections and [gone] through the same process that we were used to.”
To students expressing disappointment similar to Hoang’s, Skon said she urged them to take advantage of other opportunities to participate in their school’s culture and leadership.
“Absolutely I understand their disappointment, for sure,” Skon said. “I would encourage them to either participate in LEAD [the Leadership Exploration and Development club], …reach out to any ASB member and share their ideas, or participate in House of Reps next year—that’s where ASB gets a lot of feedback.”
To reach ASB members, ASB President Tara Lam said that students could message ASB’s Instagram or Twitter accounts, which are run by the ASB president and secretary, and through which Lam says the president and secretary respond to student messages and pass on suggestions from students to ASB commissions. Skon also said students were welcome to come to her or to other ASB leaders directly.
“I know that my office is always open, I know that [the Executive Council] is always open and willing,” Skon said. “We’re happy [to hear from students], we love it. It makes our job easier when we get feedback from students.”
Lam offered similar encouragement to students hoping to share their voice with ASB.
“A lot of kids don’t [reach out], but they don’t realize the power that they have in their voice, in reaching out and speaking up,” Lam said. “The power that they hold by just sending a message or suggestion is so great.”
This article was updated at 9:00 a.m. on May 5, 2021 to include Evelynn Pham’s quote.
