Most of the students in my younger son's school's middle school student council I noticed are slackers and my son says that they usually are only popular but don't get very good grades. I visit the school very often and they seem to be only lazing around in their office and playing music. They sometimes even drink.

I know this because my son was on the council (my elder son, who got good grades, didn't run for anything, he was iN DECA though). None of them get good grades. I was wondering if this is supposed to be normal for a school to have a council with only popular students rather than neccessarily good students? I thought the council was supposed to be representative of all students and thus need to be model students?

Ime student council members are voted in & therefore it is nothing but a popularity contest.

That said, these types of activities are sometimes the only thing keeping these kids in school at all.

As the PP said, student council members are elected by the student body. Anyone can run, and it often does work out to a popularity contest. Grades really have nothing to do with it.

If you've seen the kids on your son's middle school student council consuming alcohol on school property/in the student council offices, I hope that you've reported the issue to the administration.

Yep, its nothing more then a popularity contest. I only made student body president because the other girl who did get voted in (most popular girl in school) for arrested AGAIN and this time got time in juvie. Year after year from 6th grade on I always felt bad for the kids who actually had plans because I knew they would not get elected because 100% of the time it went to the popular kids who didn't give a flip, they just wanted the title.

That's the way it was when I was in school.
My experience has been that the smart, unpopular kids are the most successful in the end. The popular ones all went to jail:wink (joking)

So I think what is happening at your son's school is probably the norm.

That's the way it was when I went to school - 20+ years ago. The smart kids seldom ran for office. It was more of a jock cheerleader kind of thing.

That's probably pretty normal. I've worked in 3 high schools and usually it's a total popularity contest. Some schools put academic requirements in place, and usually they'd require these "character references" from teachers so at least there's some sort of background scope. But for the most part, it's popularity.

In some schools though, the smart kids ARE the popular kids. In fact, it was that way at 2 out of the 3 schools I've worked in, and it was cool to be smart. Interesting, huh?

TOTAL popularity contest. IME you'll probably find the smart kids in the chess club, FFA, DECA, foreign language clubs, etc.

Once in a great while there will be a cross-over and a kid will be both super popular AND smart. This would be nice...but I've only seen it happen a few times in my 25 years of high school myself, college, and now as a teacher :(

Nowhere is it written - in most schools - that student council members have to be good students. Sounds normal to me.

Except the part about middle schoolers drinking (you did mean alcohol?) at school. Frankly, that sounds unlikely. Did you actually see this?

In my high school, student council members had to have at least a 3.0 GPA. The same standard applied to any sports teams. If you didn't have the GPA you weren't allowed to run for council or be on the sports teams. Other clubs and groups had no requirements. I guess the policy assumed that if you couldn't handle the academics of high school alone, then you certainly couldn't handle the academics plus other activities. At the same time the didn't want to completely discourage extracurriculars, so there were plenty of clubs/groups that were available.

In some schools though, the smart kids ARE the popular kids. In fact, it was that way at 2 out of the 3 schools I've worked in, and it was cool to be smart. Interesting, huh?

This is how it was in my high school - the smartest kids were the leaders of student council as well as the most popular. Also, anyone could be on the general council, it was just the leaders (president, vice president, treasurer and secretary) were elected by the student body.

In my last 2 years of high school, the student council presidents were from the gifted class :shrug Neither was super popular but I guess they ran good campaigns and the students thought they would do a good job.

I was in a non-elected position and was a pretty good student. There *was* a lot of hanging around the office listening to music (the school radio station was broadcast from the office but I guess the members did their work at home.

There definitely wasn't any drinking!

Martha

I graduated from highschool about 8 years ago and about half the kids in the AP classes were also super popular and sporty.

I dare say over 1/3 of our elected officials fit this profile too (including a recent president!).

I'm not shocked by the grades. I'd be very disturbed (and reporting) the drinking. I have no visions that either of my children will be in student gov't. Ds is too much of an introvert/geek, and dd is too strong willed to be popular. They could prove me wrong, though!

Wait...

Those voted in are not the most qualified, but are the most popular based on a variety of erroneous reasons?

Sounds like the best American History/Government lesson if nothing else. :thumb

What they really should do is give student council a certain amount of responsibility to handle certain situations (that are directly important to students) and report on how those issues are coming along.

In the district in which I teach (and which was also the district I attended growing up) student government and clubs are treated like sports. All students participating in them have to maintain a certain GPA. Also, there are teacher sponsors who watch over the group, attend the meetings, etc. These sponsors also must watch that the students are not goofing off, working toward goals, etc.

Usually there is a lot of community service work with these groups, not to mention fundraisers and other school functions. In our district it would be extremely difficult for a student who doesn't care to get elected, much less be able to maintain their position.

Sometimes, however, a sponsor will help a struggling student stay in a club, because the student is going through a hard time. Also, there are always students who don't do well academically, but who are so intelligent. A lot of teachers here will encourage those students to get involved, hoping that it will inspire them to do better in school.

First, if you saw them drinking alcohol, it should be reported to the principal. Second, if you are concerned about the character of these students, speak with the club sponsor, if it has one. If your younger son wants to run, encourage him to do it. Even if he isn't the most popular, I bet a lot of the kids like him. Your son might be the person to turn the tide at his school.

What they really should do is give student council a certain amount of responsibility to handle certain situations (that are directly important to students) and report on how those issues are coming along.

In my experience, the school tends to want to limit the powers of the student council - they have a pretty small budget, they can't do anything that affects the building or costs real amounts of money... so they wind up running parties. They plan the homecoming dance. They plan the prom. They might run a fair in the school parking lot some weekend. A *really* powerful student council might be able to do something like, oh, put a recycling bin in the cafeteria so that people don't put their recyclable soda cans in the trash.

For those tasks, the popular kids generally do fine.

I'd rather have the popular kids who are slackers plan the dances, to be honest. :joy:

When I was in high school, the kids who held leadership positions were required to maintain a good GPA for the duration of their tenure in office.

In some schools though, the smart kids ARE the popular kids. In fact, it was that way at 2 out of the 3 schools I've worked in, and it was cool to be smart. Interesting, huh?

That's the way it was in my hs, and that is the way it is at the hs where dh teaches. I thought that was normal, lol! Our jocks and cheerleaders were smart, too.

That's the way it was in my hs, and that is the way it is at the hs where dh teaches. I thought that was normal, lol! Our jocks and cheerleaders were smart, too.

You must have lived in Eureka!

Uh, middle schoolers drinking? Alcohol? At school? This seems very unlikely to me.

Like some of the PPs, at my high school the popular kids were the smart kids! All of the jocks and cheerleaders were in all of the honors classes.

Uh, middle schoolers drinking? Alcohol? At school? This seems very unlikely to me.



I recall a couple of incidents from my middle school years when kids got into their parents' liquor cabinets and wine cellars. And a few years ago, it happened with a kid at ds's middle school. Unfortunately, alcohol is fairly easy to procure and there is a grown-up glamour to having access when you are 12 or 13.

As for the OP, is the situation bothering you enough to approach the school administration and suggest that there be changes made? Improve staff supervision? Is a teacher advisor or 2 attached to school council? Change the election rules so that students need a particular grade average to sit on council? Or maybe each candidate has to have a couple of teacher recommendations or principal's approval?

Do the other students at the school resent the situation - or are they happy joining other clubs and want to leave student government to the popular kids? It's hard to overcome self-segregation in any society - but there should be enough adult supervision in a middle school to make it possible.

My Ds is on the student councel this year. Here are the requirments that he had to meet before he could run...He had to have at leat a 3.5 GPA, he had to have one teacher recommendations, and parental consent. After all that it is still run like a reguler election, the sutudens vote. I think that is as it should be. Student government should be modeled after our government.

If he was caught drinking on school grounds or doing any other suspendable offence such as fighting then he would be replaced.

If you went to school and saw them drinking alchol then you should have reported it then. Not much can be done about it now.

council is mainly a popularity thing when election is left up to student voting. In many schools there is a minimum GPA to run for office but from there, the only way someone who isn't popular is going to get in is if there isn't anyone else popular running for the same office, it's a position that teachers vote on instead of students, or if no one is running against them. Sad but, true. Occasionally a kid who has office access will rig the voting to sway things away from the popular kid and perhaps sometimes there aren't any running mates for some of the lesser "cool" ASB positions.

At my school a majority of the ASB offices were elected by vote of fellow students. One position however (the only one where anything important was actually performed or that required quality control) was chosen by staff rather than students. That just so happened to be the position I held for 2 years in high school. I was required to help keep the books, handle check reqs and payment for classes, clubs, and sports, and given access to the safe so they wanted to know an idiot with sticky hands didn't get elected.

On the bright side, there are popular kids that are also smart and do very well in school and make good decisions in their personal lives as well. There were a couple other kids in ASB in the years I participated that had a clue, worked hard, and weren't stuck up, screwups and were popular all the while.

ETA: out of the 7 or so position in the ASB only 2 actually had duties that weren't just busy work to make it seem like there was enough for them to do to fill up a 50 minute class time slot. Myself and another person spent our ASB hour in the business office with the bookkeeper working. The rest of the ASB spent there time wandering the halls pertending they were on official business or sitting in their class (half the time unsupervised because the instructer was a total dip). In the ASB class their only real duties as ASB members were to come up with themes for spirit week, make posters to hang in the halls, and make decorations for pep-cons (assemblies to pump kids up for football and basketball games... the only two sports the school felt like paying attention to). Most kids run for office because they get to stand out front and participate in assemblies, do intercom announcements, and most importantly get out of class for nonsense that doesn't matter.

to an extent, like others mentioned, many of the popular, jock-type kids were in honors classes and got good grades... but usually made up for that by spending their weekends hung over (high school... not middle school). And don't think favortism doesn't exist between students and teachers. At my school I honestly noticed that there were still a lot of TEACHERS trying to fit in with the cool kids and being much easier on them. And for the record, honors isn't all that advanced. Taking trig at the local college while you're in hs would be worth a mention... honors... eh, not so different from regular classes. Often times I found there was much less fluff in the regular classes which left more time for real study. I took some honors and it's really not a lot to brag about.