So, here it was. The one thing I had been waiting to be able to do for years: I was going to serve on the Student Council! As I mentioned in an earlier post, prior to high school, in order to serve on the Student Council, you had to be elected by your homeroom. In high school, they just held general elections. I mentioned that I was not elected for my sophomore year and was not asked to become a member even though they were supposed to call on me when they were losing members left and right.
Apparently, the Student Council lost a lot of its appeal in high school. This was probably due to the faculty advisor being considerably on the dull side. When I ran for the next year's Council my sophomore year, there weren't enough candidates to fill all the slots. They still had to have an election so that they could pull a write-in candidate to fill out the seats. They had to do this for both the sophomore and junior classes. (I would have been a truly complete loser if I hadn't gotten elected that year.)
One of the best things about Student Council is that we got out of one class every Monday. They would rotate among the periods. If the meeting didn't take the full hour, we still got to stay out of class. My Drama teacher got mad every time I had to miss class. I guess she wasn't a fan of the Student Council because our Homecoming floats never got judged.
I served on several committees, including the Homecoming committee. One of the things I got to do was help choose some possible Homecoming themes. During the committee discussion, I submitted "Bulldog Mania" (even though this was more than 15 years after Beatlemania). The entire Student Council got to vote on the submitted themes. My suggestion came in second place, behind "Bulldog Country" (by a VERY wide margin). The idea was that we would get this popular area country covers band to play at the Homecoming dance. It turned out they were already booked that weekend, so the decision was made to book the band for next year's Homecoming and make "Bulldog Country" the theme that year. Almost by default, "Bulldog Mania" became the theme for the current Homecoming. I wonder how many on the Council would have supported that if they had remembered that was my idea. I could see hundreds of local residents protesting the Homecoming parade because I was the one who came up with the theme. However, I was still proud of that accomplishment.
One thing unbeknownst to me at the time was that there was an initiation of the new council members. Incumbent members would go out to the houses of the newbies early in the morning and kidnap them for a special breakfast. The idea was to wake them up and make them go to breakfast while they were still in their pajamas. However, at my house, since we all had to go to school (because my parents were teachers), we got up at 6am. I was brushing my teeth when two girls came to get me. I was already all dressed, except for putting on my shoes. They decided to let me put on my shoes and they went to pick someone else up. When we got to the house of the faculty advisor, there were some other members still in pajamas. I was lucky because they took pictures.
Unfortunately, all that joy and power lasted only that one year. Somehow, word got around that the Student Council was something worth getting involved in. I guess it had to do with the new faculty advisor, who had a really fun personality. The year before, they had to recruit people who didn't even have their names on the ballot to fill the ten seats. But this year, there were 30 (yes, THIRTY!) of my classmates who wanted to be on the Council. We didn't even get to give speeches like we did in ninth grade. The candidates just sat on the gym floor and stood when our names were called. Of course, I didn't win. It went back to being a popularity contest.
This same pattern would follow me into college when I was running for Student Senate. If I had no opposition, I would win and get to serve. If someone else ran, even though I was an incumbent, I would lose. I guess you could say that I figured out before I was 21 that I would never be able to run for public office.
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