Student Opinion: Student Government

The new North Shore Hebrew Academy High School’s student government is a big deal! This past week, the elections to participate in the conventional drafting of NSHAHS’s student government’s constitution took place. This past Monday, with a few exceptions, students in the running for their history classes delegate seat shared speeches on why they should be elected to be delegates. Then, on Tuesday, which was Election day, in each history class, an election was held for student’s to elect a class representative in the government. The elected delegates will go on to elect presiding officers, determine how to go about the process and get started, with as little adult help as possible.

There will be periodical meetings drafting, proposing, voting, and ultimately adopting the constitution. The student body can expect to be presented  the final draft of the constitution sometime near April.  The exact ratification process will be determined by the constitutional convention itself, just like the process our founding fathers took to decide in which way they were going to ratify the American Constitution.

This whole process is truly incredible, not only giving students representation, but also a chance to be like our Founding Fathers. This entire government would not have been possible without the vision and dedication of Dr. Jucovy and Dr. Allen, the faculty who took action to bring us this new system of representation in the school. In an interview with Dr. Jucovy, he shared where the vision for a student government came from. He explained that while learning about the school’s activities and structure last spring, he discussed with Mr. Miller, Dean, the absence of a student government. He stated that “the students lacked a real representative organization giving them a voice in school life.” After this conversation, a meeting was held by the administration on the topic of how to develop student civic awareness and engagement. Dr. Jucovy described how in a summer civics workshop, run by an organization called Civic Spirit, he joined with Dr. Allen, decided that their required project for the workshop would be helping the students to create a student government. When prompted with why he believed the student government was so essential, Dr Jucovy stated the following: “Along with Dr. Allen, I hope that having students actively involved in creating their own student government would help them to develop the type of civic spirit that is essential to a healthy democracy and prepare them for their future roles as active citizens in the United States of America.” This year is we will just see the beginning of all the grea thing that will come out of the student body.