On Student Council Election

On March 11, the Colegio shall be having the Student Council Election 2011. The current officers will be stepping down from their positions after 10 months of showing the kind of governing skills they have - diplomacy, honesty, and passion for leadership. The Letranites will decide again whom to choose to lead for the next school year. 

Every year, Letranites elect its new set of officers for the Letran Student Council to represent the student body. Their main objective is student governance. Furthermore, it acts as the umbrella organization covering all of the Recognized Student Organizations (RSO’s).

But what does an election concern about? Two things. 

First, an election must be clean and just, which is a duty of every Letranite to conduct such as we are ardent lovers of truth. Though we study in a modernized school and have had election automation, it didn’t actually lead to clean election. A systematic, fair, and honest election must be observed since this affair will affect our college life as we vote for the candidates that we know can govern us well. 

Just like in reality, Letranites were either coerced to vote for certain candidates or scared away and their ballots used. 

So securing our student numbers is of importance for this serves as our voting IDs. We must not let anyone use them; otherwise our votes will be null and void. Campaigning period was scheduled March 7, giving an ample time for us to decide who's who, and for us to get to know the candidates aiming to be elected in the Student Council. Letranites must disregard those who, while in the voting period, campaigns for their respective candidates. Voting period is the time we decide whom to choose based on the qualities we’ve seen from them.

Second, the candidates: we must look forward for two or more parties voluntarily submitting their selves for candidacy and without being strained by anyone in authority. 

Truly, we have seen qualifications posted all over the campus but if we think further, we will see that these words are incomparable with actions. Some Letranites have the guts, determination, passion, and the effective leadership skills but with the qualification set before hand, it becomes hindrances for them to serve. Letran Student Council’s primary aim is to voice out what Letranites says and because of this fact, we don’t give them a chance to prove so. Skills and knowledge in leadership are of course, the primary criteria for a student-leader to govern the organization well, but these qualities aren't all we need. All we need are students who are sensitive enough to the needs of the studentry. We actually don't need promises because as mature beings in the process of achieving our goals in life, we must be wise enough to be not easily persuaded by unrealistic and impossible promises.

Are we looking now for someone who became a president of one of the RSO’s and didn’t actually manage it properly? To the extent that its members disseminated and the organization, almost dissolved? We must choose leaders who will strive for the betterment of its organization, more so, the student council.

The freedom given to us to vote for the new student-leaders that will represent us in the Student Council has its limits, thus not absolute. Electing the next leaders and choosing the best may be hard. Let's depend on the concrete platforms a candidate proposes and the qualities he/she possess not on mere instincts and falsehoods. We must use this opportunity to voice out what we think is best for ourselves and for the Letranites as a whole.

We will not vote for the sake of ourselves alone but for the whole studentry and institution as well so we must take into considerations the necessary qualities a student-leader must possess. As educated citizens of the country and a truth-loving Letranite, we must strive to elect our next leaders in a clean and peaceful way this March 11.

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