As the year is winding to a close, the student body is preparing for a change: in teachers, classes, students, and leadership. The student election that happened this past April determined who will fill the roles of leadership next year.
The election, which concluded with a re-vote after a tie in the junior class, had the following results:
Student body: 192 – 172, with Averi L. and Cierra M. winning over Kade Williams and Lilly Johnson
Senior Class: Kade D. and Cole S., who ran unopposed.
Junior Class: Had to be a re-vote because the first vote was a tie. Revote was 202 – 198, withLauren D. and Rex R. winning over Brynn W. and Bo M., and Greg W. and Jax H.
Sophomore Class: 88 – 19, Skadi’Jun S. and Sophie L. winning
The ballots for the election were sent out over Google Classroom. A big concern for many Big Sky students was the potential for Sentinel interference.
Through Google Forms, which was the app used for this year’s election ballots, you can only change two features, making it so only people with a Missoula County Public Schools email can complete the form, and making it so you can only fill out the form one time, according to student government advisor Emma Keffeler.
There were rumors that students from Sentinel were casting votes and interfering with the junior class election specifically, however after a quick sit down with Ms. Keffeler, it became clear that this interference “was impossible,” according to Keffeler.
“The library has a program where they can go through and boot out any responses that weren’t Big Sky students,” Keffeler explained.
Regardless, Keffeler said that next year the student government is thinking of switching to paper ballots out of an abundance of caution to ensure that students can’t vote from other schools or other grades.
“It’s a lot more tedious and it will take a lot more time, but it’ll make sure that it’s just Big Sky students that get to vote,” Keffeler said.
A few weeks after the election, Averi Larson and Cierra Maloney sat down for an interview about their new role as co-student body presidents.
“We’re here to represent the rest of the student body, help plan, and execute all the events, ” said Maloney.
“We’ve slowly been talking to Auna and Tenny,” said Maloney, ”They’ve been showing us how we run assemblies, do the Instagram. They’ve been giving us all these tips and then hopefully come the start of the school year, it’ll be a smooth transition.”
“We’ve already started planning and thinking up ideas,”said Larson. “We’re really excited for next year!”
