BY LIAM KEITH

It all started with an email, which was forwarded from STUCO member Addison Jacoby to  school administrator Jason Morton, “I sent you a google form for Relay for Life Team Sign Ups and no one has signed up so, I was wondering if you would be able to resend out the google form so people can know about it.” Relay For Life is an event that the student council runs as a fundraiser for cancer and you do an all nighter at the high school. However, this email sparks an interesting conversation. Why is student engagement declining? Since COVID, student engagement hasn’t really bounced back in the way it should have. Is there a timeline for this apparent bounce back, even if, what is reasonable before we make a big deal about it? There have been various events run by the student council that students are clearly ignoring. It doesn’t just happen with school events, but school sporting events haven’t received nearly as much attention as they used to. They can push fan engagement off of team performances, but what can they say about student engagement in events? 

Student council has always had trouble with being welcoming to students who are on the outside of the club. Senior Anthony Ulberg told me when asked, “ It’s like they’re a clique, like if you aren’t in the clique it’s not inviting.” Ulberg is actually a part of the student council, and he even said, “I don’t even show up to the meetings.” A clique mentality in student leadership isn’t as surprising, due to the fact that if you aren’t friends with everyone, it can lead to issues in how the leadership is run. In order to diagnose the issue you can’t simply blame the student council as that wouldn’t be fair or responsible. 

I spoke with senior class president, Freddie Sheppard, about his thoughts on the reoccurring issue of student participation. Sheppard’s position gives him the opportunity to plan prom, set up school fundraisers and promote the out of school activities. He began by telling me that people will sign up for school dances, but when it comes to raising the money to do the dances no one shows. He simplified it to students lacking spirit saying, “ a lot of this has to do with school spirit.” He is alluding to students frowning upon the idea of having school spirit.”Truman lacks in spirit and it’s hard to get kids involved… when there’s a negative mindset towards the school”. Now, to look deeper into what is causing this mindset towards Truman. 

Well, one of the reasons can be sports. For a majority of schools their football teams represent most of their school spirit, and Truman has only won two games in the last three years. Most students’ interactions with different schools always have that basic conversation about which school has beat the other most recently. Tired fans not wanting to defend their team because what can you say at that point? Our other teams don’t nearly get the attendance that basketball and football do. Basketball isn’t nearly as unsuccessful, yet they’re surviving under .500 and struggling in the middle of the season. 

You can’t simplify it to just every student not wanting to do after school activities, there are a lot of people who love to come to school and see their friends. Going back to Ulberg’s feelings on student council, they don’t feel inclusive to absolutely everyone. Almost as if instead of being a student leadership committee, it is a friend group that feels they’re above everyone. 

What was Sheppard’s reason? He clarified that he didn’t mean this in a disrespectful way, but he did say, “I feel if people complained less and decided to help make a change we would enjoy our time at Truman” He isn’t trying to blame the students, but students tend to lose motivation to get involved, especially as they age. Sheppard said, “There [has] been some regression especially in our senior class and junior class.” Which isn’t completely unreasonable, when you’re trying to phase out of being a high school student it’s easier to start with involvement in school activities. There is actually a term for this called “senioritis” which describes lack of motivation from students about to graduate. 

The solution to this issue isn’t necessarily simple, it is hard to get students to give up any amount of time to be in the building they dread 4 days out of the week. Though, there can be better, more appealing methods of gaining back these students over the years. I genuinely haven’t heard about any of the student council events as a senior, I get the occasional email. I definitely don’t see any emails or social media and those are a way of connecting with students that aren’t unbelievably hard. To end on a positive note, there are several people signing up for relay teams currently and the event is still going to happen on April Fool’s Day.