Photo by Julia Eisen

The current SGA president and many presidents in the past have been male. Hopefully in the future there can be a change.

I will start this off saying that I have nothing against the current Student Government. The people in our SGA rightfully deserve to be there, but you can’t help but notice how male dominated it is – especially the role of SGA president.

The SGA president is basically the embodiment of WJ. They are the ones you see constantly at all school events and on the school Instagram account. Everyone at the school knows who the president is and ultimately looks up to them because they have the most school spirit.

For all of my years in high school, the SGA president has been a male and I doubt that that will change anytime soon. While it is not a sacred tradition, it is hard to break a pattern. I guess it’s the same as any political office as we’ve seen in the past presidential election.

Having a female SGA president would mean a lot to the girls at WJ. It may not be the president of the United States, but it’s still important. We are living in a time of female empowerment. Women’s rights and  the #MeToo and “Time’s Up” movements have dominated the news, and it’s important for young girls to see women in power.

SGA president is a miniscule accomplishment for girls in the grand scheme of things, but I still think it is necessary for our school.

Our two SMOB candidates this year are both female, which is really exciting. So no matter what next year a female will represent MCPS students. We’ve had 11 female SMOBs in the past 40 years. Hopefully whoever gets elected as the new SMOB this year will start a revolution for girls across all Montgomery County Public Schools to get out there and run for school office. I want a revolutionary change.

I think that our sophomore class is a great example of how awesome it is to have females in the four SGA positions. President, vice president, secretary and treasurer are all girls and that’s really empowering. Hopefully that trend continues for this class because it would be special and unique to see a female SGA president that represents all students, not just the class of 2020. Unfortunately, I’ll have graduated by that time and won’t be able to see it.

I hope any girl students reading this get inspired to run for class office in May. We should change the direction in which this school is going and a different perspective, held by a female SGA president, would be a good start.