Student Council is a crucial aspect of Palisade High School. In the last couple months, the election turnouts have been extremely unexpected, with some former Student Council members calling the turnout extremely controversial and unfair, while others have agreed with the decisions made.
Palisade students may have noticed that there were no class elections this year. Ms. Kemper, the advisor of Palisade’s Student Council stated, “Currently all of our class officer positions are uncontested, so we will not be having a vote.” Originally a significant portion of SBA and class officer positions were sought out by members of STUCO who ran uncontested, meaning that there was no opponent in the race. For example, junior Gabrielle Spriggs was initially running for SBA President, junior Dominic Hurd was running for SBA Vice President, junior Alexis Lopez was running for Senior Class President, and junior Piper Wesolowski was running for Senior Vice President. There was one position that was a contested race, Sophomore President, and both Hank Walton and Xander Mullenax were running for the position. Unexpectedly, the results changed drastically. “Due to the results of application season, and the results of applications itself, the applications for those students were not going to be in Student Council,” quotes Ms. Kemper, meaning that several people who were running got removed from STUCO, making their races unopposed, which occurred with students like Mullenax. “I believe that for an organization that tries to sit itself really hard on bettering students and trying to drive a good work ethic, I feel very defeated in the sense that I worked hard for a year and took time out of my day,” notes Mullenax. Spriggs, another student who got removed from the council states, “Getting this taken away from me is one of the saddest things that’s probably happened to me in high school… I just feel like there’s a distinct lack of justice and empathy in a lot of these decisions.” Spriggs was a member of STUCO since her freshman year, serving as a member at large and the SBA Treasurer.
The sudden change of election results sparked confusion in the Bulldog pack, with multiple Student Council members feeling frustrated because of the change of events, while others felt as though the changes were justified. Genevieve Seymour, a sophomore at Palisade who is the current SBA Historian notes, “There’s a lot of changes and some of the decisions made recently have definitely been a shock. But I do believe that we will be able to persevere through those changes and that we will come out stronger in the end.” Despite unexpected changes, Student Council will continue to run and organize school events for the 2026/2027 school year.
