Student elections are a regular part of any school year. But this spring elections at LHS had problems in the areas of fight promotion, fraudulent voting and the attempt to reinstate a disqualified candidate.
ASB ELECTIONS
Results of the electronic ballot election for ASB officers March 15 showed majority of votes for Mason Bartholomei running as president, Cutler Lang running as vice president, Eden Gibbs running as secretary, and Rae Ann Kirk running as treasurer. All ran uncontested except Lang, who ran against classmate Brooke Chase.
After giving a controversial speech, Lang was disqualified by LHS administration. Chase was then named ASB vice president for the upcoming year, even though Lang was understood to have more votes.
“His speech just did not meet any of Mr. Driskill’s criteria of the ‘definition of clean’,” explained Chad Arlint, assistant principal.
Arlint declined to give out the vote count.
Some students were appalled by Lang’s disqualification and commented on an online petition trying to reinstate him.
Ninty-five percent of the comments were all in favor of reinstating Lang. Many said his speech was not offensive and that it was all just a joke.
“You’re taking his right of freedom of speech away from him,” commented sophomore, Conner Strahan.
Not only did students take it upon themselves to try to reinstate Lang into office, shirts were also created on his behalf that said “Free the Lang.” Leaders at LHS wish to uphold a tradition of classy campaigns for the coming years, Arlint said.
FIGHT CLUB
Toward the middle of the petition’s comment thread, comments started turning to the topic of “Fight Club,” which Lang had jokingly made as a campaign promise in his speech. Nine percent of 55 students commented with phrases such as: “Fight for fight club” and “Fight for the right fight club.”
Fighting events have been a problem in the community this school year, according to the Lewiston Tribune.
In mid-March the event of “Fight Night” took place at Centennial Elementary School on a late Friday night. The Lewiston Police Department showed up and shut it down, according to witnesses. Students then took the event farther out, to Mann Lake, where they were once again caught by the police, according to the same eye witnesses.
Mary Stone, of the Lewiston Tribune, published an article March 23 on the valley’s recent and past fights among teens. She described “a collection of the graphic fight videos posted to a Facebook page,” reportedly by a Lewiston High School student.
In addition to the fight videos, the Facebook page LCV Fights, had been created via Facebook, but was taken down March 20, Stone reported.
“If people see fight videos of area students being posted to social media […] they should contact their local police department or sheriff’s office,” wrote Stone. “Charges could be forthcoming.”
In addition to the page being removed, LHS student resource officer Rob Massey said, “Charges really depend on the seriousness of the event.”
CLASS ELECTIONS
Meanwhile, the current sophomore class voted twice for class officers for the upcoming school year due to voter fraudulence with the election software.
The morning of March 29 current sophomores received paper ballots in order to re-vote for the future junior class officers as an alternate to the online system.
“Students were voting for others, using their information to vote again,” said current ASB president Will Wilson.