Students get real life experience in political process

In Westside’s own American Government class, there is currently a mock election being held. The duration of the election portion of the project lasts for most of first semester. The rest of the year is followed by the elected governing congress.

The reason behind the election is to, “teach our students about the political campaigns and the election process,” American Government teacher David Bywater said.

Students running for president have to advertise and promote their campaign just like a real election. The project is mainly student-lead therefore giving the students first-hand experience of the whole process.

“I’ve definitely been surprised with some of the feuds that have been formed. It’s weird, it’s kind of like the 2016 election at this point where we think we know who’s going to win but at the same time it’s definitely not a sure bet,” Democratic candidate Samuel Sweeney said.

“I think it’s been really fun to go through this process with all my friends,” Republican candidate Fischer Davis said when asked about the election “A few of us have been kind of going dirty but it’s fun.”

When asked why they chose to run, Sweeney said, “I wanted to make a difference in some way and I’m actually going to be majoring in political science when I go off to college at the end of this year. I was originally going to try and go the vice-president route of things and try to get on the candidate’s good side. Honestly it just seemed like a fun thing to do,” Sweeney said.

Some of the other candidates decided to run for different reasons than preparation for college.

“I knew that I could be a really strong leader for the Republican party and I wanted to show that leadership within my peers,” Davis said.

This year long project opens up a new point of view for students about the world of politics.

“[The students] get a real world experience on all of the issues campaign finance, election hearing, lobbying interest, voting, they do all of that physically first-hand, so as they go out into the world they have actually experienced almost all of these things that they’ll be experiencing in the real world,” Bywater said.

The election is something to keep your eye out for. Each candidate has their own perspective on what it means to run for president and they all can bring something new and different to the table.