The week of the 13^th has been campaign week for head boy and head girl. This is a very important campaign, as head boy and girl are the main leadership positions at GJHS and will affect many aspects of the 2017-2018 school year. The candidates for head girl are Royanna Crawford, Grace Ooley and RayLynn Nelson. The candidates for head boy are Kainoa Cunningham, Charles Pitcher and Aaron King. Voting will be held March 17^th in the library.

Campaigning started on Monday, March 15, 2017 with candidate videos. Candidates took different measures and strategies to win over voters. Most campaigners took a more humorous approach, but a few were more serious. Common strategies included putting up posters and giving out food to spread the candidates’ names. Elections in the past have often been a judge of who was the funniest and put the most money into the campaign.

“I don’t think that the campaigns should be about who’s the most popular or who spends more money, or who wins people with food, I think it should be about policy,” Kainoa Cunningham, campaigner, said. Cunningham has been spreading the idea that he has the skill and drive to be head boy and is not just trying to win off of popularity.

“All you need is an idea and I have that over the other campaigners because I care

about this stuff,” said Cunningham.

Policy is important and many of the campaigners have a similar goal of bringing the student body together.

“As head girl, I would want to change some of the negative images in our school environment and in our community,” Royanna Crawford, campaigner, said. “I want to work on the image of mental health and also promote more acceptance and inclusion of the school body. I would also want to promote school spirit.”

This spiritedness is important in addition to other ideas for improvement in bringing the student body together.

“Our biggest problem is our school spiritedness really sucks. We need to break tradition and by doing that we can get the newer generations of high school students involved and continue to build on each other,” Charles Pitcher, campaigner, said.

Raylynn Nelson also hopes to connect our community.

“I’m going to achieve the communications and the unity between the schools like Fruita and Central and Palisade and Junction,” Nelson said.

This campaigning is exciting for students who encourage the candidates they hope to win, but the process can also be stressful for candidates who have been wanting the position so badly.

“My brother was head boy in 2009 and he’s always been someone I’ve looked up to and wanted to be like because he was an example for the people at his school and I want to do that for others,” Grace Ooley, candidate, said.

The head boy and girl positions are very important and the decisions they make will have many effects on GJHS.

“I hope that I’ll be looking back celebrating that I’d made a difference and people came together more as one as a school and that we had a lot more school spirit,” Aaron King, candidate, said.