Since 2024 is an election year, there’s lots of focus on who the next U.S. president will be. However, this year, the Yutan seniors had their own election in a mock presidential campaign that was part of a new project in government class.
“With the presidential election coming up, we wanted to get the kids understanding what it took to run an election and go through all the different processes,” government teacher Dan Krajicek said. “I had them doing things as far as making campaign ads and trying to solicit voters to get them to vote for them.”
The students were divided into groups and were assigned different roles, from candidate to social media manager to campaigner. Then, the student body, using the popular vote method, would vote on a mock president, not to be confused with the actual student body president. With the instructions Krajicek gave the students, they were permitted to make websites, posters and even social media accounts to raise awareness and gain student body votes.
“I really just wanted them to be creative and make an interesting and unique ad,” Krajicek said.
Besides learning the ins and outs of a presidential campaign, Krajicek’s goal with this project was to get the students to go out of their comfort zone and talk to students and staff all throughout the school about what they stood for as a candidate.
“A few candidates did a really good job with communicating and getting teachers’ endorsements, which helped them a lot,” Krajicek said.
Senior Clark Cogdill, one of eight presidential candidates, said that his biggest strategy was to spread the word about his campaign.
“I printed out as many American posters as possible and then put them on every single person’s locker in the entire building, which I thought was pretty fun,” Cogdill said.
Getting the other grade levels involved seemed to be the key to success.
“My philosophy was basically just talking to all the younger students because they were a massive majority of the vote,” said senior Britney Zeleny, another presidential candidate who eventually won the election. “In order to get most of the votes, we talked to the students that I knew and told them to spread the word.”
Krajicek said that although Zeleny’s strategy was particularly effective, several other seniors had a thorough course of action. Senior Tyler Witt served as the campaigner for his team and created the majority of their operation.
“I helped promote our campaign by creating websites, social media accounts, posters and advertisements,” Witt said. “My favorite part was definitely being able to be creative while creating the website.”
The candidates’ websites included many things such as team slogans and promotional videos, which the seniors got a lot of enjoyment from.
“It was so much fun to make, and it made us laugh,” Zeleny said. “We got to get other grades involved in acting for the video, which I think got us more votes.”
Another vital strategy was talking to teachers and getting their endorsements to include in advertisements. Senior Mckenna Jones stated that she wishes she would have included more adults in her campaign.
“If I could give one piece of advice to next year’s class, I would say get the staff involved and get them to endorse you,” Jones said.
Regardless of their campaign’s outcome, the students learned many things that will help them politically in the future.
“Now that I know more about how the election process works, I feel like I am better prepared for when I am able to vote,” Zeleny said.
Looking towards next year, Krajicek plans on using this year’s election as an example and building off it to make the project more effective.
“I like this project because they got to get a better understanding of working with a team and being creative with strategies,” Krajicek said. “Including problem solving and how to compete a little bit teaches them a small sample of what is involved in a real world presidential election.”
