This Monday, former Head Monitors Pati Pogorzelska ‘26 and Nehemiah Sanon ‘26 announced the new Self-Governing Association (SGA). During the election process that began around three weeks ago, Day Monitor elections and Class I Representative elections each saw only one male candidate, while the Boarding Monitor election saw two. In contrast, two female candidates ran for Class I Representative, four for Day Monitor, and five for Boarding Monitor.
The unprecedentedly small number of junior candidates running for SGA leadership creates a void that reduces voters’ options and consequently diminishes the fairness of this democracy. At the base of this issue is the gender requirement for SGA positions, as stated in the Student Handbook. This rule’s requirement of “two different genders” leads to a male/female binary due to the scarcity of openly non-binary students in SGA elections.
Especially when few male-identifying candidates run in elections, the gender requirement means that men can win elections without facing real competition or even doing remotely well at the polls. This year, we had an election in which someone won by default based solely on his gender identity. We must abolish the SGA gender requirement, encouraging a meritocracy instead of surface-level gender diversity.
That this policy exists at Milton is no surprise. The effort to increase representation of historically marginalized groups, including women, is valued here. However, today, women consistently run more in SGA elections, so the policy elevates men to elected positions regardless of whether or not they deserve it. This means that the gender policy prevents elections from truly representing the will of the people. We contend that gender equity is not promoted by allowing candidates to win elections on the basis of their gender, rather than on factors that affect their ability to lead. Roles such as Head Monitor or class rep are not inherently gender-based. We should move past the antiquated notion that planning Senior Skip Day or Stables meetings inherently requires a “male perspective” alongside a “female perspective.” It is our hope that today’s Milton can look past gender when voting, electing male or female candidates based only upon our beliefs about who would be best in the role.
Almost all other Milton organizations do not have a gender diversity requirement. Even without a policy like the SGA’s, male and female representation in club leadership is roughly equal: The Milton Paper’s 2025 “State of the Acad” found that 38% of male survey respondents held at least one club head position, alongside 34% of female respondents.
Leadership effectiveness, as we define it, is not based upon some unique value in having mixed-gender leadership. Instead, effectiveness comes from participation, experience, collaboration, and more. When we force the selection of different gender identities in every SGA position, we limit our ability to choose the highest-quality candidates. The abolition of the gender policy would inspire greater commitment from candidates to stand out from all of their election opponents, instead of just those of the same gender.
Additionally, the current system requires that SGA candidates privately disclose their gender identity to Director of Counseling Amanda Chapin-Deehan. This practice places candidates in a potentially deeply uncomfortable position: if a student’s pronouns or gender identity are not publicly known, they may have personal reasons to not share that information. Forcing them to email a school administrator with potentially sensitive information to run for the SGA invades privacy, cutting against the very spirit of gender inclusivity the policy claims to promote.
Abolishing this antiquated policy would take the conversation around gender out of somewhere it has no place: the voting booth. There’s a lot of value in taking the risk of running for SGA, and everyone, regardless of gender, should have a fair chance at winning.