On April 3, two weeks before the Head Monitor elections, I noticed a campaign account on Instagram—an unprecedented sight at Milton. Eventually, posters also started appearing around the school. It wasn’t until then that I realized Head Monitor elections, in which we vote on the most important role in the SGA, were approaching.
This lack of visibility extends beyond my own experience. In a Measure survey of 133 Upper School students, more than three-quarters of respondents reported not knowing several of the candidates before election day. Likewise, almost three-quarters of the respondents agreed that the speeches and Q&A were not helpful enough. These voters sought to know more. These results suggested a brutal conclusion: our current election process is inadequate.
Taken together, Milton’s shortcomings in the election process reveal where campaigning can make a difference. To improve how students evaluate candidates, Milton should encourage students to campaign for leadership positions, thereby increasing transparency and creating a more informed, engaged election process.
Campaigning, in its simplest form, is the process by which candidates communicate their goals, values, and personality to voters. The practice developed in the US in the mid-nineteenth century when local populations began to back presidential candidates, using everything from the press to widespread photos to word-of-mouth in order to campaign on the candidate’s behalf. This process later transformed into more direct campaigning by candidates as a way for individuals to distinguish themselves in competitive races, using speeches, posters, and, more recently, digital media to reach a wider audience. At its core, campaigning promotes visibility and information, allowing voters to familiarize themselves with candidates beyond mere recognition. Yet at Milton, this fundamental aspect is absent even in major student government elections, leaving students to make voting decisions with limited information.
Beyond our community, many other schools have already implemented this method and standardized campaigning as part of their election process. One such school, where campaigning is so prevalent that I was notified of their co-president elections solely from social media, is Phillips Academy Andover.
As Andover student Mila Fan ’28 revealed, “In order to stay in the running with a fighting chance, it is almost a requirement to campaign.” At Andover, campaigning not only demonstrates “both your intentions to run and what your initiatives are,” but also signals “dedication to the process.” Candidates spend hours curating a social media account that represents their initiatives and aesthetics, posting countless banners and videos to garner votes. Meanwhile, at Milton, students sit through a few minutes of speeches, hear answers to pre-selected questions, and are expected to cast votes based on names they recognize. Fan noted that elaborate campaigns clearly indicate time and effort put into the race—qualities that Milton’s current system fails to capture.
While campaigning is customary in other schools, it remains unfamiliar territory at Milton. This year, however, one student broke the pattern and attempted to change the norms. The Instagram account that piqued my curiosity weeks before the elections was a campaign created by Dennis Zhou ’27, a Head Monitor candidate. As Zhou put it, the biggest drawback of our current system is that “when [students don’t] know the candidates beforehand, and [the candidates] are only given limited time on stage for their first impressions, [students] just choose people they know,” or as he called it, a “popularity contest.” To challenge this ingrained dynamic, Zhou made a poster, asked students to pass it around, and recorded a video to start his campaign.
Throughout the process, Zhou encountered several challenges. As he plastered his campaign posters on the walls across campus, a few faculty and staff members urged him to take them down, encouraging him to adhere to the traditions of Milton’s publicity-free election process. Nevertheless, the resistance Zhou faced only reinforces the need for a more open, transparent election process at Milton. His campaign, though brief, demonstrated how even the smallest outreach efforts can give students a clearer sense of who their candidates are.
Critics may argue that campaigning turns elections into a “shouting contest,” in which the most outspoken candidates dominate through excelling at advertisement instead of leadership itself. At Milton, a place that values humility, campaigning may at times seem excessive. Even at Andover, a school in which campaigning is deeply embedded, students published an editorial in their school paper The Phillipian to publicly censor excessive campaigning and caution against disproportionate popularity among candidates. This concern, however, disregards the reality that without campaigning, leadership elections already function as a “popularity contest,” just with far less transparency. As Zhou observed, in our current election process, students often default to voting for the candidate they know best. On the contrary, campaigning redistributes visibility, offering lesser-known candidates a chance to present themselves and receive fair evaluations. This visibility and connection with the larger community is in and of itself a quality of leadership perhaps more revealing than a short speech on possible initiatives.
Ultimately, if Milton values thoughtful leadership, students must be able to make informed decisions rather than choices rooted in familiarity. Allowing candidates to step forward and express their dedication to the position should not be seen as a rebellion against tradition; it is a necessary step toward achieving a more transparent and meaningful election process—one that truly reflects the voices of our student body.