Power struggle | Government class runs presidential campaign

Government class runs presidential campaign

Eli McDaniel | social media editor

Students in Jess Rutledge’s government class are running for President! 

Every year government students create posters and campaign videos like real politicians to simulate a political race. “I started doing this assignment when I first arrived at WHS eight years ago. I was looking for more projects in the senior government class and got the idea from a former professor at Kansas State,” Rutledge said.

The project has evolved in that it has incorporated more pieces through the years. It started with creating a slogan and making a campaign poster. Over the years, Rutledge required all candidates to make at least two commercials (30-seconds and 1-minute), along with the classes actually voting to ultimately choose the unofficial WHS president,” 

The race began in December and has been heating up since the start of the semester.

Posters

The posters had to include a campaign slogan. Slogans were not required to be puns or funny rhymes, but that’s what most candidates decided to do. “I wanted my slogan to be funny and catchy so I based it off a car sales commercial,” candidate Kyndal Maike said. Some slogans included, “We’re in a Pickle Vote for Kyndal,” “Do you like Butter? Vote for Schutter,” and “DOMINANCE. POWER. CARLSON.”

Videos

Campaign videos had to be 30 seconds long and include each candidate’s slogan. “It’s not easy to make a presidential campaign ad and slogan, you’ve got to be creative. All the political campaign commercials nowadays are similar, and you have to find ways to make them entertaining,” candidate Brayden Meseke said. After all ads were submitted, each class viewed the ads and voted on who would continue to the second round of the race. Justin Carlson, Emma Alderman, Cade Oliver, Jackson Havenstein, Jacob Daley, Kara Hafenstine, Brayden Meseke and Lauren Schutter all moved on to the second round. “It’s very difficult to choose a favorite but I always look forward to everyone’s commercials that they make. We’ve had some quite hilarious ones in the past,” Rutledge said.

Debate

The field has been narrowed down to two candidates, Lauren Schutter from second hour and Justin Carlson from fifth hour. They will have to create a minute and a half campaign ad with the help of their classmates. They will also participate in a debate over school-related topics with Rutledge as moderator, hosted by the Senioritis podcast.