Three Oaks Senior High votes Green as Carl Arnold wins Student vote
S. Ryan Quigley
Journal Pioneer
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| CAPTION: Cameron MacMurdo casts his vote in the Three Oaks Senior High student vote as the voting station team watches. The team was (back row left) Logan McLellan, Danny MacIssac, Alexandra Ozon, Mikayla Clow, Mike Trainor, (front row left) Besnik Paloji, Molly Duffy and Shelby McCormack. |
SUMMERSIDE-Carl Arnold of the Green Party got 184 votes to win the student election held Thursday at Three Oaks Senior High in Summerside.
The vote had an 80 per cent turn out with 591 ballots cast. Guy Gallant of the Liberals was the runner up with 134 votes, Jacquie Robichaud of the NDP took third with 133 votes and Egmont incumbent Gail Shea of the Progressive Conservatives took the final spot with 127
The vote was put on by both the school and the Student Vote program, which is designed to encourage students to become politically aware and simulate the voting stations set up by Elections Canada on the day of the election to show students how its done.
The school is one of 4,300 participating in the event across the country, which includes Summerside Intermediate whose vote will be held on Friday.
The program also supplies free learning materials and electoral supplies, including a polling station, ballot boxes and ballots and an election operation handbook for the schools to help the kids learn about the parties and their policies.
Mike Trainor, Political Studies teacher at Three Oaks and organizer of the Three Oaks’ vote, said his motivation was to get students to learn to take an active role in democracy.
“I encourage students and I tell them the importance of being involved in the democratic process, the fact that the right to vote is a guaranteed constitutional right and it’s protected and should be encouraged.”
Trainor said that he tells his students that if you don’t vote you don’t have a right to complain.
“There’s a number of students in my class that are going to be voting for the first time and they can’t wait to get out and vote.”
Trainor, who worked for Bennett Campbell on Parliament Hill, said the goal of the program is to encourage students become life long voters and get them to engage in the democratic process.
“Some of the research out there is that if young people, when they turn 18, don’t vote in either of their first or second election, as they get older in life the chances of them actually going out to vote is next to nil.”
Cindy Mendoza, Social Studies teacher at Summerside Intermediate and an organizer of the vote there, said for their program they handed out election dictionary so students could understand when they were watching or reading election coverage and were also assigned to find platforms from each parties website about different issues and present them to the class.
“The students really stop and think what makes more sense to me? Who did I think presented it the best? We’re trying to break everything down from what do the terms mean? What do the parties represent?”
She said that it’s important to make sure that the kids know how to make an informed vote versus voting the way their family or friends do.
“It’s just amazing where we took this, it’s part of our curriculum and we focus heavily on it in grade eight but we weren’t limited by the text book, we were only limited by our students imagination.”
