Campaign season at Lenana was hell for rabbles

Despite the hardships of first form the year was very eventful and there was plenty to learn and even analyze and so for me time flew and suddenly the end of the year was just a few weeks away and once again it was campaign season. Up for grabs were the positions of 10 heads of houses (school prefects) and the jewel of them all head of school. All school prefects had their tea in the prefects common room better known as “tower” and met with the headmaster weekly amongst a host of other privileges and responsibilities.

This time of the year was especially hard for rabbles. Certain candidates desperate to prove their worth always, always used the poor rabolis to try and attract attention to their suitability. They forgot the golden rule of any successful candidature to any office which is perception. How are you perceived? What image have you built over the last 6 years? In all my years at Lenana these last minute campaigns achieved very little if anything. But still they were there and first formers especially, were the ones on the receiving end. In the house people campaigning for head of house had to flex their muscles and up-school the “big four” were fiercely competing amongst themselves while trying to pretend they were cool and unconcerned. Just to jog your memory the big four were the 4 (sometimes 5) school perfects appointed in third term to learn the ropes from the outgoing school prefects and one out of them would end up being head of school the next year.

Working parties, round houses and every terrible punishment you could think of were the lot of rabbles in this last and most trying term of the year. The good thing is that it would give us plenty to laugh about when we returned for the first term of the new year to find that the most aggressive campaigners had failed to make it to office while those who hardly campaigned ended up at the very top.

1978 was an interesting year. I do not remember who the top four were but none of them were from Kirk which meant that the campaign for Kirk head of house 1979 went down to the wire which naturally was not fun for a rabble in the house. This was of course the time of the year when some very serious reading was going on for the final exams and so most of the bullies did not have that much free time to make our lives hell. But sadly where they let off the “campaigners” more than made up.

Personally I was curious to see who would be head of school in 1979. Clearly despite my many denials to myself and others the spirit of Changes was getting to me.