Absurdly Powerful Student Council: Difference between revisions

** More a case of the president being rich, obsessed, and able to drag the rest along.

* ''[[Kanon]]'', where the student council apparently has some say in whether or not students get expelled or not (in the 2006 anime, at least. In the original game, the signature of a student council member was needed to get the school board to revoke an expulsion, implying that the council had influence in such matters but did not actually have the authority to make such decisions on their own.

* One of these types of Student Councils appears to be the focus of ''[[Seitokai no Ichizon]]'', though they tend to get distracted by [[Conversational Troping]] so often it's a wonder they get anything done.

** A wonder, or rather {{spoiler|the male member staying behind ridiculous hours to get through all the paperwork that doesn't otherwise get done}}.

* The Fraternity of the Farm in ''[[Moyashimon]]'' has some elements of this, especially in the live-action adaptation. They certainly have the run of the school during the Spring Festival story arc.

* Parodied in the [[Girls Love]] one-shot ''You're Lovelier Than A Rose''. It has a few subtle [[Shout-Out|Shout Outs]] and kicks to other series, such as ''[[Mariasama ga Miteru]]''.

** They are also capable of interrupting an instructor's class, rounding up and arresting students, tying their hands, and marching them out, ''with the instructor powerless to stop them''.

* In ''[[Kaichou wa Maid-sama]]'', the Seika student council isn't really all that different from any 'normal' anime student council, but the Miyabigaoka (insanely rich kid school very similar to Ouran but played straight) student council has the ability to literally prosecute other students from other schools for punching a chess club member.

* While the student council at [[K-On!|Sakuragaoka]] seems to have normal levels of power, the perception is certainly referred to:

** In the anime, when it's discovered that the Light Music Club isn't officially recognized, Ritsu thinks it's a sinister plot to drive weak clubs into being disbanded. {{spoiler|Ritsu forgot to fill out and send in a club activities application form, being distracted by Tsumugi's cake.}}

 

== [[Live Action TV]] ==

* ''[[Veronica Mars]]'' did an entire episode around the corrupt antics of Neptune High's student council. The council, run by the school's wealthiest students, conceived a policy called "Pirate Points" to allow the councilmen and their cronies on the various sports and cheer teams to have take-out food delivered to the school for them to eat, while forcing the rest of the students, and those in clubs that were not liked by the jocks and student council, to eat the crappy cafeteria food. To keep a rabble-rousing ex-cheerleader from getting elected student council president on a platform of her abolishing the Pirate Point program, [[Alpha Bitch]] Madison Sinclair schemed to get popular student Duncan Kane elected president, under the logic that Duncan would keep the Pirate Point program going since he was too spaced out to care either way about how controversial the program was. In the end, after realizing the reform candidate was a narc for the local police and probably wouldn't carry out her vow to abolish the program, Veronica was forced to switch candidates and basically shamed Duncan (via pointing out how much of a hand-puppet he had become for Madison) into adopting his rival's platform to reform the system, via expanding the program to include all clubs and teams at school as well as all students on the honor roll.

* In ''[[Degrassi]]'', during the shooting episode, Jay says "When your girlfriend's student council vice president, nobody asks questions." Otherwise they limit the student council to what a student council would be involved in, raffle tickets and dances.

== [[Video Games]] ==

* ''[[Persona 3]]'' has a student council president capable of covering up crimes, creating fake student profiles, and bossing teachers around. She also "executes" the male members of your party after an unfortunate incident involving a mix up of the times each gender was supposed to be allowed to use some hot springs. Of course, said student council president's absurd power stems less from being [[Student Council President]] and more being the heiress of a [[Mega Corp]] that funds the school.

* Averted in ''[[RE: Alistair]]''. When you ask Derek if he enjoys being on the student council, he admits that the student council is mostly decorative and that the school board makes most of the decisions.

* ''[[Rival Schools]]'' and ''[[Voltage Fighter Gowcaizer]]'' are [[Fighting Game|Fighting Games]] that both revolve around student councils that want to take over not just their school, but all of Japan. In the case of ''Rival Schools'', this was a failed attempt at a [[Batman Gambit]] of one of the school's principals in order to create a new generation of politicians and civil workers to make a better future for Japan.

** Most of the funds are either used for things like bringing in comedians, musicians, and films (to be enjoyed by students free of charge, since after all they've already ''paid'' for them), or are given away to campus clubs. Frequently, if a club bothers to ask and the amount isn't ludicrous, it's essentially a rubber-stamp decision (all officially recognized clubs generally have representation on the council, and if your club's representative gets a reputation for turning down requests, guess what will happen to his own club's requests).

* [[wikipedia:Sudbury Valley School|This school]] and [[wikipedia:Sudbury school|the educational model it founded.]] The entire student body is, in theory, an absurdly powerful student council.

*** This troper was personally disturbed by Davidson College's Student-led "Honor Code", where rulebreakers are tried by a jury of student council members and fraternity brothers, and often are issued vastly harsh punishments.

* The [[Boarding School of Horrors|Solbacka school in Sweden]], which inspired Jan Guillou to write his novel ''Ondskan'' ("The Evil").