[teamcrash]

Thank you all so much for the suggestions, they have really opened my eyes as to what we can do. We'll contact our local regional director and look into meeting with the administration and mentors. Apart from that, I need to start talking to other members to see what we want to do from this thread.
The main thing I'm worried about is that the base mentors don't seem to think anything needs to change about them, but I'll see what we can do otherwise.

I do want to clarify a bit about the officer selection:
Students apply for the positions at the end of the previous year, with a resume and cover letter. They then go into an interview with the panel of people who'll be voting, which is made up of any mentors or alumni and officers who are seniors. The thing I am worried about right now is that students who are incompetent are elevated to high positions because they do well in the interview, and most of the people voting (some officers included) are not familiar with the applicant. I'm hearing both "total democracy" and "senior mentor vote" ideas, and again I need to talk to my team about where we want to go on that. I do agree that we don't need freshmen voting, but I do want to incorporate input from the people the officers will be leading somehow so we don't end up with incompetent leaders.

We do have a teacher sponsor/mentor, so to speak, but they only show up on kickoff, stop build, officer selections, and away events where a school faculty member must be present.

EDIT: One of my team members brought up an important point: how do we make things change? These are great suggestions but the more I look at them the more pushback I can think of from the mentors.