How should leaders be selected?

[Jon Stratis]

According to our handbook, the captains (we have 2-3 co-captains each year) are selected each year "by the mentors with student input". That basically comes down to the students voting, and the mentors holding veto power in case the students vote for someone popular who doesn't have the right skill set.

We have a smaller team, so we don't feel the need for applications or essays - with only 20 students, everyone knows everyone else pretty well! I think we would implement some sort of application process if we got significantly larger... There are teams with 50+ students, and getting to know them all to a sufficient degree has to be difficult!