Selection or election of students representatives

It is august and most colleges will be working to full strength (with students in the college campus and few in the classes as well).
In olden days the month of July would mean a lot activity in college as there would be the Elections of the class representatives and then the General Secretary (GS) of the college.
I have been lucky to see for my self these kind of elections in my first year of college and also was witness to its bad side.
From past many years the elections have been stopped and now the Selection method has been adopted by all colleges. Aspiring candidates can nominate themselves and then the selection process takes place by an interview.
The colleges feel this is a safe and a better way of doing this. The students on the other hand feel they are loosing the ho-halla and enjoyment of an election.
Earlier there used to be yearly exams but now most of the courses are semester based so the time available for such activities has come down.
During the election time, the atmosphere in the college used to be very heated and incidents of beating, kidnapping, threating were common. To avoid any such untoward incident the colleges decided to go by the selection process.
The older lot reading this story will have memories refreshed of their college times and elections but the younger ones who haven't seen that surely missed a lot.
But with changing times, things change and this is one more part of the change.