In my experience of University much of student activism was done by students who struggled the most academically and often made it part of their agenda to ease academic standards.
You had an outlier experience, unfortunately. I went to a state school, and most of even my student government class wound up prominently in the Congress or White House.
Why do you think that it is a given that politicians perform better in school? Here in Germany many prominent politicians were academic failures or dropouts.
We had student council elections, where the candidates were listed by degree and the semester, the trend was overwhelmingly that the candidates were in semesters after the usual graduation date, often having studied for more then 5 years.
I said that student activists struggled academically, your counter point was that at your school student activists made it into high political offices.
What other interpretation of your words could there be except you believing that people in high political offices are above average students.