As many of us know, SGA elections are tomorrow and we’ll spend the day deciding what students will run our school for the 2012-2013 school year.
The HC Hollins Team knows that’s kind of a big deal, so we interviewed several of the students running for SGA positions to hear about their campaigns, goals and qualifications in their own words.
I sat down with Kelsey DeForest last night in the RAT and learned some surprising facts about student bureaucracy, the Hollins sense of community and why you should never ask Kelsey what she loves most about Hollins.
Amber Rambharose (AR): What are you qualifications for this position?
Kelsey DeForest (KD): For the past year I’ve served on judicial board as the Honor Court Chair and that is where I got the inspiration to run for SGA President and where my main qualifications come from. I have served on SGA all three years, I started out as a hall senator and moved my way up on various boards. This past year, my main focus has been increasing the efficiency, the size and the motivation behind the judicial board. We increased the size dramatically, we have 29 board members which is triple the size that it was the year I served. Serving on Roundtable really helped me see where Roundtable can be stronger, and that’s one of the things I’m really running on: trying to make Roundtable stronger and trying to make it better able to serve the student body.
AR: For the students who don’t know a lot about J-Board and Roundtable, what are those two committees?
KD: Judicial board is made up of Appeal Board, Honor Court and Student Conduct Council and there are tiers of each of those boards. The three of us meet each week with the Judicial Coordinator, we review any complaints that come in, decide whether or not they become cases and then we preside over each of those cases. We aren’t voting members but we go through the process as guides for our student members, so that’s kind of Honor Court in a few sentences. Roundtable is kind of the executive board of SGA and mostly what we do is promote events, get together and talk about policy. One thing I’ve seen is that policy is very rarely made in Roundtable and that’s one thing I’d like to see Roundtable become a leader in. This past year we have started the process of creating smoking locations and we’re revising the Constitution.
AR: So you already have a lot of experience working with student concerns and the the student bureaucracy at Hollins.
KD: Yes and the bureaucracy is exhausting at times, I had no concept of it until this year. I’ve served on two strategic planning boards and that experience, getting the faculty and staff perspective on where we need to improve, makes me a great option for SGA President.
AR: What do you love most about Hollins?
KD: I don’t even know where I would get started. Community is why I picked Hollins, that feeling when you walk on campus of ‘oh my goodness, this place is going to become home in two weeks.’ That’s really why I picked it. I remember making my pros and cons list when I was choosing colleges and there is just that unnamable factor about what Hollins is. I’ve really seen how we can get stronger and I think community is an area in which we can be living up to our marketing.
AR: So what components of your role as SGA President would you change or work on to create that sense of community that we are so well known for?
KD: First and foremost, one of the things I would really like to see is to have Roundtable be more of a forum for the student body. There’s a part of Roundtable called Community Forum during which anyone can contact the SGA President about a topic they would like to talk about and in the first ten minutes of every meeting, they have all of the leaders of SGA there to listen to their idea. In my year on Roundtable no one has taken advantage of that program.
AR: That sounds like something people would really like the opportunity to do!
KD: Yes! And I think a lot of people just don’t know it exists! One of my goals, if I’m elected as SGA President is to always have someone using that forum or finding another topic that has been coming up a lot in student concerns. The Community Forum should always be used for students, whether students are coming in to use it or not.
AR: So you’re really going to push student involvement with SGA.
KD: Absolutely. One of the things I talked about on my Facebook page is utilizing the student leaders we already have on campus, like the club and hall senators who come to senate every week. They are involved in student government but we aren’t using them as a think tank, we aren’t using them as a base of student bodies that can really drive behind events and tell us what students want to see going on.
AR: You sound like you’re very much for bridging the gap between the student body and the student government.
KD: It’s something that seems very obvious and should be going on but we can make it stronger and that’s something I really want to see. I just want to make sure we’re narrowing that gap as much as possible because there are those girls at Hollins that see SGA and think that it’s all “pearl girls” and its all girls who have had their whole way paid and that’s not the reality of Roundtable.
AR: So you want to work on breaking down barriers and strengthening the sense of community.
KD: Exactly, and one of the things I’ve started doing as a member of Roundtable this year is going to sporting events. I’m not an athlete, I come from a family of very clumsy people but I realized that we’re a small campus. If SGA isn’t going out and supporting our teams, who will? So I really want to push Roundtable members to make sure they step out of their element and are seen by parts of the community that wouldn’t normally see them.
AR: If you could describe yourself in the role of SGA President in three words that encompass your campaign and your goals, what would those three words be?
KD: I would say: facilitator, forum and counselor. I really want to be there to facilitate the interactions between the student body, I want to see SGA become that forum for student views and to be reflecting policy and I want to act as a counselor for the other executives on the board to make sure that they’re setting goals at the beginning of the school year for what they want to do outside the Constitutional minimum.
AR: Are there any closing remarks you would like our readers and our community to take away from this interview?
KD: I am one of those people that, if you get me started talking about Hollins, I can go on for days. But I would just say, come out and vote on Wednesday, the polls open at 8:30, they close at 6:30, and then come to Step Singing at 7:30 to find out the results!