Jordan Monaghan (’17)
Major: Politics and International Affairs
Hometown: Charlotte, NC
Our Student Body President is fired up and ready to fully assume his role leading our school this year. He has a plethora of ideas that he’s eager to implement. Let’s flash back to campaign week with Jordan Monaghan!
Her Campus (HC): Tell me a little bit about your process of deciding to run and what inspired your campaign.
Jordan Monaghan (JM): I officially decided to run in January, but I had been thinking about it for a long time. I’ve been involved in student government since I was a freshman so it’s something that’s been on the back burner for a few years. I studied abroad [in France] fall semester Junior year, and I was able to spend a few months thinking about what I wanted when I got back to Wake, what I wanted my experience to look like, and how I wanted to contribute to the community. I came back with the intention of getting involved in student government and running for exec, but I wasn’t exactly sure of the position. I ended up meeting with a few different people who have demonstrated interest in the future of student government, and with their encouragement I decided that yes— I want to do this, I want this position, I want to contribute as much as I can to the organization and to Wake Forest as a whole. I think that having the position of president is the best possible outlet to do that in.
HC: What were some of the main points of your platform?
JM: The three things I ran on were unity, connection, and wellbeing. These are the three things that I think are most crucial to the Wake Forest environment, but need more work. When I was developing my platform, what I did was push myself to have as many lunches, dinners, and coffees as I could from January to March and asked a bunch of random people the questions: “What do you wish was better?” and “What would you change for the future?” I knew that when I decided to run for president, I didn’t want to develop a platform without consulting the group of people I would be representing. That was something that was really important for me and definitely motivated a lot of the things in my platform. The main points of my platform came from conversations that I had with people: with people highlighting the separation between the student athlete community and the general student population, from people expressing how hard it is to get internships for the summer, and also just from people expressing how hard it is to find nutritional options on campus. The items on my platform were generated purely from communication with other people and the student body, and I think it’s very valuable that the things I ran on were applicable to the people that I was trying to represent because it came from them.
HC: What was your preparation process like after you decided to run? Tell me about the work that went into your campaign.
JM: I had three wonderful campaign managers: Allison Koscielniak, Spencer Schiller, and McKenzie Ziegler. One of the things we did before elections week was have a brainstorming session. It was three or four hours of just us sitting in a room and talking about the issues, ideas, and general trends that came up during my conversations [with members of the Wake Forest community]. I presented this to them and said, “Where do we go from here?” So, the formation of my platform came from a very long, organic discussion with the people running my campaign, and it was very much accumulating the main issues and bringing to light how student government can solve these problems. I’ve known each one of [my campaign managers] for a while and they’re just people I thought were very strong leaders on campus, and every single one of them expressed a strong desire to be a part of my campaign. They were just phenomenal- they put so many hours into my campaign, and it’s not like I was paying them or telling them I would give them Old Gold’s in return. (laughs).
HC: How was election week? Were you stressed? Were you excited? Give us the low down.
JM: Election week can most accurately be described by using the very cliché phrase: “It’s the most fun you never want to have again.” (Laughs) It was very high energy and fast-paced with the need to make split second decisions. It’s a time where you’re very tested because there are a lot of choices you have to make immediately and react quickly. I had to make a lot of decisions about where to focus our canvasing to reach the most people. The most common response I get when I talk about this with people is, “Wow, I didn’t know this was so legit.” And yeah- it’s an operation. I had three campaign managers and 22 staff members, and it was a week where I was able to step back from the planning process and be the candidate, while having all of these 25 people operating on my behalf. It was really cool. I’ve worked on campaigns as a campaign manager for the last two years, so it was interesting to deal with being the candidate and having to navigate the contradictions between appearing to be the calm and controlled candidate and being the moving-all-around-knowing-everything campaign manager. It was a challenge.
HC: So what is your first initiative as student body present?
JM: I’ve already met with the executive board of the OPCD (Office of Career and Personal Development), and we’re already starting to have conversations about an internship data-base. It’s for people on campus who’ve already had internships to share their information and for other students looking for internships to access this information. Communication has already been set in motion for creating what that looks like for next year. I’ve also been reaching out to members of the community to kick start athlete appreciation week when we get back in the fall. Those are the two ideas taking the most gusto right now, and the others will start to take more of a precedent in the next month or so, and we’ll work on setting that stuff up for the summer so that it’ll be ready to go for next year.
HC: In the midst of U.S. Presidential Elections, how would you advise other students to go about deciding who should be president of our country?
JM: My biggest piece of advice would be to decide for yourself. Don’t vote how your parents vote. Don’t vote how your friends vote. Don’t vote how your organization votes. Vote based on the platforms you find on the candidates website. For me, I really truly appreciate the true democratic process, and I think people tend to not realize the power they have in their vote. Your vote says that you think this person is most capable of leading our country, and I believe that that vote should be the most agreeable decision you have with yourself. No matter who you decide on voting for, make sure you have decided for yourself based on their platforms, and other issues they want to address during their presidency, not based on other peoples’ association.
HC: As a Politics and International Affairs major, do you hope to someday work for the U.S. Government?
JM: (Laughs) I love this question. Last year, I worked for a civil rights activist group for the LGBT community, the Human Rights Campaign. I was in D.C., and I absolutely loved the city. I’m looking to get more federal experience in the future. So, whether that be working on the Hill for a few years or working in a department, that’s something that’s definitely on my horizon. I feel like in the future, I’ll end up in kind of a fringe politics career. Something like political consulting or voter market analysis where it’s very associated with politics but not necessarily exclusively politics.
HC: What’s your go-to meal at the Pit?
JM: Oh I love the Pit. I have a shirt that says, “I love the Pit.” Pit Pizza and a bowl of Lucky Charms is my go-to meal.
HC: In three words, how would you describe yourself?
JM: Passionate. Outgoing. Supportive.
HC: What was the last thing that made you laugh?
JM: Oh rats, I need to think about this. I watched my favorite episode of The Office last night, “Dinner Party,” in Season 4. Anything in that show can make me laugh.
HC: What’s your favorite Wake memory, so far.
JM: That’s such a hard question. The election has to be pretty far up there, just for the amount of public support and the number of people who believed in me that I felt through that experience. It was phenomenal. It made me feel like I was capable of anything and it made me feel extremely capable to lead our student body. The reason that I’m at Wake and the reason I’m in Student Government is because on Accepted Students Day when I was a senior in high school, I came to Wake and ended up by chance meeting the newly elected Student Body President. The memory I have of walking up to her and introducing myself, and then having a conversation where she told me she was the next president… I put my deposit down that afternoon. That was my first indication that this was the place that I wanted to be.
HC: What would you say is your life motto?
JM: “It’s all okay in the end, and if it’s not okay, then it’s not the end.”
Jordan presenting a Student Government Bill he had written that evokes the recently passed HB2 Bill in the state of North Carolina. He was outraged when the bill was passed and felt the need to write this document and bring it to Senate where it was immediately passed in an unanimous vote.
*Photos courtesy of Kelly Andrew
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