A Collegiette's Guide to Life: Looking at Student Leadership

One of the biggest challenges as a student leader is managing other students. They may be younger or older than you. They may have conflicting opinions. You might just not get along.

Many departments on campus are completely student run. Students are responsible for supervising other students, paying other students, and giving students valuable real world experience and professional internships.

As a student leader what do you do when someone who works under you has defiant behavior? Maybe they come to work with a bad attitude all the time, you hear them talking badly about other group members or the company itself, they miss meetings, or they aren't performing up to the expectations defined in the position they were given.

In any real world situation a person like this would be fired but on campus what do you do? You're only a student. Yes, you're the leader of the group, the RSO, or other student run department but how do you handle students who don't respect your authority just because you're another student?

Many organizations have supervisors who are in charge of overseeing decisions made in various groups on campus. They can be in the form of faculty advisors or a board of directors. Either way, decisions in firing students are typically never made by solely one person but a majority vote by the board or group itself.

If you’re in a situation where you’re asked to leave an RSO or you’re fired from your campus job by another student just remember this: your supervisor may be another student but they were elected to make those professional decisions for a reason.

Firing someone and getting fired is never easy, whether you’re in college or in the real world. At the end of the day they’re a student just like you, with stressful classes, possibly other jobs and responsibilities, and it doesn’t help the situation to make a scene or create drama. This only makes you look bad, not the company or organization that fired you. It only proves their point further as to why you should not continue your position.

Ask why you are being let go. Ask for specific reasons and what you could have done differently. Organizations are typically are not required to give detailed responses but if you ask calmly and just explain you're a student needing to work on your skills, they may take the time to explain the differences in your actual performance and the performance they expected.

Knowing your faults or weaknesses can be helpful when you approach other jobs or positions in the future. Hopefully you can avoid making the same mistake twice.

Join a different RSO or organization. Apply to other places. Get new experiences. Understand all students in both managerial and staff positions don't have everything down perfect yet. We're all training and practicing for when we leave WMU.