Name: Danny O’Connor
Age: 20
Year: 2nd year
Relationship Status: Taken! Sorry ladies
Major: Political Science
Hometown: Anderson, Ohio
Her Campus: What are your hobbies?
Danny O’Connor: I like to play basketball at the rec, read news-type stuff and hang out with friends. Pretty standard stuff.
HC: What all are you involved in on campus?
DO: I’m involved as an executive member of the McMicken Tribunal. I serve as a Senator for the College of Arts and Sciences in Student Senate. I’m pretty involved with Student Government there. I am a McMicken Ambassador. I am involved in a social fraternity, in which I’ve held multiple positions at this point, and I am a student assistant for the Advising Center for the College of Arts and Sciences
HC: What inspired you to become so involved on campus?
DO: Last year I was involved in some things, but not nearly as much as this year. It was really when I got my job at the Advising Center that I started to get much more involved with the College of Arts and Sciences and McMicken. I don’t really know what it was, but I just started becoming really passionate about doing things for the College. I realized there were a lot of opportunities for leadership within the colleges and a lot of things I really felt that I could do to really start helping the college. I knew about Student Government and about Tribunal, so I kind of figured the McMicken Tribunal would be a good way to sort of get into that. So I kind of just showed up to that first meeting looking to get involved and obviously a lot of the opportunities that I’ve had sort of came or flowed from there. It gave me the opportunity to be in Senate. McMicken Ambassadors was just kind of something else that I was like, “You know, why not? ‘Cause it’s a great opportunity to get a little bit of a different perspective working with prospective students.” So at that point I figured “Well, I’m already doing all this other stuff in the college, I might as well just get a full circle of involvement.” And that’s something I take very seriously, and I think that’s extremely important. I think it’s a good thing for students to channel—for more students to realize the opportunities that they have to help to help their colleges, which ultimately will help the university a pretty tremendous amount.
HC: What initiatives are you participating in, and which one are you looking forward to the most?
DO: I know one thing I really like for Student Government [is] the Academic Issues Committee that I’m on. We’re working to put together a bill that would create a new policy for grading deadlines to create a little bit more transparency between professors and students as far as where they’re standing in classes and kind of create more of a structured system that would help students [to be aware of that] before major deadlines so that they know how much study time they need to denote to the class or if they should maybe drop the class. It’s sort of a small thing, but I think it’ll really go a long way and it’ll be one of those things that help students a lot. In Tribunal right now with [the exploratory] initiative, that’s pretty huge with McMicken week and then kind of incorporating Exploratory Studies into that by having students allowed to shadow upper level classes. I’m definitely going to start putting in a lot of leg work over winter break to prepare our research for a potential McMicken honors program, [which is] similar to the college specific honors programs that Lindner has. So that’s probably what I’m most excited about right now, because that would just be a huge service to our students and that fact that it would really help to create a greater sense of community within the College of Arts and Sciences, which I definitely think will make it a better overall college, and bring a little more university attention to the awesome stuff that McMicken is doing.
HC: What is your favorite thing here at UC?
DO: Man, there’s a lot of stuff. One thing—I think this is always the answer that [comes to mind] when I think about that question—[is that] there is a very good amount of diversity at UC. People say that Cincinnati in general definitely has a fairly diverse culture, and I really think UC is really awesome and I think that’s just college in general, but I really do love at UC all the different kinds of people I’ve met. And from working in various student organizations, I’ve gotten the opportunity to really interact with lots of different kinds of people with very different interests and different passions. I think all of that really adds up to kind of just a great overall collective UC spirit. I don’t know. I just love that. I’ve met so many different people, and some of those people I kind of imagine I probably wouldn’t have even been friends with if I hadn’t known them [already] and I think it’s really given me perspective in my own life and things I care about. I know that was a pretty broad answer, but I think that’s really something I do love about UC is just the diverse community it has already.
HC: If you could change one thing during your time here, what would you change?
DO: I kind of wish I had gotten a little bit more involved last year. I obviously wasn’t really doing any of the stuff in Student Government as a freshman, which isn’t really a huge deal. I kind of didn’t really know what I was doing last year, so I think I wish I had become a little bit more informed earlier. I guess better late than never. If I could just go back—I think there was a lot of stuff there in front of me, but I just didn’t really pay attention to it—I think that’s something that would have benefited me a little bit more, if you know getting involved in student organizations a little bit earlier. If I could go back in time and give myself a little bit of advice it would definitely be like, “Hey, you know there’s a lot of other stuff you could be doing right now.”
HC: Last question. What is your favorite holiday and why?
DO: Definitely has to be Christmas. Obviously the presents are awesome and all that good stuff. You know, now that we’re college students, and it’s pretty much the same way when you get into the world of employment, and you’re a working adult, I feel like Christmas for the vast majority of people, it’s just the one day of the entire year where (well I guess Thanksgiving is like this too, but Christmas you get presents, so that makes it extra awesome) you get to wake up on that one day and sleep in and pop up and you’re like “No matter what in the heck is going on with my life right now, there’s nothing I could possibly have to be worried about doing today!” It’s just the one day of the year that you are 100 percent guaranteed to just have it off. I guess I can’t say that for everybody, for myself that’s definitely the case. I love Christmas for that reason, ‘cause I know I don’t have to do a single darn thing on that day.