This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Williams chapter.
Her Campus Williams is happy to introduce your new College Council co-presidents, Caitlin Buckley ’15 and Michelle Bal ’15! Together Caitlin and Michelle have participated in a number of activities on campus including Varisty Ice Hockey (Caitlin), the Junior Advisor system (Michelle), and the Great Ideas Committee (Caitlin) making them particularly well suited to the task set before them. As they prepare to take on their first full week of the presidency, we caught up with them to talk all things life, responsibility, and goals going forward.
JD: First of all, congratulations on your big win this week! You guys must be really excited to start your term as the next CC co-presidents. Could you tell us a little bit about what motivated you to run for college council?
CB: Thank you so much! I am so honored to have been elected. Personally, I was motivated to run after being involved in College Council for a semester, as well as a variety of other groups on campus. As a member of the Great Ideas Committee, it was wonderful being able to address and ideally find solutions to the issues that people brought forward. While I was on council, I really enjoyed my time, and saw how important great leadership was to CC’s success. Marcus did a fantastic job this past year, as well as Emily Dzieciatko and Erika Moszkowski before him, and I really hoped that I would be able to bring the same energy and strong leadership to council that they did.
MB: Thank you! I’m so excited! My brother, who is 11 years older than me, was CC co-President when he was at Williams and he always spoke about what a rewarding experience it was. That motivated me to first run for CC as a class-rep my freshman spring, and since then I’ve loved getting to work on projects I feel passionate about. This past year I was lucky enough to be VP of Student Affairs and worked a lot with CC’s executive board under Marcus’s leadership, which made me excited about the possibility of running for CC Co-President.
JD: What brought you two together as running mates?
CB: Well it all started freshman year when Michelle and I were on Frosh Council together. We were both on the executive board – I was the secretary and she was the VP – and we immediately hit it off and had a great working relationship. We’ve stayed close friends since then, as well as having worked together on some other projects throughout the years. I was hoping she would ask me to run for CC Co-President with her, and when she asked I was elated!
MB: Like Caitlin said, we’d worked together a lot freshman and sophomore year. I’ve always loved working with Caitlin and spending time just hanging out. I knew that she’d be someone who I would have a lot of fun working with and who I would completely trust. I asked her if she’d have interest in running and she said yes!
JD: What are your goals for office? Are there any particular problems or challenges that you’re hoping to address?
CC is for the students, so we really want students to be proud of CC and feel like it’s accessible. We hope to make it easier for students to bring ideas to CC, and work on them with us if they’d like to, and, more broadly, increase student involvement with CC overall. It is important to us that we are working on projects that the student body values, and so we plan to really involve our class-reps to increase outreach. We want the student body to know what we are working on, and we want everyone on council to be able to fully pursue everything they hope to accomplish. Additionally, we hope to try and positively change student life overall, through wellness initiatives, collaboration with many event-programming groups, re-evaluation of holidays on campus, and work with Campus Safety.
JD: How are you planning to juggle the responsibility of the presidency with the stresses of senior years?
CB: As someone who procrastinates, I know I personally am going to have to make sure I’m more time efficient. Additionally, both Michelle and I have been in contact with past presidents, and they’ve been hugely helpful and given us great advice thus far, and will certainly be a great resource in the future. As a varsity athlete, it was particularly helpful speaking to Marcus, as he balanced being the only president and his varsity soccer season.
MB: I agree with Caitlin—I think that I will definitely have to focus on time management. I’m honestly really excited for the work we will do as co-presidents, so I think that I will enjoy spending time working with and for council. We have a great exec board, and I trust that they will be incredibly helpful in managing all of the responsibilities we face. Caitlin and I also work well together, so I know that we will be able to help support each other.
JD: Last, but not least, what do you want the Williams student-body to know about you?
We hope the student body knows that we’re committed to making this year a productive and fun one. We’ve had a great time working together in the past, and we hope to bring a high level of energy to Council that will allow us to see some great outcomes. We are so honored to have been elected, and hope to make this year a fantastic one!
On behalf of the Her Campus Williams team we want to wish you both the best of luck as you begin this journey! We look forward to seeing what you are able to accomplish over the next year!
