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In high school I was involved in student government. I was student body president and all that stuff and it was good,

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but it was so ceremonial.

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It was planning prom and putting together dances and stuff like that.

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All that was fine, and we got to do some good things in high school,

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we got to do a voter registration drive, which we hadn't done before, so that was good.

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We were happy to do that.

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But when I got here, when I got on campus

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and one of my good friends, Lock Whiteside,

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was an advisor for the summer African American Symposium program,

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and when I got on campus this man was already running for student body president that next year,

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he was actively involved in stuff like that.

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I got to do a little bit of research and I realized that student government,

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especially the student senate, had access to real money that people wanted and needed and that we had the power to distribute,

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and I thought that was something that was completely out of the realm of what I understood about what student government was.

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I realized that a lot of campus organizations,

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a lot of different service projects,

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a lot of different activities, were funded through student government appropriating those funds,

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so at that point I said I want to be able to do some positive things in this area.

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I found that student body president was on the board of trustees.

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I found out that students had seats on fee committees and tuition committees where they actually had votes

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that counted towards how much tuition was going to be raised, how much this particular fee was going to be raised.

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I said I have to get involved with this because I think I have a strong voice that I can use to help do some positive things for students.

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Ran for office as a freshman,

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and I was happy to get elected that year.

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There was a big ticket running against a bunch of the freshman, there was like seven people on it

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and there was eleven seats, so there was a little consternation amongst a lot of us because were like, okay,

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these guys are running against us, how are we going to pull this out,

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and there was probably twenty-five people running.

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So I just went out, went from door to door, talked to people.

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I was fortunate to make a lot of friends in symposium, make a lot of friends at orientation.

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Teaching Fellows was a fantastic help because there was a class of forty of us,

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so that was forty people that were on my side just immediately

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because I was a teaching fellow. So it was a good time, and that got me involved.

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That's what got me involved in student government.