I will just start by saying that I have been truly blessed with the people I have gotten to work with the past two semesters. There are so many different personalities in the LEAD Office and we have all worked so well together. There has been a healthy sharing of ideas, laughs, even tears! Every program or event that we have all planned this year has brought us closer together and taught us more about each other as team. This cohesiveness was something that we all picked up on pretty early. The only downside to this cohesiveness is that sometimes I feel like we get along a little too well! We all listen to each other very well and accept ideas with open arms. I believe that every now and then a little challenge would be helpful. I think it creates great dialogue and challenges everyone to think in a different way.
Loving George Mason!
One area this year I have found myself struggling with this competency in is with Student Government. I currently serving my last week as a senator and it is a bittersweet feeling. I have learned a lot throughout my time in student government. I am not someone who keeps up with politics and I am not one of the many government and international politics majors we have here at Mason. So, when I decided to run to be a Student Senator, I didn’t expect much from it because I didn’t know much about how the whole government thing worked. I really wanted to be a senator so that I could possibly find a different way to promote school spirit at Mason or get more people involved. My first senate meeting, I had NO idea what was going on. There were motions and yays and nays and I just could not wrap my head around Parli Pro (Parliamentary procedure). It took me a few meetings to understand what was going on, but I eventually got the hang of things.
As student senators, we vote on resolutions and bills regarding various things on campus. This can range from spirit events like Gold Rush to large scale issues like supporting a resolution that promotes the idea of renaming Columbus day to Indigenous People’s Day. These bills and resolutions really took “making informed decisions” to a new level. These decisions we were making did not only affect us as a governing body but the entire undergraduate student population of George Mason. It was easy to make those decisions about things like Gold Rush or Witch Watch that impact the community positively and promote school spirit. On the flip side, there were a few resolutions that required time and a lot of reading and a lot of reflection. Throughout my time serving as a senator I remained a strong believer that as senators we are not there to make decisions based off of our own personal beliefs, we make decisions based off of what the majority of the student population wants. That requires us to reach out and get the opinion of fellow students and go above and beyond when we do research on the subjects. Serving as a student senator has taught me that there are a lot of decisions to be made really can’t be taken lightly. Something that is really small to me could be really serious to a certain population of people around me. It has also given me insight into how difficult it can be to make large scale decisions that impact more than just myself.
