Developing Interest in Student Government
T. Greg Doucette discusses how he became involved in Student Government as a freshman.
Interview on 2011-10-04 00:00:00 -0400
Transcript
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I was almost exclusively a student government guy.
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When I was here for orientation
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we lived in Bragaw Hall, my grandparents had a hotel room,
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and there was some kind of play that they did in Talley,
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talking about what life was like on campus. So we were walking from Bragaw to Talley
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and my grandparents were going regardless. I was determined to skip
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because there was this-. Before we had kind of the Cates Crawl all the people set up in the
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auditorium area of Witherspoon, so I snuck my way in and went to this little student organization area,
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thinking I was going to join College Republicans, because I was a political activist in high school,
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so that was my focus. Under no circumstances was I going to do student government.
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As I'm walking around actually I met Jenny Chang, who was the student body president at the time,
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and I'm picking up stuff from the different tables and she motions me over to the SG table
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and I'm like, okay, well what group are you? She goes, "I'm with student government,"
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and I'm like [Noise of hesitation], "I'm not trying to be rude but I just really have no interest in what y'all are doing."
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She goes, "Well what do you think we do?" and I gave some kind of idiotic response that in hindsight was really dumb,
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but she goes, "Okay, well I'll cut you a deal. You don't have to join student government but take this pamphlet for our Wolf Aides program,
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apply and see what happens." So I'm like, okay, cool, thank you.
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End up leaving the room and someone makes it a point to me-. One of the other folks in the orientation group goes,
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"Oh, you realize that was the student body president?" I'm like, "No, I don't know who the student body president is or what they do."
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He was like, "Yeah, that's the president of the whole campus." I'm like, okay. I really sounded like an idiot.
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But what ended up happening-. So that was orientation.
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We move in, I apply to the Wolf Aides program and they end up accepting me as one of their members.
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Go to a meeting and after that meeting I come back and my RA, a guy named Brian Overington, was actually a student senator,
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and as I'm coming back from Wolf Aides he was coming back from senate and he was ranting and raving about something they had voted on that night,
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and I'm intrigued. I'm like, this is politics. This is what I did in high school.
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He explains to me what's going on and he goes, "You know, you really should think about trying to be one of the freshman senators."
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Back then we had gotten rid of freshman elections.
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They voted for freshmen for a time, I guess turn-out kind of fell off, and then for a long period of time they appointed them,
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so I ended up getting appointed and I was kind of hooked after that. I literally did student government just about every year I was at State.
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My freshman year I was a student senator, I ran for senate president as a freshman, which is idiotic in hindsight,
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definitely lost, came in third out of three. Worked for the media sophomore year,
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worked for the media when I came back in '05, I call that my second sophomore year,
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then was a student senator again and then spent my last two years as president of the student senate.
This video is an excerpt from a longer interview. Contact the Special Collections Research Center to request the transcript of the full interview.
