Greatest Accomplishments as a Student Leader

T. Greg Doucette reflects upon what he considers to be his greatest accomplishment as a student leader at NC State.

Interview on 2011-10-04 00:00:00 -0400

Transcript

00:00:00.000 I would say what I would hope to be my greatest accomplishment

00:00:04.496 is this whole realization that you don't have to take no for an answer.

00:00:09.739 No is the default position for administrators when dealing with student government.

00:00:14.706 That's just how it is, because for better or worse

00:00:18.102 a lot of SG ideas are actually kind of dumb.

00:00:20.981 When you actually have to go through all of the costs

00:00:23.937 and all of the stuff you have to do to comply with state laws and regulations and everything else

00:00:28.675 all our ideas just don't work because we don't know any better.

00:00:32.448 I was that freshman. Why are textbooks so outrageous?

00:00:35.741 I don't know, but I know NC State Student Senate can't fix them.

00:00:38.179 I didn't know that back then. I was determined we were going to fix textbook prices.

00:00:41.555 But when I came back

00:00:45.452 and realized that okay no is the default position but if we could come up with a good idea

00:00:50.697 and I can find some way that you can justify it to your superiors,

00:00:54.673 or at the very least convince you to look the other way,

00:00:56.953 you can make stuff happen.

00:00:58.709 We had the fee referendum happen.

00:01:01.006 We had the Haunted Hillsborough Hike, brand spanking new. We did that.

00:01:03.590 The petition to add reading days to the calendar;

00:01:06.313 they'd been trying to do that for years.

00:01:08.497 The creation of a commuter meal plan with the dining hall; they'd been trying to do that for years.

00:01:12.238 A bunch of this stuff that had never, ever, ever been done even though it had been tried

00:01:17.356 we changed the tactics on how we approached it and all of a sudden in a year's time

00:01:22.421 this stuff's in place. It's rock solid.

00:01:24.545 So I don't expect current student leaders to even know who I am except for the name on the plaque

00:01:31.453 but my hope is that there's enough documentation out there to show

00:01:36.485 you can make one-of-a-kind stuff happen if you come up with an idea,

00:01:42.057 create multiple strategies on how to get there,

00:01:44.915 and then just focus on pushing people where you want them to go.

00:01:47.464 That's what student government is about. Student government fundamentally is about people

00:01:52.386 and if you can get people behind you, you can make things happen.