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In print | May 1, 2008

Phoenix editor Jack Keefe recently sat down with recently elected Student Council president Yongjun Heo ’09 to expand upon his previously stated policies and to discuss his ideas and direction for Student Council.

Jack Keefe: What sort of ideas are you interested in?

Yongjun Heo: One small example of an idea that could possibly work … if the Asian Organization were to start a weekend program for Asian adoptees … if SAO were to come up to me and say these are some ideas that I have, what can I do with them? … I would go through and speak with other student groups that have done this — such as Dare to Soar and Enlace — I would connect the groups … to be able to connect them immediately to say “you should speak to this person.” In terms of the work that could be done with one group that has a lot of experience with another group that has no idea as to how something could be run — even down to the logistics, it could be a very positive thing overall for a lot of student groups.

Obviously, it’ll be sort of a strain on the group that’s helping, but overall I believe it’ll be a source of community for this college.

Another way in which the whole idea of this came about was that I realized that there hasn’t been a perfect mechanism … for students to be able to have the biggest input they could have in terms of how Student Council functions and having this sort of big group meeting. One of those goals is that next year since there is this incredible opportunity for current students to make lasting changes in this institution … for this group process to occur and for us to exchange ideas as this planning is going on is abolustely essential for this college.

JK: So one of the primary purposes of this, then, would be to consult as to the Swat 2020 process?

YH: That’s one part of it, absolutely. Assuming that everything did go somewhat smoothly — [the meeting] isn’t something I’d want to end when the 2020 process has … ended … I think it’s a way for Student Council to both get more input and be held accountable … In terms of the greater good of the college, for Student Council to be more effective and be at the level of the other organizations is something that I feel will have greater impacts I think in the long run.

JK: One of the things I’m sort of hearing … is that you’re interested in having Student Council not being just an executive body in a sense, but a consultative body?

YH: For Student Council to be at a higher level than the other organizations, I don’t like that as much. Although we are elected among the entire student body … instead of solely focusing on huge changes that may or may not go through, if there are smaller changes that we could be a part of and help create that would be more feasible, I think those are the kinds of changes that given a limited amount of time we should focus on … Well, you’ve heard of the Spring Break/Thanksgiving idea? There was this great idea that was tossed around, students really loved the idea, pushed it to begin with. What came before it were these administrative obstacles and things that students didn’t necessarily think about or talk about, but it came to the point where Student Council members realized that this wasn’t possible … But as a student here I didn’t realize … why it wasn’t working, what was going on with that, what I could do as a student … to help with that process. We come back to this idea of the bimonthly [group] meeting, for students to say, “Maybe you should go to this direction, maybe you should do this” … maybe if we can come to this realization that this isn’t going to work, maybe we’ll scrap that idea and move to the next best idea. I don’t want to say it’s a waste of time, but in the end it is … that you work, and give a lot of effort — if that doesn’t come through, it’s pretty inefficient in a way. To get student input is the most important thing.

There’s another idea that I had: If students have a list of requests … have it on paper … That way, if Student Council ignores some of these requests which we wouldn’t because at that point we’re held accountable for these requests, people should be angry toward Student Council.

It shouldn’t be that people think, “Oh, this is Student Council, they don’t do much anyway, this is fine.” … It should be that… “It’s their job, we elected them to this position.” The process with that is that if you had a request and I thought it wasn’t feasible, we would talk it out and we would come to an understanding and we would know which ideas go through and which ones wouldn’t.

JK: And to go back, this would be a function of those bi-monthly meetings you were discussing?

YH: Exactly. Another part of the bimonthly meetings is … that there are certain issues that come up during the year that we can’t predict … One example would be the SQU chalkings during Coming Out Week … It was like last year or the year before that there was a huge outrage by students who were opposed to those chalkings, right, and there really wasn’t this mechanism in place for students to talk … What happened was that there was this quick administrative push to come to this forum, for students who really cared about the issue to go talk about it and think things through. What was happening was that there were counter-chalkings and people were erasing chalkings — there was a lot of tension there … if there were a mechanism where student group leaders were already meeting, this issue could’ve been discussed among the group.

JK: How do you see your role in terms of interfacing between student concerns and bringing those concerns to the Board of Managers?

YH: Again, there are two different distinctions I do make. There are experiences I have had personally here … and the other distinction is that I represent the entire student body. If there are seemingly small issues that a student brings up to me, those are issues I will press for regardless … From the Board of Manager’s perspective, they may have those ideas already in line. For me, my job is to input as many different viewpoints from as many different angles so that any decision that they make will help all students … I have to look out for the seemingly small issue ideas that will come up.

My goal is, given the experiences that I’ve had, I’ll give my personal input, and then I’ll make sure that student opinions … that their ideas are being heard. It’s a must. There’s no other way around it.

JK: At the first Q&A that was held here, you expressed a positive remark about the workshops that Student Council went through (Training for Change), but in my impression you seemed to believe that there was more that could be done in that respect … I was wondering if you could expound upon those ideas?

YH: I do think that Training for Change, those workshops that are held twice a year … are a great step in the right direction. They’re what needs to be done in order for people to make well-informed decisions. One thing that I’d like to have changed is the diversity workshop in orientation … something like that I really think needs to be expanded. I know there are groups that had honestly awful workshops … I’m personally a diversity workshop facilitator and I’ve had wonderful workshops where students didn’t have the time to get out all they wanted. Something that is really critical is learning about this, as cliché as that sounds.

First of all, let’s assume that’s there no racism and there’s no homophobia at Swarthmore … Even if that is the case, for eighteen years before we reached this point, we have been living in a world where this surrounds us … the moment we leave this institution is where we confront those same-isms again … Having a better understanding of that … through Swarthmore is something that I think people will be able to take for their entire lifetimes … I think Swarthmore as a leading academic institution is in a place to make [changes necessary to stop prejudice] … to influence the direction of how those issues go.

JK: In terms of what StuCo has done for the past two semesters, I was curious to know what you think StuCo has succeeded the most on — a trend or an initiative — and what you think StuCo may have to improve on in that sense.

YH: Obviously, the clear things are they made meals last thirty minutes longer in Tarble. Students do feel a direct effect of that … expansion of the library is something that affects a lot of students … Those are good steps in that through the surveys and through speaking to other students, Student Council figured out what student demands, needs and requests were and they accomplished those … Success is meeting the demands of the students and making it so life here is better in some little way. Another success that could be expanded upon … due to last year’s Student Council elections where there was this lack of understanding about IC/BCC issues, a lack of care… what Student Council did was bring in a lot of IC leaders in to speak about IC issues. I saw a lot of times what the trend was — and I think that you need to start the dialogue somewhere — but I think that Student Council needs to go past this point … and go be a proactive member of this institution to help students with what they’re doing. If we can move past the point where they’re like, “Great, we’ve opened dialogue, this is good” — you need to do something with that dialogue! This accountability factor that will play in next year, hopefully, will push past that dialogue. I really think that this year has been more successful than in years past in terms of meeting student requests and in opening up this dialogue.

But there are some issues with moving past dialogue. One student told me, to have seven meetings about the same issue seems just so inefficient and a huge waste of time. I understand that Student Council wants to understand things fully, but sometimes things don’t seem to click to XYZ members – I can’t give you a specific incidence because of confidentiality – but this is the sort of thing that happens when someone says, “We’ve opened dialogue. Dialogue IS a success.”

JK: Versus seeking an end?

YH: Exactly.

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