I would say what I would hope to be my greatest accomplishment
is this whole realization that you don't have to take no for an answer.
No is the default position for administrators when dealing with student government.
That's just how it is, because for better or worse
a lot of SG ideas are actually kind of dumb.
When you actually have to go through all of the costs
and all of the stuff you have to do to comply with state laws and regulations and everything else
all our ideas just don't work because we don't know any better.
I was that freshman. Why are textbooks so outrageous?
I don't know, but I know NC State Student Senate can't fix them.
I didn't know that back then. I was determined we were going to fix textbook prices.
But when I came back
and realized that okay no is the default position but if we could come up with a good idea
and I can find some way that you can justify it to your superiors,
or at the very least convince you to look the other way,
you can make stuff happen.
We had the fee referendum happen.
We had the Haunted Hillsborough Hike, brand spanking new. We did that.
The petition to add reading days to the calendar;
they'd been trying to do that for years.
The creation of a commuter meal plan with the dining hall; they'd been trying to do that for years.
A bunch of this stuff that had never, ever, ever been done even though it had been tried
we changed the tactics on how we approached it and all of a sudden in a year's time
this stuff's in place. It's rock solid.
So I don't expect current student leaders to even know who I am except for the name on the plaque
but my hope is that there's enough documentation out there to show
you can make one-of-a-kind stuff happen if you come up with an idea,
create multiple strategies on how to get there,
and then just focus on pushing people where you want them to go.
That's what student government is about. Student government fundamentally is about people
and if you can get people behind you, you can make things happen.