I was almost exclusively a student government guy.
When I was here for orientation
we lived in Bragaw Hall, my grandparents had a hotel room,
and there was some kind of play that they did in Talley,
talking about what life was like on campus. So we were walking from Bragaw to Talley
and my grandparents were going regardless. I was determined to skip
because there was this-. Before we had kind of the Cates Crawl all the people set up in the
auditorium area of Witherspoon, so I snuck my way in and went to this little student organization area,
thinking I was going to join College Republicans, because I was a political activist in high school,
so that was my focus. Under no circumstances was I going to do student government.
As I'm walking around actually I met Jenny Chang, who was the student body president at the time,
and I'm picking up stuff from the different tables and she motions me over to the SG table
and I'm like, okay, well what group are you? She goes, "I'm with student government,"
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."
She goes, "Well what do you think we do?" and I gave some kind of idiotic response that in hindsight was really dumb,
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,
apply and see what happens." So I'm like, okay, cool, thank you.
End up leaving the room and someone makes it a point to me-. One of the other folks in the orientation group goes,
"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."
He was like, "Yeah, that's the president of the whole campus." I'm like, okay. I really sounded like an idiot.
But what ended up happening-. So that was orientation.
We move in, I apply to the Wolf Aides program and they end up accepting me as one of their members.
Go to a meeting and after that meeting I come back and my RA, a guy named Brian Overington, was actually a student senator,
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,
and I'm intrigued. I'm like, this is politics. This is what I did in high school.
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."
Back then we had gotten rid of freshman elections.
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,
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.
My freshman year I was a student senator, I ran for senate president as a freshman, which is idiotic in hindsight,
definitely lost, came in third out of three. Worked for the media sophomore year,
worked for the media when I came back in '05, I call that my second sophomore year,
then was a student senator again and then spent my last two years as president of the student senate.