By Jonathan Mendez
Many people who have worked with the new Student Government Association (SGA) President Heather Gibbons know her to be an intelligent, strategic and friendly leader. Her close friends have always gone a few extra miles; deans of the University know her by her first name; and her opponents recognize her strengths. Throughout her college career, Heather Gibbons has befriended many people in the student body and in the administration. As the president of the SGA, an organization that aims to be the liaison between the students and the administration, Gibbons hopes to structure a compromise between student needs and administration concerns.
During her freshman year, two of Gibbons’ friends were recruited into SGA by Steve Richman, former SGA president. Her friends Colby and Kate told her how closely they work with Lackmann and Public Safety.
“When I saw that there was a possibility of change, I decided to join student government,” Gibbons said.
Heather went to work quickly. She was elected into the senate during her sophomore year, and became a part of the Academic Affairs committee. Being a member of that committee did not stop her from going to other senate committee meetings.
“She attended every committee meeting her first year as a senator,” Matt Anderson, a former opponent for the presidency, said.
Including the Academic Affairs committee, there are six senate committees in total: Rules, Clubs, Student Services, Appropriation and Social. These committees are made up of student senators. Senators are students voted into the senate during elections. They have the power to vote on student government propositions during these committee meetings.
During her junior year, she became the chairperson for the rules committee. The rules committee oversees the rules, but they don’t enforce it. Anderson recalls Gibbons providing food for everyone at every rules meeting.
“That to me is above and beyond the call of duty, no other committee chair has done that in my experience,” Anderson said.
From her beginnings at SGA, Gibbons knew that the position to aim for in order to implement the most change was the presidency. For her, it wasn’t an easy haul before the presidency, nor was it a breeze getting elected. She was unsure as to whether she would run until about a week before the elections when a good friend pulled her out of the quicksand. Gibbons’ original running mate, was disqualified from the election about a week before the ballots would be opened. With no idea of who could be her second running mate, and a nearly depleted budget for her campaign, Gibbons was read to throw in the towel. Campaign posters and flyers with the Gibbons-Clark ticket on them had to pulled off of the walls throughout campus.
At a residential life dinner prior to the elections, she regained hope of winning the election. It was there that she told the story of how she lost her running mate in depth to a close friend Ahmed Mostafa.
“While I was telling him the story, I could see that he was thinking about things, and by the end of the story he said ‘you know what, I’ll run with you,'” Gibbons, said.
“I was just chilling and having a good time [at the residential life dinner], and I saw that Heather looked really down, and she told me the story,” Mostafa said. “Nobody in SGA was willing to step up so when our friend Amy recommended that I run with Heather, I thought, ‘Hah! Me?’ But the decision I made wasn’t for my benefit as much as it was for hers.”
Though everything turned out as hoped for in the end, the two weeks of campaigning were troublesome for the Gibbons-Mostafa ticket.
“They were the craziest two weeks of my entire life,” Gibbons said. “The campaign went well, and the entire thing was a learning process,” Denise Harris, assistant director of Student Activities and advisor for the Student Government Association, said.
The campaigning process taught Heather a lot about student life and about the administration that she would never have learned otherwise.
She was also told some of the many concerns that students have with Lackmann, and Public Safety. But she also learned of the history of certain SGA policies.
“Students now don’t understand policies and why they are enforced. I learned that there is always a story behind why one exists, you just have to speak with people to learn,” Gibbons said.
The candidates in the election were split three-fold on many of the issues. Gibbons said however, Andy Valentine and Anderson were similar to each other, but different from her because of something foundational: the way in which they go about changing things. Where two confront with full force using demonstrations, and whatever else necessary, the other works with the both sides to seek a worthwhile compromise so that the work is done without anyone getting hurt.
“I feel that its more appropriate to go to the administration and work with them to gain insight on their viewpoints and knowledge about what’s going on instead of being confrontational and having it end in a stalemate where neither of us can get anything accomplished,” Gibbons said.
Senator Anderson feels that they are working with two different conceptual timelines for change; Gibbons’ timeline is long term, and Anderson’s is immediate.
“In college [SGA], you are faced with a limited amount of time to enact change, so you must pursue it rigorously, whereas in the ‘real world,’ you have a lifetime,” Anderson said.
Wielding an agenda, a battle plan, and a list of student concerns, Gibbons says that she will fight to make both the students and the administration happy. She hopes to increase student involvement and get students more prideful about being a member of the University family.
“It’s really sad that our mascot is the pride of lions and student involvement is so low,” Gibbons said.
Gibbons also plans to meet with the dean of students and other necessary people in order to reduce the paperwork involved for student clubs to do anything at the University. There are plenty of stops to make before an event can be put on. A student club rep would first have to go to Event Management to request a room, get their faculty adviser’s signature, get the request approved upstairs at Student Activities, then request approval of the dean of students, and finally if the event has enough people, get it approved by Public Safety.
“If the policies were more student friendly, then the students would be more willing to be part of the community,” Gibbons said.
Gibbons also has certain strategies to attain her goal of higher student involvement.
“I want to make SGA more visible and have senators [and myself] around at events and have SGA hold their own events such as building a homecoming float, an ice cream social that we coordinated with New Student Services,” Gibbons said. “And have a Senate/Student meeting which would work as an informal town meeting.”
Gibbons also plans to publicize the fact that all senate and committee meetings are open to the University.
After graduating from the University, Gibbons hopes to attend law school. “I’m working towards a career in International Pharmaceutical Patent Law,” Gibbons said.
The position that she is aiming for would have her fighting the battles for pharmaceutical companies. She wouldn’t just be fighting with the FDA, since every country has different ways of approving pharmaceutical products.
“There is still going to have to be some compromise involved in working with [the regulation agencies], to ensure that people’s rights are being recognized and that the pharmaceutical company that I’m working for has the proper patents and recognition for the work that they have done,” Gibbons said.
Gibbons works with students about their concerns about Lackmann Culinary servicesand Public Safety while working around University policies. (Paul Palazzolo)