Politics at Coe and the United Nations.

Last week was a big week for me. In between scrambling to complete a 12 page paper and study for an economics test worth a third of my total semester grade, I announced to the campus that I am running for student body President. While the decision to run was made a long time ago, finalizing my platform with my running mate and preparing PR was a lot more work than I anticipated. While we were working on our platform Katie (my running mate) and I came to a couple of realizations about Coe.

1.) We really love this place.

It sounds corny, I know, but when people ask why I’m running, that’s the best answer I can give them. Coe has been great to me in my two and a half years that I’ve spent here, and if I can do anything for future students to fall in love with Coe even more than I did, I won’t hesitate.

2.) Making changes at a place you love is tough.

Logically, our platform would address problems we see on campus. While Coe isn’t perfect, there aren’t a whole lot of things we see as major problems. Our platform is more proactive than anything, trying to make Coe a better place, not addressing things that would make Coe a bad place.

3.) Its amazing how much say students have at Coe.

As we were talking about the members of the Student Senate, we realized how much pull we have. Naturally, I’m partial to our student government, but I think its great how much access we have to our administrators. It’s not uncommon to see students eating lunch with the President of the college, stopping by the Dean of Residence Life’s office just to talk or going to the Vice President for Student Affair’s home for dinner. And those are just the informal times we have with them.

The next cool thing about my week was my first trip with Coe’s Model United Nations Club to a simulation in Chicago. While I have taken advantage of many opportunities Coe has offered me, this was one of my favorites. I learned more about the UN by actually simulating a meeting than I could ever by reading about it in a book. The best thing about it is that Coe recognizes the educational value in opportunities such as this one and the Student Senate funded our trip. While representing the country of Peru, we learned how diplomats had to work towards a common goal while balancing their nation’s own self-interest and try to mash out a solution to our world’s problems. In my committee I helped to co-sponsor a resolution about peacekeeping that we actually got passed… Exciting!

So while politics may be slightly different between Coe and the world, I have been heavily involved in both in the past week. And I have loved every minute of it, but I’m ready to take a few days for turkey!