Caroline Marcus, a junior studying public administration and economics, is a candidate for student body president in this year’s SGA elections. She currently serves as the chief of staff in the Darwin administration. The following is a conversation between Beacon contributor Kela Fifer and Marcus.
This interview has been edited lightly for clarity.
Q: What do you believe you will do better than your opponents and what evidence from your past experience supports that?
A: With the experience I already have I will be able to seamlessly transition the student government and work on building from what I know rather than having a learning curve and having to figure out how things work. I know the most effective means of communication, I know the people to ask, I know the people to talk to and I’ll be able to get things done very quickly and very efficiently.
I also think that my leadership skills, and focusing on servant heartedness, and having conversations with students excel. My experience with that comes from student government so I know the appropriate ways to communicate and how to maintain a level of professionalism. With that seamless transition it would be able to help us actually accomplish things very quickly and grow from there as a whole.”
Q: How will you work with university administration when student interests conflict with administrative priorities?
A: I plan to be completely transparent with everyone. I am a very “tell it like it is” person. I think that a really, really big part of where misunderstandings can come in is what you think without actually asking or what people perceive. I really want to emphasize that factor of communication and communicating with both sides.
Communicating what I hear with both sides whether it’s my belief, my opinion, or not. Being able to share that with both sides and then being able to take forward an idea and reach a compromise and being there to be a voice to the administrators but also being a voice to the students to accomplish what needs to happen.
Q: What are a few high-priority issues for students you’ve identified and what will you do to address them in the first 60 days?
A: The thing for me is I just want it to keep going from the moment the campaign period ends. A big thing that we talked a lot about and almost every single conversation I had was communication; not only on the student government side but from the university to students from students to the university. That’s what SGA is; it’s the bridge of communication between students and admin. Looking at my campaign, I really plan to expand our outreach. Coming from someone being on exec right now, I know that elections are our biggest publicity of the year.
This is what people know us for and they’re going to get talked to a lot. This is our really big pull for students. Last year when we had elections, it really taught a lot more people what student government is. That’s why it’s so important that we really encourage every single person to vote. With that, coming off elections, I plan to just keep going. What that means is we visit so many chapters and organizations during this time period but after our campaigns end, we stop.
My question is “Why do we stop?” So I want to keep going. I want to visit every single organization I can across campus throughout the next year with a team. In the first semester, I want to visit over 100 student orgs and talk to them about student government and be able to explain what it is and how we can help and also have those individual conversations. It goes so much further than that and the fact that with students knowing what we are, whether you care or whether you don’t, I want people to know that we are working for them and if they have something, they can to us with it and make that really important
With that initiative as well, a big part of that, I want to expand a lot of what we do. Working on general body, I really want to open that up and make that a lot bigger than it already is and have more open forum conversations in there so reaching out to organizations and really pushing people to come to those meetings. We’ve grown the general body this year from about five members to now about above 40 that come to every single one of our meetings and so I want to continue to do that
I will host weekly office hours on campus, while some people might think we have those now, we do not and so I want to have executive office hours every single week with me, VP and sometimes the speaker of the senate as well for senators and mine would be for all students.
I also want to really, really push our social media. I think that is something that we can make even bigger and that’s a really great way for students to stay in contact with us and see what we’re up to.
Working with the university to talk about their communication methods and different things students have brought up to me regarding that and being like ‘This is a really effective way we’ve learned to communicate’ or from a student perspective, ‘try doing this or try doing this,’ and offering that perspective as well.
Another part of that is student safety. My initiatives that launched today, two of them are very safety driven. One of them, I want to continue the advocacy of putting Narcan all over campus so putting it everywhere from the library like we’re working on right now, and on the strip as well. We’re working on those projects right now and I want to keep that going and eventually have it everywhere we can on campus.
I also want to launch a drink safe movement and stop roofying on campus … I want to promote safe drinking habits with that, so education and awareness. Passing out drink toppers that fit our exact style of cups and how we handle things here at Tennessee, partnering with Greek Life and Health Services to have a student driven approach so that it really makes an impact on students.
Q: What do you believe sets you apart from the other candidates?
A: I think what sets me apart is my experience this year being on [Executive Branch]. I have a lot of experience in that realm and I know every single thing about how we operate. There’s no learning curve for me. It doesn’t take me a second. I truly understand everything that goes into our financial allocations and what we do on a daily basis.
Working side by side with Chase this year, I know exactly what he puts into his role and so I know exactly what is expected of me and I know where I can go even further and be able to get results that are effective for the student body. Working so closely with [Chase] and truly knowing the job, I know I want to do the job. I know that I want to keep doing what I’ve been doing this year and that I love what I do.
The service aspect really goes into it for me. I’ve talked a lot about intention and that is my biggest thing and doing it with my whole heart; that is what I have put into this campaign. It is so important to me with that aspect and making sure that I am very student focused and servant hearted … My love for the student body and my experience in student government really pushed me to run.
I always prioritize the student experience here at UT’s campus … I know that I want to do the job for the job itself. For me, it’s not about the title and it never has been. It’s genuinely about keeping doing what I am doing and that’s serving the students at this university and being able to make an even bigger impact is my dream … To serve this community means so much to me and that is truly what I want to do and be able to do.
Q: What organizations, administrators, or leaders will you need to work with to accomplish your goals?
A: I want to talk to everyone that’s possible. I don’t want it to be “I want to talk to these set administrators,” I want to talk to anyone and everyone in every single way. We work with admin right now on a daily basis, our advisors, stuff like that and I want to build past that to every single person we can that wants to hear from us. I want to continue to visit faculty meetings and be able to work with them on issues as well and collaborate a lot more.
Organization wise, I would like to speak to any organization that would like to speak to me. For this campaign, I looked through every student organization listed in Vol Link. We had some that I had no clue even existed … so I want to work with anyone and everyone on this campus because I think that’s how you get a truly representative look at what students really want to be accomplished by their student government.
Q: What do you have to say to anyone who sees your current position of chief of staff in the Darwin administration as a potential conflict of interest?
A: I have completely stepped back and I have been stepped back this whole entire semester. Once I expressed that I wanted to run, I did not touch anything with elections. At all. Completely out of it, which, honestly is very difficult because of the fact that I plan our events. If I was running it, all the stuff and all the purchases would go through me but instead, Mansi, our executive advisor, and Griffin have done a great job of managing that.
I see none of it, I know none of it and that’s the way that it should be. I am very far removed from it. It is very, very important to me that people understand that. This was also a conversation I had with my opponent and assured him the same as well and so we have had multiple conversations about this just to ensure that everything would be completely fair.
Q: Has your campaign been adhering to the $300 budget and how has it made sure it is doing so?
A: I have read those [election] rules and procedures so many times. I have annotated them. You truly know it all when you’re doing this. There are so many little things. I think that our election rules and procedures, while they have changed in the last year, look very different from every SEC school but it really leads to an increase in participation and I think that is very important. For me personally, saying that, knowing the rules, every single member of my team has read those rules and I have made sure of that as well as explaining [election rules] to people who ask how they can support me … The biggest part of it is that you have to truly look at [election rules], understand them and comprehend them to be able to follow all of them. I’m constantly thinking about it, they’re always in the back of my head and making sure I’m staying coherent with them.
