(upbeat laid back music)
- Thanks for meeting with us, you guys.
Would you mind introducing yourselves?
- Yeah. My name is Edwin Saucedo.
I'm the undergraduate student body president at USC.
- And you are?
- My name is Chelsea Zhang and I am the director of
business relations for the student government.
- What do you think is like the most important
thing that you do as parts of the student government?
- Yeah, so we like to say we
shape the undergraduate experience.
That's kind of our motto,
and it's because we shape it in the sense
that our advocacy efforts, our funding efforts
for student organizations or programming
really helps to create an experience
outside of the classroom,
and we're big people on empowering students
beyond the classroom experience,
so we get a $2.5 million dollar budget,
so it's an unlimited supply of money in some ways
to really create what we want to do.
And that all of our programs are completely student-run,
and to have that power and that autonomy
to be contacting agents for artists and being able to...
My sophomore year I met Jessica Alba, right?
So like, things like that are like such cool experiences
that not many college students can say they had,
and so I think we really pride ourselves in that.
- Would you tell us a little bit
about what your roles entail?
- So my main job is to connect our
internal organization with external brands.
- What do those partnerships look like?
- Yeah, so I think the best example would be
every year we have two major concerts.
One in the fall and one in the spring,
and a spring fest is coming up,
and we are gonna have people like Monster Energy,
hopefully Spotify to come
and they'll set up a tent
and create either an experience,
bring products or donate monetary donations
to help with the production of the event.
We have so many events.
Concerts, festivals, food festivals.
Large name speakers come.
We kinda just do whatever the students want.
- Why did each of you initially join the student government?
- So, for me, as a freshman, I loved going to events,
and I lived right in the middle of the like main quad.
And the first week I came here,
I remember there was like a giant welcome back concert,
and so just seeing that there was,
and it was all free for students.
Like they had big name like DJs come, lots of free food,
and that just got me so excited about college.
I was like, I need to get involved
with whoever is putting this on.
- Very cool.
- Yeah, so I've always been involved in student government.
Since high school I was senior class president there,
and naturally I wanted to really
get in touch at USC as well.
I actually started with the political student assembly,
so I'm a political science major,
and really wanted to bring political events to campus,
and so I got involved as an e-board member,
and the became a director,
and kind of just went up from there.
So my second year of student government,
I was an executive board member,
and then I decided to run for president.
- What advice would you have for high school students
who are involved in student government,
who are not involved in student government,
who are thinking about getting involved in college?
- In terms of advice is really find your niche, right?
Try to find your passion and growing it.
My first time trying to join student government,
I absolutely hated it.
I was like, "This is not for me.
"It's completely different from the work
"that I was doing back in high school."
And that's because I started joining the advocacy branch
and now I'm 180 degrees where I'm constantly advocating,
but I found my niche at the beginning through programming,
because I was passionate about putting programs
for other students and so I slowly switched to the
advocacy and started where I first initially hated it,
but I think it's sticking through it
if it's something that you really want to do
and finding your passion within that.
- Awesome.
Are there any cool perks that you guys get
as part of the student government?
- Tons. (laughing in unison)
It's the best part.
Well, you get to be a part of like,
so when there's big speakers that come,
whenever you have concerts, like,
you get to like meet the artists.
You get to work with these brands like directly.
I think that connection is like just invaluable,
and like, I personally like loved that aspect.
I feel like it's like the people you
get to work with it, it's phenomenal,
and you get so much insight into like what happens
behind the scenes, which is really cool, yeah.
- Yeah, like I said, I met Jessica Alba.
I have a selfie with Hillary Clinton.
But all of those things were through student government,
right, and I think the biggest perk of it all
is just what you take away from it in terms
of like leadership abilities and you face so many
challenges along the way, but you really grow as a person,
and I think I look at people who started...
I mean, Chelsea and I started as sophomores,
and now we're in our senior year,
and to see how we've been able to grow,
and the types of, how we were able to develop,
and how this is gonna play into our future careers,
I think that in itself is a huge perk of getting involved.
- So are you considering going forward,
like sort of using these experiences in a
corporate setting or in a business setting?
- Yeah, like for me, if I'm doing business relations,
well, I love reaching out to companies
and working with them,
and so I feel like there's been a lot of opportunities
for me to continue partnering with these
companies that I'm already reached out to,
and they're always looking for ways to like have marketing,
like more marketing channels,
and so, like for me, I've been interested in
marketing and business, the business side of it,
so for me it's been pretty relevant.
- What's the best thing about student government,
and what's the worst thing about student government?
- For me, the best thing is making an impact
on someone that you didn't know you were
making an impact on, right?
And so, for example, my last year, I worked to create
a scholarship fund to help students who were
from low-income backgrounds to be able to get involved
without having to worry about working on campus,
so without having to make that choice,
and I got an e-mail from a professor who I had
never met before that was just like,
"I read about this on the newspaper,
"and I wanted to reach out and congratulate you,
"because I think you're making an impact
"on a lot of students at USC for generations to come."
And so that was really touching for me,
to know that someone was taking notice
in the work that we were doing.
At the same time, I think that one of the worst
things that happens oftentimes is that
the work that we create oftentimes
doesn't get recognized, right?
So, for example, all students on campus
have free Ubers from 7:00 PM to 2:00 AM.
That was work of our student government,
but oftentimes no one knows.
And that comes with public service.
I wouldn't say it necessarily brings us down,
because we know that we're working for the better
of other people, not for our own self-recognition,
but it can get frustrating when people only
see the bad things and not the good.
- What is your favorite USG memory?
- This is really small,
but a while ago one of our committees
decided to boost like morale during study nights,
which is like when everyone's studying for finals,
and we just made little goodie bags from USG,
and like ran throughout the libraries and handed them out.
And I just loved it, 'cause like, people were whispering,
like, "Oh my gosh, I love USG for doing this,"
and then we have like Yik-Yak, which is like an app,
kind of like an anonymous app,
and I like went on it after,
and it's like all these just like positive comments
about like, "Wow, they really care."
And it's just like little things like that.
I remember that moment.
- Yeah, sounds great.
- Yeah, it was funny.
- Go to the library and get a goodie bag and don't stress.
- Yeah.
- I think, so, we try to build a team,
and so we have this thing called,
we used to have this thing called PV Halloween
where for Halloween everyone had to draw a random,
pull a random little card,
and that's what you were dressing up as,
regardless of what you pulled,
and so there's a lot of like very interesting
suggestions but just seeing everyone come together,
right, you see them working so hard
and being so passionate about their own issues,
and having them come together
and just enjoy some time outside of the office as friends,
and really creating that, making that your friendship
I think some of my best friends were in USG.
Not because I told them to join,
but because we became best friends in the organization.
That's one of the things I'm gonna take away from here.
(upbeat laid back music)
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