Tino Quiroga

ASR: What experience do you have that qualifies you for the position you’re running for?

Quiroga: This year, I’m going to go back for a moment. I’m a student advisor in Delta, up on the ridge. That I think is an experience in its own. I feel like being an RA you have a lot of influence on a lot of people in the dorms and that if I take on the position of Vice President of Activities it’s like having an effect on a larger population than just the smaller population of 500.

I think activities runs very closely with programming. Programs are what we put on for residents. So I feel like activities run very closely because you have to advertise, first of all, second of all you need to get people involved, to plan it and delegate out tasks, I feel like that’s a huge part of it because nobody can do activities by themselves. I feel like I can have dedication to the job. Being a RA [resident advisor], I’m kind of comparing it to this job because; being an RA you have to go door to door and talk face to face. I definitely feel confident talking to people. Hopefully they can come and talk to me and I’m somebody that’s really approachable for them.

Getting input is probably one of the biggest things with an RA job because it is a very vague thing, there are set goals for what you want to do but there’s a lot of room for people to influence that. Like if somebody had an idea for like a You Tube night and they wanted to watch movies and whatnot then they could come in and that would be part of the plan for the year, so it’s not like you have your own set plan that you have to set an agenda for. So I think that helps me out because that is one of my plans for the next year is to not have a set plan and a goal and an agenda because there are so many influences that we are going have on it. I am really excited to see what is going to go on because I have a goal and a direction but who knows what will happen next year. Who knows what events will happen. Somebody may have a great idea. There are so many great ideas out there.

Last year I got a chance to sit on the planning committee for the A.C.E. leadership conference, which as you know, is one of the components you have to plan for being AS VP of Activities. With that I learned a lot, specifically for the conference. I learned a lot of delegation skills.

Nate Panello was the VP of Activities last year and so he helped delegate all those tasks out and there’s a lot. Now I can see that there’s definite positions where you need to have your stuff done and deadlines and know how many people it takes to put on the conference because its not just two or three people, I think we had about 10 or 15 or 20 people working on the conference and I mean that is a lot of people if I need people to help chaperone for it and do different specific little things. So I definitely feel like that was a huge experience that will definitely help me with the position.

I’ve been on hall council last year and this year also. I feel like that helped me gain peoples feel for how they think and how things should be. I can’t say what they should do or what they shouldn’t do, I’m not a mind reader, but I feel like I have a great feel of what people want in general. But part of my idea for next year too is just to get a lot of input of residents, of people who live on campus or off campus, anybody who’s a student at Western. I want to hear what they have to do next year, or any ideas. It’s a huge part, because I don’t know everything.

My last two years of high school, because I am a sophomore, I was on a board called Washington Association of Student Councils (WASC). It was a prestigious board of about 50 students across Washington state on it and we did education reform, we dealt with people, we got to deal with senators and we and we got to meet the governor. We got to meet the, she was like the public instructor for Washington state, she did all the education reform. She was an amazing lady.

We helped change a lot of different things, like huge decisions on where schools should be placed into leagues depending on the size of their school. And so having large decisions—we’ve been a part of that. I think that having a huge part in a state compared to a university—I feel like I’m going to be sitting on a board and there’s going to be seven of us and we are going to be managing a $2.5 million budget that’s huge. You’re going to have to make so many huge decisions. I feel like having an opportunity to be on the WASC board is going to help me to deliberate what decisions I should make or to just say what I need to say or for somebody else to influence me or for me to influence them. I want every body’s ideas too. I feel like I will have a strong point and a strong hand to say that I want something or that I don’t want something. So in decision making I think that it helped me out.

I am a leadership camp councilor or camp advisor for the summer which is totally fun. Leadership is definitely my passion. I’ve been experienced with leadership I would say since my eight grade year. I’ve been in leadership camps, in and out, and I’ve been a councilor at middle school camps and high school camps. It’s just an amazing experience because there are just so many skills and opportunities you can get from those. And networking is a huge thing that you can learn form leadership skills. I feel like from being a councilor I feel like I have also gained some experience working with people or having experience with cooperation; what they need and what I need and help collaborating those ideas. And for next year I definitely have a goal like I said, and I feel like I can do a pretty good job collaborating both ideas into one. And so I think that I am also really open minded to anything that goes on whether it means that I have to switch off my idea with this other students idea because it’s better or they think its better or everybody else thinks its better, I can say okay, I totally understand, I can set my idea on hold and I would love to implement your idea.

I feel like that is a huge part of being in activities, you have to set your own stuff aside and that’s why I don’t have a huge agenda for next year. I just have a direction and a goal.

Being a councilor helps me be excited about things and show that there are fun sides to being in leadership.

ASR: What are your three biggest goals for next year, or your one goal, whatever you have?

Quiroga: I kind of have a little bit of a goal set.

First would be that I want to bridge the gap between clubs and organizations.

Second I would like to work a lot on the A.C.E. Leadership conference because that is a huge part of this position. There are so many different things that you could learn from it.

And then third, my goal or vision is just to get as much input and hear from the students as much as possible next year—so to revamp or revitalize what we have for next year.

For bridging the gaps, as you know, there are over 200 clubs and organizations on campus. It’s so hard for people to know what clubs are out there or if one club can talk to another club or how they can work together to plan an activity.

Somebody, actually a student, brought this to my attention, from going through the campaign and talking to people—I am really glad that he brought this up—these event sections, in the clubs and organizations so there is Western Young Democrats and Republicans and Liberalists. So if there are all those types of political organizations I would like to have the presidents of each organization or club meet at a certain time—so there is like maybe 10 or 15 of them not like all 200 at the same time—meet and talk over some of the activities they might want to do for the next year and collaborate and just see where each other are coming from because I am sure that the things that Western Democrats are probably doing the same things that the Western Young Republicans even if they may not be as prevalent around as much. I am sure that they have some ideas about what they want on a campus or activities maybe just to get everyone involved. I am sure every club wants to have more members.

I feel like that would help bridge those gaps to have more effective meetings to have resources for each other. There are so many different clubs. There’s a pre-med club, there’s a biology club, all these different clubs and organizations that some people don’t know about that can actually help advance their career. If you’re going to do pre-med there is a pre-med club out there. There are so many different things that people don’t necessarily know about.

I hear that from my residents because they will be like oh, what can I do for this. I will be like oh, well, there is this club you can totally go to that will help you if you’re going to go pre-med. They have speakers come in, you can network, if you want to go to UW [University of Washington] med school they have the dean come and talk a lot. There are a whole bunch of different opportunities for them. Bridging those gaps so those clubs can also be resources for other clubs. I am sure that there are tons of people in that club who are like I’m ethnic and I’m in the pre-med club is there any way I can get involved with the Filipino American Association. And I am like yeah, there is a Filipino American Student Association club down in the ESC [Ethnic Students Center]. I want them to be able to know, I know it’s a huge thing to say you should know where everything is but I’m not telling them that, I’m just giving them an opportunity to step out there and see what is out there.

The ACE leadership conference, I believe it gives you lots of leadership skills, next year I want to get the input of what people actually want at the conference. There are so many different skills out there and for people who already have their own skills and so maybe they need to know how to run an effective meeting, how to get effective information to the people in your club, or members, either though Email or letters or what not. Maybe there are different things that they are having trouble with that we can address at the conference because there are so many things that could be going on and I personally know that it’s hard communicating between individual members and so maybe that will be a huge part and they will want to do something like that. But getting that input from those clubs and organizations is probably going to be a huge part of that conference. And it’s kind of like I won’t really know anything until that comes up. And so that is why it’s one of my huge goals.

Input for next year I don’t think that this position would be anything without the input of students because the AS is put on, we’re associated students, it’s people coming together for the greater good. My goals are kind of, they don’t have holes in them, there is just a lot of room for peoples input in them and so I’m really excited because there’s that direction but there’s no specific, I have to do this, I have to do that. What this leaves me open for is then if someone has an issue with something I’m okay to drop it off because it was not one of those huge things that I needed to do, like a step by step by step process.

There are so many things that I know are going to come to me next year. I know talking with Aaron Garcia this year he was like, I had a lot of ideas and I had a whole bunch of things that I wanted to do this year but one thing came up after the next on my desk that I had to sign and go over, look through, talk to people about next thing I know it’s the end of the year and I haven’t necessarily done everything I wanted to do.

And that’s totally true because there are so many things that I can related to with an RA position that I’ve wanted to do but that I don’t actually have time to do and that’s why keeping an open mind and allowing for those little things to come in and help them with those small activities or large activities you know, so, but I definitely have a vision and a pathway. Anything that comes up with the students, students come first.

ASR: What are one or two of the decisions that the board made this year that you disagree with or would change?

Quiroga: That is a tough question. I feel like the goals of this year haven’t necessarily been the best at getting out into the community for the idea or what’s going on in the meetings. I know that they are open for anybody to go to but I feel like they could do a better job. I know that that there were things that they were doing, and I don’t necessarily know what they are going to do. But I feel like they’ve done kind of a good job with it. So as far as an issue this year that I wouldn’t of agreed on I don’t know actually.

I agree on some things and I don’t agree on other things I also don’t want to put out what I feel about these decisions because I don’t actually want them to be in the paper about what I believe and what I don’t believe. But what I can say is that I do believe that students have an influence, and I know I keep repeating this, but it’s a huge deal to me, and I feel like making people aware of what’s going on in the meetings is a big part. I don’t necessarily want to say what I believe and what I don’t believe in as far as what they’ve done this year because I feel like I would be impeding on what the decisions were.

ASR: What past or current political leader do you identify with and I’m adding pop cultural icon also to this question?

Quiroga: I’m not necessarily a huge political person so I would probably not say anything political.

I would have to say I really like Madonna and Pink because, I know their girls, but I kind of identify myself with them because they have such a huge campaign with RED [a line of products which gives part of its proceeds to AIDS treatment] for AIDS in Africa. I feel like being a part of something so big like being a pop-culture icon, and having that much power and saying that hey, we need to look and see whether there are opportunities out there for people or what’s going on, you need to know what’s going on. I feel like that’s cool because they have two parts to their lives. They have part of it which they fulfill for themselves and a part where they can fufill other peoples desires and just help them decide what’s good for themselves by not influencing them but just saying hey take a look at this information, decide for yourself. I think that is really cool for someone to be like, I can take time out of my life and my own career, for my own decisions, you know and go out and just make the world a better place.

There’s a quote by Gandhi that I kind of almost live my life by. “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Because if you’re not that change that you wish to see then there is no change that’s ever going to happen.

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