ASR: What experience do you have that qualifies you for the position of AS President?

Garcia: Since high school I’ve always been actively involved. I’ve been ASB president, I’ve been my class president, I was my hall council president… so I’ve always just felt this duty to be involved and engaged and be a voice for the students. I’ve really focused my life around that. My current job as AS VP of Activities really helps me know what to expect next year and gives me an understanding of what the role of AS President is.

ASR: What are your three biggest goals for next year?

Garcia: First, outreach. Getting the word out that the Associated Students belongs to everyone. It’s our [The AS’s] 100 year anniversary, and it’s a good time to kick off the year right and making sure all students feel like they belong to the AS… Another thing I want to work on is evaluating objectives of the AS, we have a lot of great programming and resources. I want to make sure we’re following our objectives. The most important objective in my point of view being supporting and developing leadership, whether it is activities and event or providing resources and opportunities for students to organize themselves around their special interst. And if we are not meeting these objective, why not? Also, we have a new [university] president coming in next year. Fostering the relationship we have with the current administration with this new one is going to be key.

ASR: What’s one or more decision(s) the Board has made this year that you disagree with or would change?

Garcia: There was a personnel decision where we had to decide on whether or not to allow someone to reapply [for their AS position] again, because we have certain policies… it was tough to say no to the person, and it was hard for the Board to separate the personal aspect of it from our mission. We gave this person the opportunity to reapply for his position, and I think it would have been better if we’d voted no, and given someone else a opportunity to learn this position. My vote was a unpopular one but I voted in a way that I felt supported the AS’s goal and objectives in giving students new to develop leadership. But for the most part the Board is pretty cohesive when it comes to decisions we have agreed on a lot of the same things.

ASR: What past or present political leader do you identify with and why?

Garcia: Martin Luther King (Jr.). One of the things I want to throw out there is that I’m not a politician and I’m not an activist. The other candidates seem to have politician mindset or the activist mindset, but I’m right there in the middle. The reason I identify myself with MLK is because I admire his four steps to peaceful protest. First you have to recognize the problem or injustice and make sure you understand the whole scope of the issue. Then you sit down and try to negotiate, and do that to the fullest extent—exhaust to the extreme. Then the third step being self-purification, getting in the mind set that if your are willing to protest your willing to go to jail, willing to get mistreated and beaten without out fighting back. MLK was arrested over 30 time for causes he believed in. And the fourth is peaceful protest. I believe in peaceful protesting and I believe that WWU a very activist-minded school. And I always tell students, ‘I will go to bat for y’all, but this is how I approach things.’ I will be more than willing to do things with students as long as we take a structured approach. But I have yet to meet a administrator who wont meet us at step two.

ASR: How would you represent and support Western’s diverse community as president?

Garcia: I think I have a pretty good understanding of many of the issues that students bring to us, and I think I’d be really good at sitting down with the administration and discussing why those issues are around. The number one thing one must all be willing to do first is LISTEN, sometimes we get so far ahead of ourselves in trying to solve the answers we start to forget what the real questions are.

ASR: What’s one problem or challenge you’ve faced in a previous position of leadership and how did you resolve or deal with it?

Garcia: The biggest thing I’ve learned is to delegate responsibilities. It’s important to develop trust with the people you work with. I think it’s essential—you can’t do everything by yourself. When you delegate responsibilities, that does not mean you just tell people what to do, as a leader you must guide people to the right answers. Sometimes even admitting you don’t know the right answer, but hey “lets learn it together.”

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