TRANSCRIPT OF THE PODCAST
STUDENT GOVERNMENT: ENCOURAGING LEADERSHIP AND SOCIAL CHANGE

Hi. My name is Vicky Owles. I am currently the Associate Director for Campus Life and Orientation at Florida International University, and I've been invited to be part of the Speaker's Bureau of the U.S. State Department. It was my pleasure to actually be here for the past two days. I've been working with the Democracy Grant doing presentations with fourteen selected groups from the Ukraine, to talk about the importance of student government as a concept in universities and NGOs.

Today I spoke at a university to a group of student leaders from various student governments from different universities, and that session I spoke mostly about student activism and social change and what they could do as a member of their student government encouraging leadership throughout their universities. Later this week I'll be going to visit other universities to speak about social change and activism as well.

My message to these students has been about becoming a change leader, that I look at student leaders as change leaders and that they not only make changes about themselves personally, but as part of an organization. And usually from that organization, they then become better community citizens globally, and that is one of the lessons that I think I share as an administrator in my own job every day, and that is training student leaders to become better leaders, to go back out into the community and to make positive changes in the world.

Student government is such an important concept at a university because it is the voice of students, and I tell them with or without money - because I think money is always an issue for students. They want more money, they feel like they need money to do what they want to do - but I said nothing is more powerful than their voice. Their voice is what makes change, and it's the art of negotiation with an administrator or a group of administrators to make that change. Not all the time will they be heard, but they can always insist that they are part of decision making, because it is their university, it is their opportunity to make a positive change and leave legacies for students that are coming after them.

Things that I've said are to make a set of goals and know what you want before you go and ask for things. When you come up with a concept of "I want to make my university better," an administrator doesn't know what to do with that. But if you sit down with your team, or your group of students to say, "These are some concrete, specific, measurable, achievable and realistic goals that we want to see happen", a university administrator is more likely to sit down and talk to them and negotiate some acceptable terms.

I spoke of tuition increases today. Our students in the United States can't control tuition. That usually comes from state. What they can do is go to administrators and make sure that it stays within a reasonable amount, saying, "You know, we really don't want a four percent increase, but could you consider it as you're sitting at the table with the people in the state, making these decisions that will impact our lives and impact our financial situation at the university." So it's not always about demanding and going and telling them what you want without any concrete or knowledgeable background. I tell the students, "Do your homework. Go into an administrator's office with a lot of knowledge and a lot of background and with a voice of your constituents. It can't be you. It has to be you saying, 'on behalf of all of these students I've met with, this is how we feel.'" That always makes a stronger argument, and they often times are heard and it doesn't fall on deaf years, which I think most students just want to be heard.

My time in Ukraine has been probably more exciting for me as a guest than it was for them to meet somebody from the United States. I am also a student at the university that I work in. I'm in the doctoral program. For me, I'm constantly a learner. So I've been wearing an administrative hat, an educator's hat and a student's hat since I've been here, and I've learned as much about this culture as I have been able to share about my own work at the university, and that cultural exchange to me has probably been the highlight of my trip so far.

I had a student who is part of the democracy grant program come to the university today, and as I ended my speech I asked him to come and talk about his experience for the past two days. To see that segue of information being shared back into the community was just moving to me. To see that he was able to take two days worth of information, and now go back out and share all of his experiences, and now I know that my visit has actually made an impact in a very short amount of time. So, for me that is probably one of the highlights that I've had so far this week, and I'm only halfway through my visit.

So, I'm looking forward to the rest of my week, to learn more about Ukraine and different cities besides Kyiv and to share whatever perspectives. I find that people are asking me a lot of questions about what the university life is like in the United States and what I thought I was prepared for, I'm now finding that I'm sharing information about other topics, and I just feel like I've become an ambassador of sorts from my university to the students here in Ukraine. So, overall this experience has been warm and inviting and exciting and exhilarating for me and I can't wait to go back now and share this information with all of my students at the university so that they can learn something from my experience as well.