With a rich 2-year history of service, departing ASNIC senator and former president of NIC’s Gender and Sexuality Alliance Josh Swan sat down with the Sentinel to discuss some of the perks of being entrenched in the campus community.
How did you originally get involved with campus politics?
That would be due to the fault of former senator Danni Bain, she pushed me into the leadership realm in two pools at once and said ‘go for it.’ For my first year at ASNIC I served as a senator and I served as president of the GSA.
Do you have any previous leadership experience?
Growing up in St. Maries for a little bit, or living there for my high school career I never got the opportunity because I wasn’t there from birth on. I think I really took to it, and I took to helping people when I saw there was a need and it really helped me as a person.
Why did you decided to step down as GSA President?
I’m involved as a member; I actually had to take a step back because I knew that this was my second year at NIC. I was ready to graduate, so I was honoring my edge and knowing I couldn’t put as much time into it and I figure if I’m going to put my time into it I might as well go all the way instead of just trying to do it half way and not let it be as big of a success as I really think it should be.
What’s been the most rewarding part of being in ASNIC for so long?
It’s been phenomenal to see the students’ voice grow and change over the two years and how we’re starting to be able to have a little more pull as ASNIC and we’re starting to get more respect. I feel like toward the beginning or in the past ASNIC had kind of wound itself down and started to lose some respect and we’ve been able to really build that back up and we’re a respected student voice now and which is really exciting to see.
What has been your proudest accomplishment at NIC?
My proudest accomplishment is my work on the Intercultural Center. It was really phenomenal because it started as carrying on the project Danni Bain had started of getting an ally center for the LGBTQ community and I kind of took that up and started going even further with it. It was also the year Graydon Stanley was appointed to be the vice president of student services, and he took [the concept] and expanded it. The idea and got me more enthused about making an entire diversity center, and we’ve kind of progressed that through the word multicultural center now into Intercultural Center. That’s kind of the new buzzword, and it acknowledges that people have intersecting identities; while that person could be LGBTQ, they could also be a vet, they could also be an American Indian student and this center would help serve all of those needs. That’s what I’ve been working really hard on the last two years. It hasn’t been just me, but its been me pushing, prodding and poking to make things happen and to make people get on it.
Who would you say has been your most influential mentor on campus?
The top three I can think of off the top of my head that always push me for me to reach my highest potential would be H—Momma (Heather Erikson), Peaches (Alex Harris), or Pit (Graydon Stanley.)
What are some of your favorite memories of ASNIC?
That’s an extremely difficult thing to select. For me its been the ability to watch some of my fellow board members grow as leaders, and really see the changes that have happened to them over the years.
What has been your favorite part of being in GSA?
With a lot of members of the LGTBQ community, myself included, you don’t really feel as accepted before you get up to the college level and you feel like a bit of an outcaste, so watching members kind of blossom into individuals and carry pride in themselves, grow and develop as humans is phenomenal to watch. I’ve really been astounded to be able to do that and it’s really been a rewarding experience.
What have been some of the perks of being a senator?
You gain a lot of leadership experience, you learn how to be a leader among leaders; I think that’s something that having the GSA and the ASNIC roles together really helped me do. With the GSA, you’re leading with a group of students and in ASNIC you’re leading a group of leaders. That covers both aspects of leadership which are both fundamental. Besides leadership experience, there are travel opportunities. I’ve had the opportunity to go to Boise, Missouri, New Orleans, well as our fall retreat. Our retreat is really fun, we get a cabin on the woods on the Palouse River divide and we just go and we learn about each other, we learn about leading, we start brainstorming and working together. Things all start to pull into one.
What have been some of the challenges of being involved with student government?
One of the most difficult and challenging parts I’d say is trying to learn how to become a facilitator or learning how to help guide some of the newer senators and such. You want to step in, you want to say, “oh no, you shouldn’t do this for X, Y, and Z reasons.” You’ve got to learn to let them be leaders on their own instead of just dragging them through it. It’s a process I’m still learning, but you have to because if it’s done right they’ll grow as leaders.
What would you like students to know about ASNIC?
ASNIC really has got a lot of potential to make a lot of change here at NIC and I don’t think students fully realize that we pay a third of what it takes to run this college and we should have a good say in decisions regarding the college climate.
