Associated Students, As you pass the torch on to the next leaders, whether it be BCCS, Exec Board, Senate, OSLs, or any of the groups that work to improve life on our campus, its important to remember who has a voice and who is silenced. Who helps our climate and who hinders it. Who gets the awards and who doesnt. Sofia summed it up perfectly in her farewell speech last year and we need to remember it. Dear student leaders, visionaries, writers of history, I just wanted to say a last goodbye and really communicate from my heart what an honor it has been to serve you all and the student body this year. Coming upon graduation I am increasingly nostalgic about my time here and want to thank everyone for their tireless dedication to something bigger than ourselves. Don’t forget that you all, us collectively, are often the only voice for the students and that the future of this campus and all that flow through, will be defined by what we do and what we don’t do. Public higher education in crisis is relevant to not only you but your kids and your grandkids and it will be this moment in history that we look back to, that your children ask, what you did, how you chose to engage with forces often acting against the creation of a just world. The dismantling of the education system in California literally created for the people, is no one’s fight but ours and whether or not every person realizes each and every committee, positions, and decision in this Association has great social and political context, that whether we believe exists or not is part and parcel to what we do here. Having to fund basic services the university should be- has weight, repairing the deteriorating bike paths because of the disinvestment of the State of California to make students are safe and can get to class- has weight, the advocacy for marginalized communities, for tenants, and those who have been rendered unworthy of basic and fundamental human rights, has weight. The idea that students should represent themselves, as experts of their own experience, is a very progressive idea and extremely rare in the society we live in. And those of you who quickly jump at “progressive,” should know such term is not confined to the right-left binary that too often dominates this country rhetorically. Rather we are talking about how we, as our generation, we create and craft the future, seek progress forward, and how especially with our immense privileges our action affects others- in both positive and negative ways. Holding true and challenging the status quo is necessity. We didn’t get here because of inaction, the things we take for granted in this Association were fought for by students just like you in very recent history. How will you shape our history? How are you already? And to those who often go unnoticed, who may not be up at the mic, or who aren’t on the “awards” lists time and time again, planning history, charting new political, social, service to community territory, those who balance work and keep positive, who open their arms to the community, who have sacrificed and unselfishly committed to vision for the betterment of this campus, please know this: Your work is greatly appreciated, I appreciate YOU, and you work doesn’t go unnoticed. It is felt by those you do not even know, that you will never meet. And ultimately it is because of your work that students a little later will have it better. Each of our actions and decisions ripple, and even with the slightest alteration we are forging new paths. One we have pushed the limits of what we can do, how we see ourselves as students with agency and power often in a world that seeks to shut out our voices, it cannot be undone. Thank you so much to the wonderful AS Staff, to the amazing Office of the President Staff who inspire me daily and keep me laughing into the night, and to my experiences from rallying at Senate to BCC Chair Council, no sleep and the fierce organizers who often ground me to the bone thank you so much for all you have taught me. I am stronger today because of it. Thank YOU, thank you, thank you, for your service, strength, and inspiration, Thank YOU students for dreaming… This is my last sign off. In Solidarity, Sophia Rakel Armen Associated Students President 2012-2013 I began my term with this quote and will end with it: If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. -Frederick Douglass
Posted on: Wed, 21 May 2014 21:00:13 +0000
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