On a bustling Sunday evening, we had the pleasure of speaking with Issy Mejia ‘23, the interim President of Skidmore’s Student Government Association (SGA). Mejia, a Psychology and Social Work double major, was previously involved in the Senate but decided to step up as interim President during the summer months. After much thought, she has decided to not run again in the fall because of certain issues regarding the current climate of SGA.
Mejia spent her summer interning for American Express as their supplier diversity intern. This position entailed keeping track of how much money the company was spending on diversity suppliers. Additionally, Mejia was able to visit home in the Caribbean to see family and friends, a healing time away from her 9-5 internship. Mejia’s time in SGA was short yet remarkable, serving as Sophomore senator in the 2020-21 academic year. Afterwards, she was planning to run for Executive Vice President.
In our conversation Mejia spoke about her vision for SGA, her experiences as a member of SGA as well as her frustrations and challenges that she faced as the youngest, and first woman of color in the position of SGA’s President.
Her decision to ascend into presidency stemmed from wanting to establish change in SGA and on campus and to encourage other POC to step into positions of leadership. When she was struggling to decide whether she would take on the position, she expressed the importance of her decision, as there had never been a Black student in this position before. “I was thinking a lot about how my identity and positionality would make this job more difficult for me,” Mejia explained, taking into consideration the emotional burden of taking care of herself in a predominantly white space.
The last academic year has been an unprecedented time for many Skidmore students and alumni, being faced with a global pandemic on top of other school stresses, such as racism, political polarity, and discourse that pushed many students of color further to the margins. With this in mind, Mejia’s role as President holds more weight, as she expressed wanting her plans of equity and inclusivity carried on even though she will not remain in the position. “At least people had the chance to hear me [in the past] couple of months.” Mejia expresses.
During her period as Interim President, she has experienced both the instances of discrimination and the heavy strain of work. Mejia, when asked why she was hesitant to run for President in the fall, explained that it was a “heavy responsibility on her shoulders,” as a queer Black woman and the first Black woman to hold this position. More often than not, her actions have been excessively questioned (more than other Presidents beforehand); thus, she faced the immense pressure of constantly having to defend herself and her decisions to others.
“When anything goes wrong, people don’t look at the whole Executive Committee (the unit of people that makes decisions), rather they look at me like you’re the front line person, and they expect a simple answer,” Mejia shares. In addition, the workload proved unsustainable at times. “There are a lot of blurred boundaries because of the expectations that people have of me, like they forget that I’m a student, have a job, and [work] as a Community Assistant (CA),” Mejia reveals.
On the other hand, Mejia stresses the importance of Black people or other POC being in these positions, “so we're able to have our voices heard.” She was honest and critical of the roles and responsibilities of SGA, wishing that more members of SGA, Skidmore’s administration and students could be more self-aware of the different privileges they hold and to be more “flexible and transparent.”
Regardless, Mejia is hopeful of the positive developments that SGA could make. She envisions SGA to be a more collaborative and transparent space with the individuals in different positions having equal power and responsibility. “Every position in SGA is actually doing something meaningful,” she explains, and she wanted SGA to be something more than a “1-2 hour responsibility,” but an ongoing commitment to better the lives of the students on campus. “I also don't think that my ideas are any better, or that my thoughts are more important than anybody else's.” Mejia elaborates.
She expresses her desire to change the bylaws and the way SGA is run, stating that the way the decision-making processes in SGA at the moment is “very whitewashed.” She runs parallels between Student Government and the US Government, expressing the concern that the way SGA is run “mirrors the Senate in the [US] government” and “personally [Mejia] doesn’t think that anybody should be taking any notes from the American Government.”
In addition to editing the rusty, outdated bylaws of SGA, one of her most pressing concerns involves addressing the lack of gender inclusivity on campus. As a CA, she wanted to inform her residents of the gender neutral bathrooms, but upon further research, she noticed how sparse and buried away the bathrooms were. She cites how there are none present in any of the four floors of the library and how one of the few bathrooms was behind the post office, an area where students rarely frequent. “The digging I had to do to find—I just thought that was ridiculous, and I don't think it should be the case,” Mejia recounts.
Mejia presses on the importance of transparency in the decisions that SGA makes in all aspects of student life at Skidmore. When asked about what her role of President means to her and what she would like to bring to the role, she explains that she wants to be honest and transparent, “to have more open conversations,” citing the example of the SGA-backed Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement in solidarity with Palestine and why SGA came to that decision. Mejia explains that it is important for members of SGA to have hard conversations and be flexible and transparent in the decisions that they will be taking. To her, the position of President is less about power and “being in a high position,” but “more about being pulled in different directions in a way that's often good because you're getting different perspectives, and you're able to see things from hopefully every page, but if not then most pages, so that you can communicate and support people, the best way possible.”
Although Mejia will not be running in the fall, her meaningful decisions and concerns have catalyzed critical conversations regarding inclusion and equity that need to be addressed if there is to be substantial change on campus.