August Rey, a sophomore majoring in political science, is one of two candidates on the ballot for vice president for student success, an office that advocates for Binghamton University students’ academic needs and general well-being. Their responses to Pipe Dream’s questionnaire have been lightly edited for clarity.
1. Why are you running for this Student Association position?
I am running for VPSS to help make Binghamton a University where anyone can succeed. There are very institutional issues within the University administration and the Student Association that serve as barriers to student success. A lot of our student body does not feel represented in our institutions and many are forced to make tough decisions about their own success because of this. My goal is to help reduce and remove these barriers so that every student can prioritize their success and feel supported while doing so. I plan to make success more accessible and affordable for all students, while also holding the Student Association and University administration more accountable to all students.
During my time at Binghamton, I have felt firsthand the lack of institutional support that students receive and I have seen students lose trust as a result. At the same time, I have seen the Student Association work with administration to improve the quality of student life here at Binghamton. I think the Student Association needs someone with an outside perspective to really help it see its own blind spots and I would love to take on that role.
Advocacy is central to who I am and I am always looking to give back to my community in the ways that I know how. I want to be VPSS because I want to do right by y’all.
2. Tell us a bit about yourself. Are you a part of any clubs? Any hobbies or career plans for the future?
I’m a current sophomore majoring in political science and minoring in education. I’m originally from Sarasota, Florida, but have found myself moving more and more of my life into Binghamton, New York. On campus, I serve as the area-wide vice president of multicultural affairs of the College-in-the-Woods Council, the political activist chair of SHADES, and am a former intern for Corazoncitos. Off campus, I am a regional board member for Citizen Action, a student organizer, and have worked on a wide range of local democratic campaigns in the Binghamton and Broome County area.
As the political activist chair of SHADES, I worked to take the role offline. This past semester, I organized a protest to get ICE out of Broome County, working with 12 student organizations and 11 off-campus organizations to bring residents and students together to advocate for the Melt Act, the New York for All Bill and the Dignity Not Detention Bill that are currently making their way through our state senate and assembly. Through this, I was able to establish connections with local nonprofits and elected officials. I hope to utilize these connections as VPSS to push for more collaboration between the Student Association and the Binghamton community.
Serving as the VPMA of College-in-the-Woods Council, I worked to make sure that the programming of our Hall VPMAs felt connected to the work of the pre-existing multicultural communities and organizations on campus by pushing for more collaboration between the two. Through these collaborations, we were able to introduce College-in-the-Woods students to a larger community on campus while simultaneously boosting attendance and stretching funds further allowing for an increase in programming for all parties.
This summer, I worked as a field organizer on the Miles Burnett campaign. Here, I linked community concerns to policy agendas, improving messaging to low-income and underrepresented neighborhoods and helping to ensure that community concerns were reflected in policy platforms. Specifically, I spoke with voters about the quiet gentrification occurring in Binghamton as students moved off campus and further into Westside Binghamton. I then worked to ensure that the campaign’s housing policy reflected these concerns and offered solutions to these problems. I think it is important for the VPSS office to work with the local community when it comes to issues of housing affordability and tenant protections and I would love to use this experience to advocate for both students and residents with authenticity.
I believe that too often we are taught that success is a one person job and that it has to come at the expense of someone else. I want to use the VPSS office to show that working together for a common good will always be more efficient and more powerful than working only in a vacuum. If organizing has taught me anything it is that we always stand taller when we stand together and I hope to bring that to the VPSS office.
3. Please succinctly describe your platform and what you hope to accomplish through it.
My goal for the VPSS office is to make it more representative of every student and reaffirm its commitment to serve every student on this campus. There is a large portion of this campus who don’t know what the Student Association does and how it benefits them, for some that is because they are not aware of the functions and responsibilities of the SA, for others that is because they just do not see themselves in these institutions and feel like none of the policy coming out of it helps them. If I can change both of those in any capacity then I would feel successful in my job.
My first pillar is accessibility. I want to ensure that campus is accessible in all senses of the word. The VPSS cabinet has recently expanded to include an accessibility liaison, however, this role still feels like an afterthought and does not have the support it needs to be impactful. I want to work over the summer to build out this role and establish a strong foundation so that come August we can start tackling big issues. One of those big issues is the lack of physical accessibility on campus. I want to expand the presence of QR code accessibility reporting on our campus. I then want to use that data to map out campus accessibility so that we can see which areas demand the most attention and even provide real time tracking and routing so that if a door stops working, a student can get redirected to the nearest working entrance.
My second pillar is affordability. There is a large opportunity gap on campus surrounding economic status. Students from lower socio economic backgrounds are often forced to make difficult choices in order to get by or to get ahead while other students simply do not need to worry about these issues. As a student who has needed to weigh the pros and cons of missing class to pick up shifts at work, I know first hand that these choices only jeopardize student success. My personal favorite affordability policy establishes a grant that would help to reduce the cost of summer and winter courses. I plan on working with the Faculty Senate and individual departments to develop this grant in a way that allows for it to last for years to come.
My final pillar is accountability. I believe that, as institutions, both the student association and Binghamton University have a lot of room for improvement when it comes to accountability. My goal for this pillar is to restore trust in specific branches of the Student Association as well as encourage proactivity when it comes to harm reduction on campus. For my initiative to provide Narcan and Alcohol Poisoning education to all incoming students, I want to model it off of the 20:1 training. I also want to work closely with ResLife to get Narcan inside residential halls in the same way that reproductive health resources are available.
Overall, I see my policy as deceptively bold. In reality, a lot of these large changes are based off of pre-existing initiatives or are a natural progression of the services we already provide. I want my policy to feel creative and bold and maybe even a little hard to accomplish because I firmly believe that if we only look for easy solutions then we can only address easy problems. Progress is a process, but just because it isn’t easy does not mean it is not worth doing.
4. How does your background influence what you are able to offer the campus community?
I believe that my background has informed so much of my life. It is what has kept me at Binghamton, it is what got me into the VPSS race and it is what prepares me the most to take on the role of VPSS. A lot of my largest policy priorities were developed because I found myself living the need for change.
My idea of extended bus routes during finals and midterm weeks came from me walking home in a snow storm from my midnight shift at Target, just to head straight to Bartle and study for another eight hours. My idea for making summer and winter courses more affordable came from my inability to pursue certain interests without delaying my graduation date and not having affordable alternatives. My experiences as a student who works, as a student of color, and as a queer student have all shaped my platform in different ways.
As political activist chair of SHADES, I understand the ways in which multicultural organizations feel supported by the Student Association. I also see clearly the areas that need improvement. This outlook allows for me to push for institutional changes that better help the student organization serve every student, not just some of them. I hope to work with the Finance Committee to help create an institution that students of color can trust.
However, I think my background can only get me so far. Over the past few weeks, I have been meeting with student organizations to share my platform with them, and from these meetings I have found that there are many important issues on this campus that I simply would not notice unless someone else pointed it out to me. There is a level of trust necessary for anyone to be able to enter a community that they themselves might not be a part of and to offer help. That trust is earned through showing up, through collaboration, and through listening. With many administrative roles, I believe that you can teach anyone how to do the job, but you can’t teach them how to care. They either do or they do not. I hope my care shines through in every aspect of my campaign.
5. What is your favorite memory from your time at Binghamton University?
My favorite memory from my time at Binghamton has to be this past Sex Carnival. I love seeing large-scale events come to fruition and I think every part of the event was fun and energizing. Working together to create something of that scale always feels stressful and nerve wracking but seeing Old Union Hall so packed that I couldn’t even sit to watch performances left me so proud of my fellow E-Board members and of the community I found on campus. My heart always feels more full after large events!