Undergraduate Student Government (USG) President Elijah Jenkins was reelected last month after a year in office. He spoke with the Maroon about his achievements so far in USG and what he hopes to accomplish in a second term.
Note: This interview, which was conducted before the USG impeachment proceedings on May 7, has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Chicago Maroon: What initially inspired you to get involved with USG and run for president?
Elijah Jenkins: [My] first year, I knew I wanted to get involved and hopefully try to create more opportunities on campus through student government, so I ran [and became] a representative on College Council. [My] second year, I became College Council Chair, and then this year, I became the president.
I’d say the main reason why I ran for president this past year was really about training. After COVID hit, USG had a really big dive in membership, and part of that dive led to a lack of institutional knowledge and [member] retention. And so, there were people in my own year, and the years above me, [and] very few of their class [members] were [in USG], which means it was mostly underclassmen coming through. They’d be there for a year, and leave; there for a year, and leave. So, my job as president was to mostly work on: “How can we change the social mechanism of USG to make it seem like less of a job and [be] more inclusive and a community?”
So, I started creating general body meetings, social things. We would do training programs for USG members to not only increase retention in USG itself, but to ensure that USG members themselves could advocate more effectively.
CM: How do you define leadership, and how has your definition of leadership evolved since taking office?
EJ: When I first came into a leadership experience, I thought that leadership was defined by impact and results. But often I feel like, at least specifically to student government, results don’t come within a year, especially for longer projects.… At least for me, especially this past year, [I’ve been focused on] seeing engagement. USG members, especially first-years now, are trying to create their own initiatives and are learning how to do so by themselves.
I think that’s [important]—helping train other people [to be] leaders at home—because I’m going to graduate next year, and I would like USG to have members who know what they’re doing. Leadership for me now is mostly about creating opportunities on campus and ensuring that the next generation is able to continue the advocacy work themselves.
CM: What is the best thing that being president has taught you so far?
EJ: I think there are a lot of opportunities as a student government that we currently don’t engage with.… For instance, right now we’re going to do a raffle for students who are low-income or identify as unable to afford [them and] raffle out three diploma frames. Something simple like that can make a really big impact for someone, and it’s not really dealing with policy change or something like that, but [it’s a way in which] USG is able to impact the student experience. So, what it taught me, being president last year, is that USG needs to move away from simple policy change and administration change. [While] I think [that] is effective and good, [we also need to] ask, “What are small ways we can improve social experience between RSOs themselves?”
Being president this year has really taught me to make the social experience more of a top priority.
CM: What do you see as your greatest success as president?
EJ: I’m going to make this a two-part question. My greatest success as a member of Student Government was launching the Igbo course. This past November, [for the] very first year, students could take an Igbo language sequence for three quarters.
I think my biggest impact as president has been seeing the amount of returns for next year. In spring quarter, we had a recorded amount of 59 students within Student Government—that’s including first-years to seniors. We just did an application cycle, and we had a total of 51 reapplicants within student government. This is phenomenal because, [in] my previous years, or even last year coming to this year, we had to fill all the committees with basically new people. Seeing that [the] majority of the members want to come back [and] work [means] the work we’ve been doing this year has been effective.
CM: Are there any initiatives that you launched that didn’t go as planned? And what did you learn from them?
EJ: This year we launched the Greek Life Liaison [program]. Essentially the idea was [that] we wanted a member from [each] fraternity and sorority on campus to be involved in USG. The fraternities and sororities on campus are in student life, and they have a lot of students who care about different issues, but they’re not involved in student government. I wanted our [USG] administration to see ways in which we can impact things they’re already doing.… That was the intention.
The pushback we faced was that not that many people in Greek life want to be in USG, so we only had a total of three people collectively within USG who are [in] Greek life and working on that work. We were trying to create a whole committee out of it, but it didn’t go as planned. I think it’s baby steps, and we’ll try to launch it more next year.
CM: Would you say that Greek life and USG are fundamentally separate aspects of student life?
EJ: The student experience encompasses Greek life. We see UChicago students constantly posting videos of people at parties, so a good amount of the student population, whether a student is in Greek life or not, is actively attending the parties, and the Greek life experience is growing.
So, my goal with that is: What does recognition for fraternities and sororities look like? Some of the sororities want to be recognized by the University, which means there will be more administrative oversight, but fraternities don’t. Personally, I’m not involved in those fraternity and sorority life experiences, so it was really problematic to be advocating on initiatives that would affect a broad segment of the student experience without members from those bodies to begin with. That was the goal [of the Greek life committee].
CM: How has the relationship between USG and the University changed over your tenure?
EJ: I think it’s something that was a lot stronger this year. This year, I made it a goal to focus on making sure our committees are meeting more with direct administration and staff.…
The strength [of the relationship] between USG and administrators has been evolving a lot more, and I think part of the reason [is] that we allowed more agency for [USG] committees was to grow the relationships themselves alongside our support instead of having a cabinet member be the sole liaison with administrators. I think that was part of the reason why a lot of people didn’t stay in USG [before], because they felt like they were not being fully involved in that kind of decision making with staff, with senior leadership.
But overall, the strength [of our relationship] with the administration has grown vastly throughout the past year.
CM: Since you got reelected, what are some goals for the next term and something that you wish to continue?
EJ: The goal is to establish the Greek life committee next year.
The second thing is election turnout. That’s something we’re still facing extreme problems with. We get high [attendance] in the fall from College Council members and first-years, but, by the time it becomes spring, they’re not really that engaged with USG elections, and so another thing I want for next year is actually more public-facing events, so less internal, behind-the-scene policy work [and more] actual USG-sponsored events for the campus.
Another goal is to have more members outside of USG join.
The final big thing is really looking at free speech policies on campus. Specifically, the ways in which our university currently has been engaging with free speech with the Trump administration has been really bad. USG is putting out a petition that we’re going to give to Alivisatos in a couple of weeks—I’m trying to have the College take a stance on it.
We have students coming from across all ways of life: [international] students, first-generation students, low-income students, and the College is [expecting them to] speak out on issues when they are the only one in the room that looks like them. So how can we foster an environment of free speech that allows every single member to be comfortable and in a position to speak up and make their voice known? What I’ve been pushing for at the University is more opportunities for cultural housing or cultural centers on campus to allow the communities that are marginalized on campus to have breathing room and space to be shared beyond RSOs.
The University administration thinks that actually goes against the idea of ensuring that perspectives across demographics are being shared, but I don’t think they realize that sometimes not all communities are able to participate in this process [of free speech] 100 percent. But that’s definitely more of a long-term thing.
