You Should Run
 

In USC student government, where are the women?

This was an LA Times news headline the year I ran for Student Body Vice President at the University of Southern California. The article suggested winning an election at our university is next to impossible unless the candidate is male and holds membership in a fraternity.

It's a reasonable deduction -- especially when we look at the past decade: Not a single woman ran for the position of Student Body President. When I made up my mind to run for President the next year, some recommended I choose a white, Greek-affiliated male to pull votes. But, I believed wholeheartedly my female running mate and I had the best qualifications for the position. I was not about to let our gender hold us back from at least trying. When we won, I knew the accolade of "first dual-female ticket to win in PAC-12 history" mattered because it signaled to other young women they could do it, too.

In the most recent campus election, two dual-male tickets contested for the position of President and Vice President. Although I believe the gentlemen who won have the capacity to make a difference on campus given their skills, I am concerned we will revert to the trend we saw plaguing USC for the past decade. I am concerned it will take another ten years before a woman even tries to run at my university.

So, before I leave office, I want to remind other young women of this lesson I learned during my time in college: Don't let your gender hold you back. And before I graduate, I want to stress the importance of female leadership in student government.

I know there are critics of this argument. We see it in our current national election cycle.

"Gender shouldn't matter." "I'm not going to elect just any woman to office." "Having a uterus doesn't qualify you to be President." (Shoutout to Killer Mike!) "Is student government even relevant?"

Student government leaders often deal with pressing issues such as sexual assault prevention, college affordability, mental health and more. So while some may think we're winning off kitschy slogans to then cruise through our terms, the reality is much different. Student government politics reflect the dire state of gender parity in national politics.

Celia Wright, former Undergraduate Student Government President at Ohio State, ran the first successful dual-female ticket on her campus. When asked about her thoughts on women in student government, she agreed the female lack of representation is a serious problem.

"Women are more likely to pursue leadership positions like USG president when they have role models who have done so, to make them believe it's possible to win and to help them see themselves in the role," she said. "It was hard for me while I was running, to even see myself as USG president, when I had no one (at least visually) like myself who I'd seen done it. I'd known it to be a very masculine thing. The last female was seven years before me."

Non-profit organizations such as Running Start recognize this problem and have launched initiatives to bridge the gap. At USC, in conjunction with the Jesse M. Unruh Institute for Politics, Panhellenic Council, and the Women's Student Assembly, our Undergraduate Student Government hosted an on-campus training for women to run for higher office. The event, Elect Her, was a space for students to discuss why so few women do run for office and find ways in which to empower one another to reach higher.

Although the event did not lead to female contenders in the presidential race, we saw a surge in female involvement in the campus senatorial race. In fact, of the 12 newly elected USG Senators, five are women.

I hope greater efforts are made in future years to invest in similar training programs and discussions to encourage more women to run for public office. If my words have an impact on even one young woman and motivate her to run for Student Body President next year, I will feel so happy. Representation matters. Our voices matter. In the next few months, I'll get ready to step out of office. But let's not make it another decade before our campus hears the click-clack of heels in the USC USG Presidential office. You should run. You can do it. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.












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