Student Rep Candidate Interviews: Annie Liu

Annie Liu

Interviewed by Marion Lefèvre

What motivated you to run for the Student Rep position?

In everyday life, there are certain things that I think could be improved in almost all areas of student life. That’s the main reason I’m running for Student Rep. By talking to people, I realized I’m not the only one with these problems and, as Student Rep I want to be available to organize student movements to make improvements to our lives.

Do you have any previous experience, relevant to the Student Rep position…Or not, as you prefer, that you would like to share with us?

Yeah, I was the head of a lot of clubs in highschool and was pretty active on campus. So that really taught me a lot of organizational ability and how to mobilize people and play on everyone’s strengths to get pretty much what we all wanted. An other thing is that this year, at the beginning of the year, a couple of friends and I saw that there was a need for a more active LGBT+ association and so I went up to Mr. Ruchet… he was actually really chill about it! The administration is not as daunting and as ironfisted as a lot of us think. When I went to his office, and pitched the project, he was just like: “Yeah. Go for it.”. I asked if I could get it credited, he said yes.

What challenges are you expecting to overcome as a Student Rep?

The main thing is trying to get organized things within people’s time schedules, since we are all so busy here at Sciences Po! It’s a challenge to get everyone to work together on a big project and have it done extremely efficiently since we have academic work to do and other stuff as well. I think that the solution to that would just to be patient, and things will happen as efficiently as possible. It is a reality we have to face, that everyone is so busy with their life. Not just us students, but also the administration.

What do you think about the Student Rep Campaign process?

It’s fun! (laughs) Actually, at first, I was kind of reserved about campaigning on personal qualities. I personally don’t believe in saying “oh, I bought a bunny costume the other day, vote for me, I’m a cool person!”. That’s not a judge of whether or not you’re relatable or approachable. I think I want to run more based on ideas and try to show my classmates that I can get stuff done and I would be an effective Student Rep in representing all of our interests as a student body.

What is unique about your platform?

One of the main things I want to do is create a clear path for a student referendum. There are certain things that the admin either ignores or doesn’t approve that a majority of the student body would actually want to have. I think that if we have a process – since we’re all in a democracy, even though it may not always feel like it is -, we can use the stuff we are learning in class and really apply it to our own lives, saying “hey! we want this done, and so we are going to write a petition gathering people’s names and signatures and bring it to M. Ruchet’s office or someone’s and say that this much of the student body supports this. You can’t ignore it, do something about it or at least talk to us about it”.

First, of course, you have to start small with things that bother us in everyday life and that would improve life a little bit more: fixing the coffee machines and having regular maintenance for instance! Things such as: if there’s no trashcan in the hallway, it would be very convenient to put one there, fix the water machine that’s near the library, have more of those snack/water things distributed around the campus. In the middle class, sometimes you want to go out and have a quick coffee and a quick snack but then… You have to run fromt he top of C building to in front of the library. That’s just inconvenient.

In three words, what is the role of a Student Rep?

I’d say participation, approachability and professionalism.

Miscellaneous question: what are you the proudest of in your hometown?

I’m from New Jersey. I actually love New Jersey. There’s a lot of things to hate on NJ, How I met your mother hates on NJ, but still. Jersey pride? We have Princeton University. Jon Stewart lives in NJ. And I keep saying that NJ is on the right side of the river, compared to New York, because we are clean, no pidgeon poop everywhere nor traffic, but we still have the beautiful NYC skyline to appreciate! And also Colbert lives in NJ too. Jon Stewart has an animal rescue now: he turned his house in an animal rescue, I think.