As the campus enters the middle of the semester, students often focus on their studies. Yet, some students are more invested than others into the wellbeing of campus. Enter AJ Matthews, a history and art major who happens to be the newest legislative advocate for the Solano Student Government.
“So, essentially, being a legislative advocate, I’m our school’s delegate to the SSCCC, which is the Students Senate for California Community Colleges.” They stated. “I joined last semester as a public relations officer, which also made me a part of the executive board. I had no experience. Um, I was kind of just going in blind.” Matthews furthered.
Joining the executive board though is no easy task, with the positions come a heavy responsibility. Yet, they were inspired by their colleagues in the previous semester to join the executive board. This includes last year’s legislative advocate, Carissa Brown.
“I was kind of mentored by Carissa Brown, our previous legislative advocate. She’s graduated now and she’s going to Davis, and she’s working as an intern for the Vacaville Vice Mayor, she’s amazing. She graduated with like five degrees!” Matthews explained.
“What I saw Carissa doing, I saw her organizing events. I saw her paying attention to what students want, what they need, and actually making a difference.” They explained.
Matthews found legislative advocate to be the best method to contribute to the civics on campus.
Matthews explained, “I was interested in that role instead of president because my friend Jedi.. I just really wasn’t interested in it, because when you’re the president of the student government, you have to do all of the Brown Act official proceeding language.”
They further added, “You know, it’s really complicated language that I just don’t want to be responsible for saying, because I’m more interested in actually talking about what we’re trying to do.”
Despite the enthusiasm of Matthews, not everyone is as interested in civics on campus which can be disheartening for members of the student government.
“It’s already a huge problem. Like I said, with the scheduling conflict, it makes it so much harder for us to get stuff done as quickly as we need to.” Matthews explained, following with, “Right now, as a legislative advocate, I’m working on our civic and voter engagement action plans. And this is a comprehensive two year plan.”
The civic life on campus isn’t the only concern, however. Currently, the government focuses on vast topics such as student welfare and academics.
Matthews explained, “And we also want to see a substantive curriculum adjustment. So we were talking about in a retreat, changing the English 2 curriculum to include more media literacy, because we were talking about critical thinking courses and how my friend was in a critical thinking course but only did fiction.”
The overall goal of the student government is to serve the student body, including expanding upon academics as well as the student experience. The government is currently focusing on encouraging students to vote in both local and national elections, developing more clubs, and improving general welfare.
Matthews is one of many leading the charge for campus engagement and is currently planning on helping different programs such as the Puente Project.
The next election is scheduled to begin on voting on April 5th 2025, with candidacy applications already open for the next semester.
