I was fully prepared to attend the RSO summit this past Saturday, recently renamed Leadership Connect. My mindset entering Connect was entirely negative. Having sat through this event in the three years past for either The Stute or the Art Club (or both), I was not looking forward to a PowerPoint presentation containing information that I could access online. However, I was excited to bring my laptop, work on my thesis, and eat some SGA-funded pizza.
Well, when I realized I had no idea where Connect was that Saturday morning, I checked my phone and saw it was in Bissinger. I was admittedly frustrated that I had to walk up campus because I live in 604 River and am not a morning person, but once I made the trek, I realized I was going to have no opportunity to use my laptop. With a new five-hour length for the summit, I realized that this was going to be a long day — and I enjoyed every minute of it.
The notion that I enjoyed what is bemoaningly referred to as the “RSO summit” so thoroughly and genuinely is shocking to me. When one of my friends asked how the “summit” was, I replied that it was great. He thought I was being sarcastic. I’ll now conclude my burial of the SGA’s past RSO summits. The reason I am being so harsh is to illustrate how significant this 180-degree shift in SGA-to-RSO proceedings is.
When Assistant Director of Student Life Chris Shemanski kicked off Connect, he reviewed the schedule and explained that there was a keynote speaker discussing mental health, which intrigued me. He also mentioned two breakout sessions that would require everyone to walk from Bissinger to Babbio and back, which annoyed me. Shemanski then reassured everyone that there would be lunch, and that instead of pizza — the most popular extrinsic incentive on Stevens, if not the world — Compass One would be catering food. At that moment, the crowd went mild — strike one. Although Connect seemed to be off to a humdrum start, there was a different aura about the gathering.
One noticeable difference was that everyone, despite embarking on a five-hour journey at 10 a.m. on a Saturday, was cheerful, energetic, and sociable. I sat at a table with folks I knew of but didn’t know well. Strike two, I thought. However, after the first breakout session in Babbio on motivating membership, traveling back to Bissinger with a slew of other RSO leaders and members, an apparently well-known motivational speaker took the stage to talk about mental health, which was something I valued highly at that moment, because I was a bit of an uncertain wreck.
The speaker’s name was Ross Szabo. He was a charismatic, funny, and direct person who told his story about his near-death struggles with bipolar disorder, and flipped the all-too-common perception of mental health on his head. Szabo’s take on mental health was that it was not a negative aspect of humans, something that distinguished the unstable and abnormal from the stable and normal, but a facet of humanity that applies to all and can be refined, just like one’s body. At the end of his talk, Szabo had me filling three pages of my notebook with quotes, diagrams, and advice on how to deal with mental health, not just as some student organization leader, but as a human being.
When the time came for the SGA to speak, which they alone had done in past summits, I was full from Compass One’s delicious chicken parm. Okay, I just read that sentence back to myself, and it looks like it’s laced with sarcasm and disapproval; I assure you, it’s not. After the Chair of the Committee on Student Interests (CCSI) Thomas Daly finished his review of the SGA’s budgeting guidelines and other important dates and such, a final breakout session focused on transitioning to a new executive board, I headed back to Bissinger, filled out a survey, and left.
I spoke to Matt Hunt towards the middle of Connect and explained to him that Connect was so far ahead of anything I have ever seen the SGA pull off, that he deserves huge credit for what he’s done. Hunt was quick to explain to me that he had nothing to do with it; instead, Chris Shemanski, Thomas Daly, and former CCSI Emily Noonan were to thank.
So, to everyone who made Connect happen: thank you. Thank you for making a student-to-student government experience worthwhile, and thank you for covering a topic like mental health seriously and passionately by hiring Szabo. Thus far, the new SGA Cabinet and senators have talked the talk, but with Leadership Connect, I am seeing the first evidence in my soon-to-be four years at Stevens that this iteration of the SGA can walk the walk. It’s a good thing that I’m leaving! (Now, that’s sarcasm.)
