Newly appointed Paige Burgess and Elijah Federman, President and Vice President of DePauw Student Government (DSG) respectively talk about their journeys in student government and student concerns on campus.
Initially President Burgess didn’t have a passion for politics or student government growing up. They explained that they had confusing childhood ideals on religion and politics.
“My family has always said we shouldn't talk about religion or politics, and I realized me not talking about religion or politics has made me not being comfortable in my identity as a non binary person…I had time over the lockdown to think about how shying away from politics doesn't solve problems and it doesn't make you more comfortable in what your doing.”
Eventually, Burgess applied to be a senator during their freshman year. One of their most notable written resolutions advocated for free access to menstrual products on campus.
“The resolution has been signed into official university policy at this point, so it will be like that for the continuation of the university. With that, and the positive feedback I received, and how it helped people . . . I realized I really like representing everyone, but especially representing people who may not always be at the forefront of the mind of an institution..”
Unlike Burgess, Federman had a passion for politics and student body government from a young age. Federman, originally from Memphis, Tennessee, attended St. George's Independent School Episcopalian school for middle school, and later on Christian Brothers High School to play basketball and lacrosse. His path to DePauw came to light because of basketball and playing for the legendary Coach Fenlon. He doesn’t play basketball anymore, but does play lacrosse for Coach Ambrose.
When speaking about his first steps with DSG, he elaborated on his involvement with student government since middle school, leading to his inclination towards pursuing leadership roles and being a voice for the community.
“I like being able to take leadership, to take charge of the situations, and like I said, be a voice to people who don’t necessarily have a voice.”
Federman also speaks of how he got involved with DSG at DePauw, how it wasn’t a journey that was straightforward but one of chance, opportunity, and determination.
“I always wanted to get involved with student government as a freshman and there aren’t necessarily very many opportunities. Freshmen aren’t allowed to hold [executive] positions just because elections happen the year prior, but when I was a freshman the vice president of programming actually stepped down which left a vacant position for me to fill. . . and luckily I was chosen and that made me the vice president of programming for DePauw.”
Having held this position as a freshman and sophomore, Federman, now a junior, spoke to his journey in joining Paige’s campaign, his admiration for Paige’s hard work, and how he became Vice President for DSG.
“Paige approached me about being their executive vice president in the campaign. Naturally, I’ve always kind of wanted to be a vice president or maybe even a president potentially, so yeah I love the opportunity and I hopped on it immediately,” Federman shared. He further elaborated on how Paige’s previous senatorial initiatives such as free access to menstrual products inspired him to learn as much as he could before taking on this huge responsibility as Vice President.
“Last year’s EVP was Mohammed Rafa Jamil, and I kind of worked closely with him, especially when I decided I was going to be running and started kind of speaking with him every week to see what he was doing. . . I knew I was going to be taking on the role the next year, I kind of wanted to hit the ground running. I think we've already started to do that thus far, we’re already working on I believe seven resolutions already in like two weeks into school so that’s fantastic.”
Burgess and Federman also speak to their vision for DePauw. Federman explained,
“That’s not up to DSG as much as it is to the entire student body. I mentioned earlier that my favorite part about student government was giving a voice to everyone. Our job in our constitution, our role is defined as how we can serve the needs of the students of DePauw. So, a big thing that we need to do is to listen to the concerns and voices of the people.”
Federman also continues saying that DSG is always open for complaints on issues or grievances the student body wants changed.
“DSG always has a suggestion box, it’s always set up, you can turn it in online or in person and it's for the purpose of listening to people . . . right now we’re working on setting up a way to better hear the concerns of the students.”
Burgess also commented that DSG’s current plan is different from past plans in that there isn't anything that they are changing. Instead, they are looking to consult with the people who will be affected by the changes.
“A big thing that we really have been focusing on is making sure that in our decision making process about changes that need to happen, we are consulting with the people with which those decisions are for,” Burgess explained. “So, a big thing about our platform is that we didn’t say that we are changing this about Greek life, we’re changing this about the School of Music, we’re changing this about these people. A lot of it is setting up structures so that people who are having problems or who have grievances about a particular system can come to us. . .A big part of our initiative in general is hearing what other students have said: annoyances, grievances, or things they wish to change and finding ways to change them with the structures that we know work.”
When speaking about more sensitive issues like the recent cut of the New York Posse program, both Federman and Burgess were honest about the situation.
Federman initially spoke to his opinion on the Posse decision, stating, “The big problem with the cancellation of the New York Posse and the big plan they rolled out in that email it has less to do with the idea and more to do with the roll out, so the way the school did it . . . it kind of lacked the transparency that I think it needed, and they did a really poor job of explaining what was actually happening.”
Federman further explained that the university had an allocated amount of money towards the New York Posse program, yet eventually decided to diversify their student pool with applicants from lower socio-economic areas such as Chicago, Memphis, Atlanta, or New York.
Federman continued, “We’ve worked with Posse in the past . . .we asked them if they could send us people that wanted to go to DePauw, because we had a lot of students who felt that the award of being a Posse scholar was ‘golden handcuffs’. Posse doesn't let you go wherever you want, they make you go to a school in a list that they provide and so a lot of students that end up at DePauw, say that [they]didn’t even put DePauw on [their] list. . . . There are other programs that do have students who are choosing DePauw, and they don’t get to come here cause we're not working with them, we’re working with Posse instead. . . . There are hundreds of programs that do the same thing that Posse does, and we're gonna work with one or a couple ones to get students from all over. The school did a very poor job of explaining that, and it kind of lacked the transparency [needed] and I think students were right in pushing back and backlash.”
Burgess also elaborated on Dr. Lori White's honesty about the absence of communication with faculty and staff upon consulting with the board of trustees, who lacked understanding and involvement in the student experience. “The damage has been done but now students with initiative have a lot of ability to change what DePauw looks like in the future even when these things go into place . . . Now, because the people who made those decisions recognize they messed up, we’re in a good spot to have our voices heard drastically more seriously,” they added.
Apart from the situation with New York Posse, both Federman and Burgess also spoke about the sensitive topic regarding potential budget cuts and how they're going to handle that situation.
“Something we're thinking about is that we’re in talks with Andrea Young who’s the Vice President of Finance and Administration so we fully understand the financial necessities that come with budget cuts and capacity building,” Burgess explained. “A big part of that is not drawing too much from the endowment . . . There’s a federal responsibility that we only pull a certain amount out, and we’re pulling out too much right now . . . However there are budget cuts that affect people disproportionately, especially with things like jobs, student workers, work study, that kind of thing. . . What we’re planning on doing is making sure whenever these decisions are made . . . that we understand we need to look at them with the appropriate amount of nuance [to] make sure that students aren’t being affected in a way that puts students at a disadvantage compared to others in the overall university budget cutting.”
Federman agreed, stating how, “There is a federal mandate that says that we as an institution are required to responsibly spend our endowment and they give a percentage number where you’d be considered spending responsibility. We’re above that number and if we continue at the rate we're spending and go beyond that number, theoretically we can be sued for a lot of money. We have to fix that and our spending has been way way up because of COVID. The current day and age there are a lot less students going to college and even less are going to liberal arts colleges, so a lot of students are going to the big schools."
He added that DePauw is proactively trying to allocate their funds responsibly to provide quality education as enrollment numbers decline across the country and to support the construction of the business school. This is attributed to the increase of high school students' interest in business majors, allowing DePauw to gain more revenue while ensuring consistent operations.
Both Burgess and Federman also spoke on the recent resurgence of COVID and how they would handle this situation if COVID suddenly spread rapidly.
“We have an emergency fund that is saved for things like that, so if Covid would suddenly come back there is money to give for people like food trucks, rides home, or flights home for international students, we don’t want them to be stranded here, things like that. Money is set there in case of an emergency for if there is a sudden boom, we have the money available and we have the connections with people who are set up institutionally to handle it.”
“That’s actually what made us set up the emergency fund, that is a very, very recent…we established it just in case if there is another pandemic we need to be prepared and that was a great idea by the president at the time, [who was] Demetrius Morrow.],” Federman explained.
Both Burgess and Federman gave final remarks on what they hope to accomplish and achieve for the good of the student body and DePauw as a whole.
“We are making very sure to not make assumptions on what the needs of the campus are, therefore anything that is considered a grievance or needs to be changed should be voiced to us,” Burgess said. “Like I’m not part of the New York Posse program, so it’s not my place to say what the needs of that program are. But I might be able to represent the School of Music or Honor Scholars because I’m part of it…I know that to have these initiatives it requires communication with the people who are affected and the people who can facilitate conversations.”
DePauw is an incredible liberal arts institution, and with Paige Burgess and Elijah Federman as DSG President and Vice President respectively, there is a bright future ahead for all Tigers in the Greencastle community.