‘LET ME HEAR YOU' BALAC’S CURRENT STUDENT PRESIDENT MESSAGE TO THE CANDIDATES

Hi everyone! Welcome to our exclusive interview with the one and only student representative of BALAC14, ivie Pacharasorn Thummachote! BALAC Presidential Election week is coming up and we are excited to hear from the candidates running for the position, but for now, let us hear from the current student president herself. In this interview, we will be treated with an insight into ivie’s work ethic, a look into the work behind the scenes and her words to the candidates of the upcoming BALAC15 Presidential Election!

Let us start by having you introduce yourself to our readers because it has been a year since we last heard from you and BALAC 15 is officially here.

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‘Hello, I am ivie, BALAC14 year representative and now BALAC student president. I do not know what I should be telling you guys. I do not know how familiar you guys are with me, so we will see how things go with this interview and whatever you want to know, I would be happy to tell you guys.’

How is it, working as a student representative of BALAC 14? What is the experience like?

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‘People hear the term year representative — definitely the term representative itself means that you are supposed to represent the student’s voice and the sentiment from your student body year, whatever they want to do or what concerns they might have. You are supposed to be kind of the bridge between the student body and student administration. That is definitely one of the job descriptions, not just for the student representative but the entire student committee overall. I do definitely think that, more so than just being a representative, per se, there is also the aspect of organisational work, for example, student events. Luckily, we have a very good faculty for our program because in a lot of ways, a lot of these events we have to do isn’t something that the faculty wants to do, but more so what the student body wants to do — or even more so, traditionally, a lot of what is considered faculty work is put into the responsibility of the students, so, we have a lot of freedom and autonomy to decide how we want to conduct events or what we want to do – that’s what makes it an important responsibility that you need to keep in mind.’

Speaking about events. We recently held a BALAC trip, a fun trip for our newcomers BALAC15 and a first in 2 years; tell us about the work behind the scenes, was it chaotic and how do you think it had panned out.

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‘So, first of all, a bit of a correction there, it is the first one that is ‘organised’ in 3 years because BALAC12 got to go but did not get to organise, and that is important speaking as a student representative because, not just me, but the entire team, we had admittedly quite a hard time thinking about how we would work around organising this trip. Other than what we had from the current student body, only from the perspective of people who have attended the trip from BALAC12, which are the fourth year, we did not really have anyone to tell us about the organisational aspect of the BALAC trip because you know ‘unfortunately’ or well,’ ‘fortunately’ they had graduated. But, we did contact P’Junior, although he had already graduated, to come help us because we really needed the input on the organisation of the trip. So, that really helped us with the staff structures and also the scheduling, the ‘สันทนาการ’ (recreation) and other activities that we took inspiration from the agenda of their year, but, because, again, it has not been organised in 3 years, has not been held for 2 years, that meant that, a lot of the ‘BALAC traditions’ definitely had been lost. So, because of the timespan, most of us that organised the trip had never gone to the BALAC trip – it is a bad thing in the way that we did not really have anything to go off of but also a good thing that because we did not have anything to go off of so we could come up with really original ideas. One aspect of the BALAC trip that I definitely considered as a highlight is the ‘Murder Mystery’, for example. That has not happened before.’

What advice would you give to the candidates, given that you have been through the election campaign and now have a year of experience as a student representative?

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‘So, there is one student representative needed to represent the program, for example, in the international open house, just as a student representative. But, even if it is just you, things that you definitely have to have in your student committee, your vice-president, secretary, treasurer and other positions depending on how you want to organise the staff structures – all these people are important to organising whatever you collectively want to do. Of course, you have to take it seriously, you do need to have responsibility and organise the work, but at the same time, you are student representative; you are not the prime minister. It is more so about working together and everyone having the input, because when you actually work, there is no such thing as ‘I am the president, you listen to me!’ – It is very much a ‘We are a team, we are working together’. So, you need to keep in mind that while you should be responsible, while you should take your work seriously and have a good work ethic, you definitely also have to remember that you are just a student with friends organising this. That is a very important aspect of being in a student committee that people should remember. Maybe not the best way to put it but: you are not that important – we are not that important.’

Last year, during the BALAC 14 student representative election live finale, you were asked, “if you were to compare yourself and your working style to a living thing, what would it be and why?” To which you answered that you do not really have one specific answer that your work style changes along with the people you work with, perhaps something that is adaptable.

After a year of work as a student representative of BALAC 14, cooperating and engaging with many members within the council, do you have a new answer or are you sticking with what you told us a year ago?

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‘I wish I could find an animal; the specific question was an animal! I wish I could have found an animal and be like one of those cool houses in Game of Thrones, Harry Potter and have an animal representative that describes like eight cool characteristics and adjectives – I still do not have that. My answer has not changed, and I really hope that someone reading my answer will not say that it is bullshit, when I say that I would like to adapt to other people working with me, when they read that they would not go ‘That is bullshit, she is not adaptable at all!’. I hope that that is true, so, yeah, no change in answer.’

Being adaptable is something that you value greatly then, is that what you look for in a candidate if you were to be one of the voters?

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‘I definitely feel like it is very important. I am not saying that you cannot have the way you prefer because I also have my preferences. If you want to be a representative, you cannot just sway with everything – you need to have somewhat of a compass, whether it be morally or whatever; otherwise, it [work] is not going to go anywhere. It is just that because you are one person representing, still, that word ‘Representing’, that is such a big word; representing. Which you are not doing that really, you are just kind of being a bridge, rather than, like, representing other people. To be a representative, you need to be able to accept that people might have opinions that you disagree with, that you will or may, be instilled with biased but you are trying to kick that out, representing them accurately to what they are trying to convey – you should not let your biases affect how you work with other people and dictate the opinions of people you are supposed to relay accurately. So, definitely being adaptable, whether you like it or not, is kind of a trait that you need to have.’

Lastly, then, are there any final words you would like to say to the candidates running for the student representative of BALAC15 role?

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‘It is not something that we actually have gotten to use, but my motto was ‘Let Me Hear You’, so I will say the same thing to the candidates; let me hear you. I want to hear what you actually have to say because if you are not genuine from the start, you are not going to be able to work with people as they come in more and more and there are more staff, more work and the whole team – you have got to be genuine. And then, after being genuine and finding other people to work with you, then, you adapt to each other, that is how you can work with little to no conflict.’

Alright. Thank You for your time, ivie.

‘Thank You’

That is the end of our exclusive interview with the current student president of BALAC. We will now be looking forward to the upcoming week for our Presidential Election. However, in the upcoming days, pieces of our coverage will be up on both BALAC.FM social media platforms and the website itself at https://balac14stuco.wixsite.com/balacfm, so be sure to keep an out for it!

Written by: Noppasin Yafa

Proofread by: Pacharasorn Thummachote