“It’s really important that we’re on the same page … that we’re still a community, that we can also make the rest of the black students on campus feel like they could have a home or somewhere to go.”

“I sort of think of this work of [our staff] is part of a revolution. This country is failing so many kids, and everybody seems to turn the other way. I find that people who feel really passionate about that and feel determined to make it better and determined to give our kids exactly what they deserve end up doing really well.”

“We were totally unprepared for what we saw and who we met. It was so far from what could happen in our country. We couldn’t get our heads around it. What really inspired and motivated us to start SBP was meeting people who were affected by Katrina, for the first time in their lives, had to wait in line for food. Their lives were in complete turmoil. And there was no clear path to get home.”

“I found that it was a great way to deepen the connections I was making with people and also the stories we were able to tell. There’s a real connection that can be paid through an audio story.”

“Hopefully the sold-out, limited-edition ones will fuel the exposure to the one that’s mass-produced. Then I will keep building on the ones that are mass-produced, and then eventually I’ll have a collage of watches I know people like, not that I’m guessing [they like].”

“The Intersectional Social Progress pledge is something that we want to be a core document for every single interaction we have—so we want that to be a fundamental basis for those relations. Whether we’re creating the new coalition of student governments or working with the Jesuit Student Government Alliance, we want to make sure that we’re all on the same fundamental page.”

“I think that [these experiences are] very important for a person who’s going to serve in a role of student government—it obviously can’t be someone who loves Boston College, because if you really, really love Boston College, and think that everything is perfect, there’s going to be no more room for improvement.”

“We need to have a culture of respect because sometimes people, especially people who are in the margins, do not feel as though they are respected here. You know, there’s a great song about it. ‘R-E-S-P-E-C-T.’ These things ring true throughout history, and we need to bring it here at Boston College.”

“At this point … there isn’t enough actionable change in UGBC organizationally to say, ‘If we do something out of the norm and elect someone that’s so young, you know, is the world going to collapse?’ We really don’t see much how many steps backwards we can take because the organization is not a cohesive unit.”