Student Body Vice President Jefferson Ratliff Talks Student Governance, Drug Policy Initiatives, and Senate’s Role in Mediating Campus Controversy
The Quest spoke with Student Body Vice President Jefferson Ratliff, newly elected to the position this past fall semester, to talk about his ongoing initiatives to improve Reed student government, and his plans for improving student services this spring semester as Senate at large continues to respond to the needs of the college post-pandemic. Ratliff, a junior from Dallas, Texas, is majoring in Political Science with a minor in English. He was elected Vice President after serving as a senator, notably chairing the influential Appointments Committee. The following conversation has been edited for clarity.
HK: What sort of experiences did you have before you came to Reed that inspired you to get involved in student government? Why did you want to run for VP?
JR: I was kind of always a bit of a student government kid. I did it for only a bit in high school, but I was pretty involved in it. And my middle school as well on…student council and event planning stuff. So yeah, it's always sort of been a part of my extracurriculars.
I really wanted to run for VP – it’s kind of similar [to] why I ran for Senate. I felt like the work wasn't done. And I felt like I got to the point where I became really experienced in Senate. I'd been around for a while and I wanted to have that wisdom and knowledge and be able to give it to new members and help lead a little bit more. And I was chair of the Appointments Committee (APPCOM) for three semesters, and that sort of became my whole Senate life, and it became really hard to do other projects. And so I wanted to be able to continue to work on harm reduction and drug policy. Stuff like what we did with the locker and SSDP’s (Students for Sensible Drug Policy) absence. As well as getting back to more bureaucratic committee work that's a huge part of Senate. Being on APPCOM fully consumed me.
HK: What specific initiatives/projects are you hoping to pursue as VP? What initiatives/projects from your time as a senator are you hoping to continue?
JR: Right now we're working, hopefully, to revive SSDP or find a new way to sort of take over a lot of the services they were providing, particularly the locker room, in the GCC for students. They had a sort of harm reduction locker that had, like, drug weight scales and fentanyl testing strips. A few like other items like education cards for students. For more responsible drug use. I know that me as well as Bella Moore, who's now a senator, we’re both very interested in that harm reduction aspect, and so we've worked with HCC (Health and Counseling Center), as well as with the pool hall to revitalize the locker – that's an ongoing project – as well as working on a sustainable plan for APPCOM – hiring and promoting positions, and really being able to build up a strong base of applicants for our positions on Senate.
HK: Could you explain the role of Vice President? Does it carry any unique responsibilities?
JR: The vice president has two main tasks. There's a few key committees that the vice president is always on. I'll be working with Andee [Gude] on Commencement Committee because that's an executive committee, as well as on the Alumni Board, helping advise alumni events and providing a student perspective there. And then the main VP role is to sort of serve as a bridge between Senate and Treasury, and more specifically APPCOM and Treasury, and work on communication between them. The big thing that I want to do in my role is be a real support for senators as well as for Andee, who’s very busy and very sort of spread out and involved across campus, and sort of be able to help manage and help keep everything organized and help work with senators on achieving their goals and always checking in. That's one of my big goals.
HK: As a former senator yourself, how are you working to initiate the new members and help them come into their own?
JR: Well, we just had orientation on Sunday (1/21), which is really helpful for obviously just getting oriented and understanding what the position looks like. And then I'm hoping this semester to really check in. One of the goals that I have, more broadly, for Senate is that I think since COVID we became a real crisis management like ‘as they roll in,’ sort of responsive body, and I think that also happened at the college in a lot of ways. I talked to professors who expressed really similar things on the faculty side, and same with staff, and so now it's about working on being really proactive and really project-based and really working on finding problems and talking to the students, building that engagement, and then utilizing our sort of, bureaucratic involvement in the school to really try to make that change. While that is a lot of what we've been doing in the past, I think we're now in the space to sort of be able to ramp that up and be more proactive now that we've built this more stable culture.
HK: You were the APPCOM chair for a long time as a senator. Does the VP sit on any committees?
JR: Yes, I'm on a variety of committees. I'm working on the CSO liaisonship as well as with the HCC Committee. Legislation Committee and Commencement like I mentioned. Andee and I will also be meeting with Phyllis [Esposito] at OID (Office for Institutional Diversity) pretty regularly, which is something that Sean [Brown] and Safi [Zenger] started, so sort of keeping up with what's happening with inclusivity and diversity and those sorts of initiatives and what support they need from Senate.
HK: Since you’re in this new role, are there any projects from your time as a senator that you are passing along to other members now?
JR: A lot of it’s APPCOM things. Lew (Senator Lindsay Worrell) is our new Appointments chair. That’s really just working on promotions, working on better communication, and finding new ways to try to bring applicants in and get in contact with them which has been a struggle. All throughout my time as chair we were having trouble with fielding applicants, and I think it's on us to be more transparent and accessible to the student body and really put ourselves out there and do more postering and find more engagement. Because when we do those things, it's not night and day, but it improves a lot.
HK: From the events leading up to Paul Currie’s resignation to the ongoing student-led organizing regarding the war in the Middle East, how do you think Senate should respond to campus controversies and tension within the student body, or between the student body and the administration?
JR: I think that in a lot of ways, it's the thing that we're trying to navigate. I think it's a lot more clear cut for us when it's instances like the Paul Currie incident – incidents that are happening from a community member and really affecting the community. I remember Senate took a very active role and we held, during our normal Public Time, we held a sort of public town hall meeting for people to talk that was attended by faculty, and by some administrative staff. It was the only time during a public I've ever seen the SU (Student Union) full to the brim, and I'm convinced it will be the only time I will again. We released a lot of statements and open letters and we were talking a lot to the dean of faculty about what we can do and because it was a tricky situation, with tenure and all that.
When there are more of these sort of global news events – that I know a lot of us personally on Senate were very frustrated by, and have a lot of agreements with a lot of the protesters, also had our own disagreements – it becomes difficult in many ways to navigate whether or not we're a fully political body or not. Because we are definitely on the base college level, but it becomes very different when we're commenting on outside things.
I think it's finding the line of commenting about things that are happening on campus, protest-wise, and how that's affecting the campus community, and not over-broadening calls for global policy that we don't really have the power to affect. We do have a variety of opinions on all of it, we're 13-odd people and often think different things, but I think there is a space for us to be sort of more adjusted about what's happening and the emotions and the feelings and the activism that's happening on campus, which a lot of us support in our time outside of Senate. Finding ways to respond to it and provide space for students is definitely something I think we need to work on, and navigating those tricky boundaries.
HK: Last question for you. How do you generally think Senate can improve?
JR: I think we're always working on being more transparent and more open, and I think a lot of the time it's because you know, we run into a busy semester and it becomes really hard and sometimes there's sort of this desire just to kind of like, get to an end result. But I think building upon transparency and more activity within the community, finding more time to listen to students, which we have sort of set out to do, but it's like, how do we get them there?
It's about being really transparent about what committees we are on, when our office hours are, being accessible and available to talk to. Because we know that Reedies have a lot to say about how Reed works and functions for them and we wish that we heard it more directly: more verbalized in in-person meetings and written down in emails and less through the grapevine of our friends in our dorm rooms who are saying ‘x and y,’ which is how I get a lot of my information when I'm advocating for Senate. I've realized the power of that: sitting in committees and saying, ‘well, students say this a lot,’ and you kind of expect them not to listen because they’re staff or faculty who are never really talking to students and never really interacting with them just by the nature of their job. It's so rare that they get that student perspective because students aren't talking to them. And sometimes they're not putting in their best effort to talk to students. But it's really being that bridge between the student body and the administration and I think that's when Senate is strongest. And being really good at doing that role is something we could really improve on.