By Elizabeth Levi, News Correspondent
Huntington News: How did you first get involved with SGA?
Mike Karolewski: I joined two years ago, at the end of my freshman year. My friend lived in the same hall and she was a senator, and she kind of convinced me to come out and check out SGA, so I guess I was kind of talked into it. It took some time for me to love SGA, it was a tough transition just to get to know people as a freshman, I was kind of overwhelmed, but throughout the year I met a lot of great people and built some strong relationships. I got involved with the finance board, and that is what I chair this year, and that is what brought me further and further into the pull of SGA and made me realize I wanted to stay in a leadership position going into next year.
HN: What is your current position on SGA?
MK: My title is Comptroller, my friends call me Troll-Compter for laughs and giggles, but chairing the finance board. What the Finance Board is – it is a group of students and a staff member from the student activities business office, and our charge is to allocate the student activity fee which students all pay into. It’s a sum of about $2 million to be distributed to student groups every year, so every student pays $120, so we’re in charge of making sure that the money is put to its best uses. Student groups come, they make presentations, they budget and then they come and present it to the finance board. We vote whether or not to give them all the money they want, to deny them all the money they want or to give them somewhere in between. That’s basically our job, so if you ever see a poster advertising an event and you see a sticker that says ‘Supported by the student activity fee,’ the event is through us.
HN: How has your current position [as the comptroller of the Finance Board] prepared you for next year?
MK: It’s been a lot of work, I’ve been in contact with so many student groups – it’s a great way to work with so many different student groups across campus outside of SGA, so I think that that kind of networking will prepare me well for next year, to know that I have connections outside of SGA to hopefully bring them in and get them involved, which is what we are always trying to do is to get out into the student body. Further, I’ve been on the e-board for a year, so I’ve been a part of all the executive decisions that were made in student government this year, so I know a lot about what the goals were for this year, what we accomplished and what we still need to do. Having that insight will be valuable going forward, knowing what we want to do and how I can continue that role.
HN: What are your goals for next year?
MK: Something big that we did this year was kind of rebranding SGA as a resource for students that people can actually take seriously. A lot of people never looked at SGA as having a good reputation and being able to do anything, so this year we got students out into student groups. We started the student ambassador program, which is getting senators to go tell all the different student groups what we’re actually working on and to get any ideas that they have. It’s in its first year, so there are a lot of tweaks that I want to make to it next year, to make sure that we are still getting representation from all student groups and people who are not involved in student groups at all because they still have a voice. We also have the “I Am a Husky Award” which I want to keep up that’s new that’s recognizing students on campus who are doing great things. I want to transform that into something that we do that makes people feel good that’s an established award on campus. I want that to be something that SGA is recognized for: getting out and recognizing students because we represent them. Since I am the vice president, most of my goals are internally based. I know Noah’s are more external and work with the administration. A lot of my goals are to develop the new senators. In SGA, we have a lot of great new people who joined this year. There’s a lot of youth in SGA right now, and one of my big goals is to kind of cultivate them so they can be the best leaders that they can be because I think that is what SGA can offer its members, so I want to continue that. Another big goal I want is to work on retention because SGA loses a lot of its senior members and that’s just losing a lot of ideas and knowledge about how this whole process works, so next year one of my big goals is to increase the retention rate and get older students involved too.
HN: What’s your favorite part of Northeastern?
MK: It’s tough. I guess just all the different options. I know that’s kind of generic but when you think of all the different things that students are doing, just my first two years I got to go abroad on a dialogue, I got to go on co-op, I got to be a part of SGA and get involved in things like that. There’s no limit as to what students have access to if they’re willing to take advantage of those resources.
HN: What is your opinion about the referendum question on DivestNU?
MK: We [Noah and I] never really formed our own opinions based on it since it was a part of our election and we didn’t want to campaign for it one way or the other. Our opinion on the matter is that DivestNU is very passionate about their cause and we wanted to make sure that they had the opportunity to get out into the student body and to get the sense of the student body. Student government, we don’t try to make political stances like this because we realize there are students who have varying views. What we support, to be very political, is the right for DivestNU to have the opportunity to engage with the student body and to hear their voices and to use that in their talks with the administration to kind of move their cause along.
HN: What are some current projects underway in SGA that you plan to continue into the next year?
MK: The two biggest projects underway are that ambassador program and the I Am a Husky Award. Those are two new things that went for a trial run and went well and need to be developed, so those are the two things that I plan to continue working on next year. We’re also looking for another system that is an online platform for student ideas. We used to have a software called NU Ideas that wasn’t engaging students, so we definitely need a new platform to make students feel that SGA is accessible, so exploring those options, making sure that people aren’t afraid to submit their ideas, because that’s what we definitely need, so that’s something we will definitely be looking at. Our campaign, our motto was “Your voice. Your ideas. Your university,” so we are really just concentrating on building that bridge between the students and the administration, and to do that we need to get the ideas and the voice of the students.
HN: Where is your favorite place to eat on campus?
MK: Well, I don’t want to sound boring, but it has got to be Rebecca’s for breakfast. I go there far too often and get a nice cheese omelet and bacon to start my day. I love Rebecca’s breakfast.
HN: Where have you been on co-op?
MK: I’ve been on one co-op. It was at an economic consulting firm, and it was really cool because they had just branched off from a big company, so I was there during their first year and it was a group of 10 people, so it was a really really small team. They were making decisions about where the company was going in the future, how they wanted to start building up their clients, what kind of corporation they wanted to be – all these big ideas that they wanted to set – and they included me in those meetings. It was really interesting to see the birth of the company, really, and get to be involved with that. For them to have me there was very, very cool. When they had a couple of interns during the summer, and I was there, they let me take the lead. I had the chance to manage other people and delegate work which I think are very important skills for SGA especially as an executive vice president.
HN: How do you want to give back to the Northeastern community?
MK: I definitely love this school, obviously, that’s why I want to be in SGA. I feel like it’s a good avenue to kind of help the students, help the school get better for the students. I think my best option right now to give back is to be in this position and to continue working to make sure we are engaging with the student bodies because that’s how we are going to change the school.
HN: What other activities on campus are you involved with?
MK: I’m part of a fraternity, the newest one on campus, Delta Tau Delta. We actually got fully recognized and initiated on Saturday. That was really cool. It was an all day event with our rituals and we’re officially brothers now. I joined that a year and a half ago, so that was great to go through that whole process of being a founding father and starting a new organization on campus. It’s a great way to meet new people too. I’m also a volunteer. I tutor kids at the Boys and Girls Club for Roxbury as a part of Math Stars, which is a program that is in a few different places around the city, lots of tutors going out to different places to help students, get them motivated to do work, teach them math especially and do any homework they have.
HN: Do you have any special talents?
MK: I used to play the trumpet. I used to blog, and then I stopped because I got really busy. What else? I wrote a book in high school. It was pretty mediocre though.
