AS President Noelani Defiesta smiles in AS staff photo. Joe Addison // AS Review
By Soleil de Zwart
In an interview with the AS Review, Associated Students President Noelani Defiesta spoke on her experience running for the position of AS President, what motivates her and her goals for the year.
“I feel like all these positions [AS Executive Board] and also this position, we act as like a liaison with the relationship that we have with the administration, the board of trustees and with students, in being able to create a bridge between those relationships,” Defiesta said.
While the AS VP positions have specific areas of focus, the AS President’s priority is supporting those positions, according to Defiesta.
Originally Defiesta had considered running as a student senator for the College of Business and Economics after the senate had been announced.
“I was working as a research analyst for the Center for Economics and Business Research, I was working as a student ambassador for the Foundation, I was working as a manager for the phonathon with the Alumni Association, and I was working as a canvasser for Sharon Shewmake’s campaign,” Defiesta said.
Defiesta decided to drop from running as a student senator for the College of Business and Economics after realizing she was too busy with the four jobs she was working and school, she said.
The other jobs were supportive of Defiesta prioritizing the AS President position and she is now only working on the board, according to Defiesta.
In the time between the first student senate elections and spring elections for the executive board, Defiesta spoke to friends, family and coworkers about running for AS President.
“And so then I kind of just started speaking it into existence after that,” Defiesta said.
Through speaking with other students Defiesta further developed her platform of collaborative conversations. She spoke of talking to students about what they care about at Western and what has affected them.
Defiesta began developing her platform with the intent of providing more information for freshman about what the AS executive board is and what it does.
Working with AS Communications Director Hunter Stuehm, the Communications office has been livestreaming the board meetings on the Associated Students of Western Washington University Facebook page.
“The students are paying for us to be in these positions and to represent them and that’s really important to know that, because at the end of the day we will always be there to represent students and advocate for students,” Defiesta said.
The AS communications office has begun piloting the livestreaming, as a trial, to test engagement and other ways to improve the livestream. If engagement and the response is positive at the end of fall quarter then they will continue livestreaming, if not they will look into other avenues to make the meetings more accessible, according to Stuehm.
“Accessibility looks and feels differently for many different people,” Defiesta said.
In terms of future plans, Defiesta has been meeting with AS Senate Pro-Tempore Adah Barenburg, AS VP for Diversity Yesugen Battsengel, VP for Enrollment and Student Services Melynda Huskey and President Sabah Randhawa about a response to last year’s sit-in and forum, according to Defiesta.
In relations to her academics at Western, Defiesta is an economics major and education and social justice minor. Her current career aspirations are teaching as a professor.
Defiesta spoke on her ideas for her own seminar-based economics class that would focus on breaking down the theories of economics, exploring the ways economics could work differently, looking into the effects of fiscal policy and making economics more accessible.
“I’ve never had an economics professor that’s looked or identified similarly to me. And so I think that’s also something that would be so important for me is to be in that space and do something different than anything anyone else has really done in that field,” Defiesta said.
Defiesta went on to express her gratitude for her community, friends and family and their support while she campaigned and ran for AS President.
“Seeing the support that I got and how support takes up so many different forms. And how I saw it in the people who helped me campaign to literally my girlfriend being an absolute rock for the whole thing, to my friends calling me when I had pneumonia and carbon monoxide poisoning during the election,” Defiesta said.
Defiesta was sick for a month during the campaigning and was grateful for the love and community that manifested around her during that time, she said.
As a college student juggling work, school and life Defiesta has learned to utilize her planner to organize her time and to practice self love in the different aspects of her life, she said.
“As you change, self love manifests differently,” Defiesta said.
Self love hasn’t eliminated the moments when Defiesta gets overwhelmed, but she has noticed being more intentional with the way she spends her time with school, family, friends and at work, she said.
“Just being intentional with all those things has been such a really important aspect of me being able to just be me, be good and be me,” she said.
There’s so much more to this answer than Defiesta could give in one interview, but she believes in practicing self love, grace and compassion for who you are, the people around you and what you’re involved in. It’s important to remember to be yourself and what it means to be you, Defiesta said.
“I really think it’s so important to bring love and joy into spaces and it’s so hard to do that sometimes. Especially with, you know, being in spaces that you feel like and you know aren’t really meant for you, it’s so hard to bring that in,” she said.
Defiesta emphasized how privileged she felt in loving her job.
“It is a privilege to sometimes love the jobs that you do. And so I will say that I’m absolutely so privileged that the students felt like I could be in this position and I feel really lucky and humble that students supported what I believed in to be this position,” Defiesta said.
Defiesta spoke on her love for her coworkers and everyone she works with.
“Something I’ve been intentionally trying to do is to bring care and love and compassion into this space and that’s the kind of relationships that I want, ‘cause I really want to support all the people that I work with in the best way that I possibly can,” Defiesta said.