Before being elected, ASUO Sen. Jeremy Blanchard prepared to present a special request to send students from the Survival Center to the Power Shift 2009 conference. It was his first time watching the Senate process.
“It was still in the EMU Board Room, where it was really intimidating,” Blanchard said. “It took like an hour and a half to pass that request … we got the full request, but I walked out of there feeling defeated.”
Blanchard, who is resigning at the end of term because of graduation, said he walked out upset with the way the meeting ran and how senators nitpicked details.
Later that month, when slates were allowed to start forming in the ASUO elections, the True Blue slate’s ASUO vice presidential candidate, Lidiana Soto, reached out to Blanchard to run for Senate because of his work with the Survival Center and Power Shift. He ran to change some of the things he thought were wrong with the Senate process.
“So there have been multiple times over the time I’ve been in Senate where … I’ve asked everyone to step back, and I’ve helped shift the tone back to realizing that these are students and human beings in front of us, not people here to be badgered,” Blanchard said.
Blanchard is graduating at the end of the term with a degree in environmental studies and a minor in computer science.
Blanchard started attending as a senator during summer session 2009, almost immediately after being elected.
During fall term 2009, he started to create the Climate Justice League as an offshoot of the work he did with ASUO Senate Chair Zachary Stark-MacMillan and OSPIRG Board Chair Charles Denson on Power Shift West, a conference for University students and others in eight Western states.
“I’ve always kind of had school, Senate and Climate Justice League for the past almost two years now,” Blanchard said.
Also during fall term 2009, Blanchard started noting cases where Senate encountered inefficiencies in the bylaws. At the time, he wrote down the offending rules and how they kept Senate from being efficient.
This year, he, along with Stark-MacMillan and ASUO Sen. Chris Bocchicchio, worked to develop these rule changes summer term 2010.
During fall term 2010, they promoted a number of bylaw changes that Senate approved, including a process of creating resolutions he worked on with Stark-MacMillan.
“We just solved so many efficiency things and so many things where we just bump up against the rules all the time,” Blanchard said. “It’s just a waste of time. No one even knew why the rules were there in the first place, what they were accomplishing.”
Bocchicchio worked with Blanchard since his own appointment during last year’s Senate.
Although Bocchicchio said he and Blanchard occasionally butted heads on Senate issues, Bocchicchio said he enjoyed his time with the resigning senator.
“I hope I’ve been able to help him grow as much as he’s helped me grow,” Bocchicchio said.
In order to fill his seat more quickly, Blanchard began discussing his intent to resign with Stark-MacMillan and ASUO Chief of Staff Ben Eckstein last week.
“Jeremy would like to minimize the lapse in between his resignation and new applicant caused by his resignation,” Eckstein said.
During the controversial Pacifica Forum issue the ASUO Senate faced winter term 2010, Blanchard said students who were opposed to the forum’s place on campus attended and jeered when senators tried to find middle ground, which forced Blanchard to reconsider the meaning of his constituency.
“I had to dive way deeper into what it meant to be a senator, what it meant to be elected and who I was really needed to be represented,” Blanchard said. “Part of it is, I was elected to be me … they elected me because they saw my values.”
[email protected]