Students at the table of power

They’re not part of general elections and their votes don’t really count, but student trustees bring something to their boards that other members can’t.

“We’re the ones who are there all the time, and we know what’s going on,” said Jocelyn Felicano, 22, a Miramar College Student who will represent her school this year on the San Diego Community College District Board of Trustees.

“They don’t get to see the issues we get to see, and they really understand we’re the ones who know what’s going on on campus,” she said about the elected five-member board.

Like the two other student representatives on the board this year, Felicano is the student body president at her college. Each student representative sits on the board to cast advisory votes whenever the board’s rotating schedule brings meetings to their campus, or about once a quarter.

The three student representatives this year include a man from Trinidad, a military dependent who grew up in Japan and a San Diego native.

College districts throughout the county are swearing in student representatives over the summer in preparation of the fall semester, which starts Aug. 22 in the San Diego Community College District.

Even when it’s not their turn to sit on the board as a voting member, student representatives usually attend each board meeting.

With all the pressure already on college students, why would they take on the extra load of attending meetings, studying agendas and taking occasional trips to Sacramento and Washington, D.C.?

“For me, it’s something I love to do,” Felicano said. “I love being involved. I love being the voice of students. I don’t think of it as extra work. I think of it as an opportunity.”

Other student representatives this year are Daron Woods, 22, from City College and Ava Fakhrabadi, 18, of Mesa College.

Of the three, only Fakhrabadi had previous experience in student government before going to college.

“I wrote a letter to the editor of my high school newspaper about my frustrations with student government, and they got really mad,” said Fakhrabadi, a political science student. “Then I realized that instead of complaining about what they were doing, I decided to join them and actually do something.”

Fakhrabadi enrolled at Mesa last year with an interest in continuing in student government.

“It was a little intimidating because everybody was older in community college, and I was like 17,” she said. “Everybody in student government was really welcoming, and slowly I started understanding the issues of the student. I started learning enough to actually run for president.”

Felicano’s entrance into politics was more happenchance.

“I wasn’t involved in anything,” she said about her past experience. “I came to Miramar and I accidentally walked into a club meeting.”

Thinking she was in a class, Felicano said she realized she was at a science club meeting.

“I sat down at a table and some of them were saying, ‘Sign my petition, I’m trying to run for secretary,’” she said. “And I was like, ‘We have that here?’”

Felicano, who grew up in a military family and spent most of her life in Japan, is studying management leadership at Miramar and recently was accepted to Pepperdine University.

Her dream job is to return to Miramar to be dean of student affairs, a job now held by Adela Jacobson.

Woods, a political science student, came to San Diego from Trinidad about a year and a half ago.

“I didn’t want to go anywhere that was cold, and the best option was California,” said Woods, who hopes to transfer to UC Berkeley.

Woods said he became interested in student government after meeting another international student. He was elected as a senator last year and said he saw government as a good way of being involved in school.

“I enjoyed the work,” he said. “I showed up every day, helped out on the events and planned events, then though maybe I could go further in the organization.”

Woods said students at the school often take the lead on issues, as when one student suggested adding to the campus machines that collect coins for the homeless.

He and other elected members of the student body went to Stanford University last year for a national meeting of student leaders, where he said he worked on teams of students from other colleges.

Students from Miramar attended the Student Senate for California Community Colleges last year and submitted a resolution, which was adopted, calling for equal standards for gender-specific and non-gender bathrooms on campuses across the state.

Fakhrabadi said she and other Mesa students traveled to Washington, D.C., on a trip organized by the American Association of Community Colleges. At the nation’s capital, she said they met with a congressional staff member to discuss the high cost of college textbooks.

All three agreed that textbook costs are an issue for students at their schools, and they said they hope to work with the district board this year on possible ways of keep their prices low. Their ideas include creating incentives for professors to assign lower-cost books and more on-line assignments rather than textbooks.