George Harris decided to run for attorney general because of his passion for leadership.
“I’m really involved in SA. I just love being involved here on this campus. I’m also involved in Interfraternity Council, and I just have a passion for leading and serving others,” he said.
Currently, he’s the director of Freshmen Forum for the Student Association. Aside from the SA, he’s a member of Sigma Chi fraternity, vice president of IFC and Lambda Sigma honor society, but his position as attorney general will be his first priority, he said.
He was a member of governmental affairs his freshman year, as well as being a member of Freshman Forum, he said.
He said his main job as attorney general will be to make sure the actions of the SA are in line with the Constitution. “I just really view attorney general as kind of the enforcer of the rules. The president sets the agenda, and the attorney general makes sure that agenda is parallel to what our Constitution is,” he said.
He sat in on the housing appeals committee-one of six committees on which the attorney general serves–recently because another student was not able to be there.
As a member of the committees, he will not be afraid to speak up, he said. “Some students might be intimidated in a room with three or four other faculty, to make their opinions heard, but I was not,” he said.
He has also been doing the duties formerly assigned to the IFC attorney general since the position was consolidated into the vice president’s position.
“I will always make myself accessible to any student that has a concern if I’m elected to this office,” he said. “My cell phone number’s on Facebook if they want to reach me. I’m going to make those kind of things known, cause I believe that a leader should be accessible to the people who elected him to that position,” he said.
Harris would like to see more people get involved in the Student Association. “My number one thing is just to see more students get involved with our committees, run for Senate seats. See more of these executive elections contested every year, because that’s what makes the strength of an organization.”
He said the executive officers must hold each other accountable for doing their jobs.
“That’s something that I believe I do have experience at, because I’ve been in charge of a group of 17 freshmen this year, and I’ve been keeping them on task all year toward this leadership conference, toward planning it: calling the speakers to come in and speak, booking the cafeteria for breakfast, booking the club level for our events,” he said.
He had to use good judgment on the student housing appeals committee. “Whether or not we knew the student or not-because one student that did come in I had met before, I didn’t know him really well, but he came in, gave his side of the story, and then we had a chance to ask him questions about different things that he said,” he said.
He said he’d interpret the Constitution strictly. “I really believe in my heart that the Constitution is really your foundation, your rules, your laws, your regulation for any kind of organization you’re in,” he said. “When you stop upholding rules that you have in place, you just start a precedent of you let a little bit slide and a little bit slide each time, until finally you just start going against everything in the Constitution,” he said.