Why do you want to be Co-Presidents?
RP: I really can't imagine my life without Andover at this point. It has really done so much to shape how I view the world and live my life and interact with others. I'm so grateful and appreciative of Andover, and I want to give back to this community that I feel has given me so much and helped me to shape my identity and like what I do so much. I want to be able to give back, and I want to do it with Johnny too because he's amazing, and we work well together.
JR: My answer goes hand in hand with Rosie's. I just couldn't imagine my life without Andover. It would be so different going to Andover High. I [would've had a] totally different experience. I think going to Andover has really shaped me as a person and changed my viewpoints and helped me to be aware of my surroundings and understand others around me. For that reason, I'm really grateful for Andover. Same as Rosie, I really want to give back and be a leader for my school. I'm really psyched to run with Rosie, she's super cool.
What do you think makes an ideal Co-President?
JR: I think a good Co-President should be really approachable and relatable, and I feel like Rosie and I have those qualities. We're both very down to earth, and we would be willing to talk with anybody who wanted to talk to us. I think Co-Presidents should definitely be approachable.
RP: Yeah, definitely. That and also I think they should be able to work together, but all to bring different perspectives to things, which I think Johnny and I are able to do because we're very different people. We have different beliefs, different lots of things, but we do work well together - a major key.
What makes you two a good pair?
JR: Initially, I wasn't planning on running for Co-President, but a friend of mine asked me if I would run with Rosie, and I couldn't [pass up] that opportunity, I just thought we would work well together. I think definitely we're both very involved on campus, and we're both super committed to everything we do, and we love this school.
RP: I think our response to the previous questions sort of answered that. We work well together, we're willing to talk with any and every member of this community, and I think we cover a lot of people, a lot of different beliefs, a lot of different aspects of campus, so we can represent the student body more fully.
What would you say is the most important aspect of your platform?
RP: Probably student health and wellness.
JR: I think a big part of our platform is... our campus lacks a sort of education about substance abuse, but I think there is a lot of stress and peer pressure on campus to do these things, and I feel like people don't have any notion on how it could affect them before they do it, and that these [substances] can be harmful. So I think the big focus of our platform is to provide, enhance and encourage discussions about substance abuse.
RP: And also, within the general realm of health is sexual health. We know that, in two years, the 4x5 schedule will be implemented and there will be a whole wellness, Empathy and Balance curriculum within that - but next year, [there will still be] a lack of that, it's the same schedule that we have this year. So, we want to be sure in that transition year, there will still be opportunities to learn about general wellness and in particular, sexual education. So, what we wanted to do was to have someone from the [Rebecca M. Sykes Wellness Center] come to every dorm and every day-student advising group and answer your anonymously-written questions about sexual health, because that's not required right now, but it's an option. We want to make sure that everyone has the same grounding, same foundation in that. And also, we want to make sure that Wellness Week isn't just being lectured at, but there are engaging presentations and you also have a chance to talk about them afterwards because you have to reflect in order for anything to be effective.
Do you guys have a campaign slogan?
RP: "RoJo is PA's mojo"
In what ways have you two done your campaigning for the Co-Presidency campaign?
JR: First, we started collecting signatures; that was probably the most important [part].
RP: And we talked with everyone about our platform. We actually got extra signatures, so we could make sure we talked to as many people as we could about it.
JR: We started devising a platform before hand, so we talked about our ideas with people and we got good feedback for the most part. And then we created a Facebook page. We tried to get attention from that about our campaign, [and] to post updates and thank yous.
RP: We were in the debate last week. And just talking to people if they ask, sometimes just bringing it up ourselves and letting them know what we stand for and what our platform is.