The morning of April 27, Undergraduate Student Government (USG) elections for the 2020-2021 academic year opened. All students were emailed their personalized ballots, and they should contact duusgbusiness@gmail.com if the incorrect class or department was included in their form. The candidates’ platforms can be found here, and voting will close on Friday, May 1st at 2 p.m. MDT. 

To help inform students’ decisions during this time, The Clarion sat down and got to know the presidential and vice presidential candidates for each ticket. In this in-depth interview, Ryan Hyde and Dajah Brooks opened up about why they are running for USG, their personal accomplishments and what they have been up to during quarantine. 

Their entire policy platform can be found here. Students can explore their website or Instagram page to learn more about who they are. 

This interview has been edited for clarity and cohesion. The full transcript can be found here. You can read our interview with the competing ticket, Abdul Ayad and June Churchill, here. 

Kiana: For those who are unfamiliar with your platform, could you characterize what your leadership would look like? 

Ryan: I think there are two things I want to point out that sets our campaign apart. First, our implementation strategy involves building bridges and healthy relationships with people on campus. Second, we recognize that we can’t get everything done by saying, ‘thou shall.’ 

What 50-year-old senior leadership person is going to listen to a 20-year-old say, ‘You’re going to do this because I said so?’ No one. You have to come at it in a pragmatic and realistic way. When you’re telling someone ‘this is what the people want,’ you have to back it up and legitimize those claims. 

Kiana: How did you make the decision to run for this position? 

Ryan: I really love DU. I know that’s not a very popular sentiment, but I love DU and I attribute this campus to a lot of my intellectual and personal growth. But I know not everybody’s having this experience, and it’s not because there is one big, egregious issue. There’s just 1000 cuts. There are 1000 different issues that we can solve by lobbying for change to happen. 

If I can do something that will improve the experience of our students and get some of them to a point where they’re enjoying their time here, I want to do that. I can’t think of a higher honor.

Dajah: I’m a person who’s really big on family and building that with my school friends. I wanted my school to have that same spirit, but coming here was different from what I expected. It was hard to find anyone who felt like this was a place where they felt respected and at home. The main reason I’m running is because I want to take part in creating a unified body where students can feel safe and comfortable.

Kiana: Why did the two of you decide to work together? 

Dajah: I think what makes the two of us work so well together is that we challenge each other. When we don’t agree with each other or have a problem, we vocalize it. I saw potential running with Ryan because I knew he was someone who would take what I have to say seriously. He is someone who can listen to others and have an open mind. 

Kiana: How did you put together your platform and campaign? What did that process look like? 

Dajah: We took a lot of time to talk to people in different student organizations on campus, different people. We asked them what they thought needed to change on campus as a whole, and a lot of their answers were similar. So when we started writing our policy, we really pulled from what we had heard and seen on campus. 

Ryan: We took the time to build our policy on what the campus wanted, not what we personally thought was necessary. 

Kiana: From talking with student leaders, what have you learned about DU and its community? Did any trends or patterns emerge? 

Ryan: I realized how fragmented our campus is. Everybody is on their own island, and they operate within these separate communities. What I heard from these people is that our campus is missing an identity. We don’t have a collective identity. 

Dajah: That’s the biggest thing that is constantly brought up—the lack of intersectionality on campus. One group can be working on the exact same thing as another, and they’ll have no idea.  There’s no connecting factor. 

Kiana: On a personal level, what have you learned about yourselves from this experience? 

Dajah: This whole campaign has taught me about my ability to take things in stride. There has been a lot of self-reflection during this whole process. Asking, ‘Is this something that I really want to do? Can I see myself being pushed to spread my voice wide enough for everyone to hear?’ I’ve realized that when I set my mind to do something, I’m going to do it. 

Ryan: What I’ve learned is how much I don’t know. It’s been such a great experience talking to all of these people, and it’s taught me how much I don’t know about this campus. It’s made me realize how important one of our pillars, accountability, is at an institution like DU. There’s no way you can have these kinds of conversations about how to make change without it. 

Kiana: If you win the election, how will you judge whether your presidency and vice presidency was a success at the end of your term? 

Dajah: If one person has the slightest positive outcome or change because of the work we’ve done, I’ll feel like I’ve done something correctly. 

Ryan: I would measure it by quality over quantity. I understand that there’s a lot of stuff on our policy document, and I recognize that not everything may get done. 30 weeks is a short period. But so long as we can achieve some ends that are solid, I would consider our work successful. We want to lay a foundation down for the next student body president and vice president and create momentum that can keep going beyond us. 

Kiana: We’ve touched on your professional goals and accomplishments, but what is a growth in your personal life that you are especially proud of? 

Ryan: When I was in high school, I got into a ski accident and fractured my skull. Skip ahead almost a whole year, the doctors found something in my brain which was effectively a ticking time bomb. It’s called an AVM. I was told that I was going to die unless they removed it right away. I was 15. 

I went into surgery, and they removed a golf-ball sized chunk of my brain. When I came out, they told me that I was never going to be the same. I was never going to be as smart as I used to be. I was never going to be able to do the things I used to want to do. 

For quite some time, it felt that way. But I bounced back out of that surgery, and I had this insane drive to succeed I never had before. I wanted to prove my doctors wrong. Say, ‘Look at me. Now watch me.’ I do have some learning disabilities subsequent to all of this. But as far as my personal accomplishments go, my motivation to overcome adversity stands out.

Dajah: Growing up, it was me, my mom and my grandma. I am 100 percent a mama’s girl and grandma’s girl. When I was little, people would ask me, ‘Who do you want to be when you grow up?’ My first answer was always my grandmother. 

In junior year of high school, my grandmother was diagnosed with stage four cancer. I stayed in the hospital every day after school. I was going to take the semester off, basically drop out of school, so I could sit with her. But I didn’t because her biggest thing was ‘You can’t quit school like that. That’s not what I want.’ 

Every single day, I would come into her room and she would have the biggest smile on my face on her face. I would say, ‘Grandma, why are you smiling? You’re going through some of the worst things.’ Chemotherapy, radiation, drugs being pumped into her body. But she would tell me, ‘The only way that I can live each day is if I take pride in little things like seeing you walk in. If I can try to be the reason that someone else is smiling. That brings me joy.’ Since she said that, it’s how I’ve tried to live my life. 

Kiana: When you’re not doing public service, what are your other interests? What have you been up to in quarantine?

Dajah: Dance has always been a constant in my life. I’ve done classical ballet since I was five. My freshman year of college, I discovered pole dancing. My mom surprised me and installed a pole in our garage, and that’s what I’ve been doing during quarantine. If you can’t find me in a dance studio, reading or hanging out with my mom, then I honestly can’t tell you what I’m doing.

Ryan: It’s kind of silly. When I’m not doing public service at DU, my favorite thing is still public service elsewhere. I love working with the Golden Fire Department. A couple years ago, we got a new chief. Her name is Alicia. When she first started, I walked into her office and asked if I could help with anything related to public policy. I told her it was my major, and I wanted to learn more about the policy that surrounds public safety. 

Since then, I’ve done a lot of work with the department writing grants, helping with departmental planning and working with nonprofits. I’ve gotten so much out of it. Alicia has been a tremendous mentor to me. A woman in fire service is not a common thing, especially a lesbian woman. She’s dealt with a lot and overcome some huge hurdles, and she’s an example of a good leader to me. 

Outside of public service, I like to ski and fish. Going to Beans and DU sports games. During quarantine, I’ve been going on runs every single day. I actually run past the Chancellor’s house, and I wave to him and his wife most days. 

Kiana: What do you hope to do after DU? What are your long-term goals and aspirations? 

Ryan: As far as career goals go, I’d love to see myself doing emergency management and public safety policy here in the City and County of Denver for quite some time. Then after that, maybe it brings me to the federal level at Washington with FEMA.

Dajah: I haven’t decided where I want to go, but I want to do law school. I’ve always wanted to be a lawyer. Right now, it’s a toss-up between wanting to do corporate law working with small businesses or defense law where I could give people a voice who otherwise wouldn’t have one. 

I really want to end up in Seattle, Washington. I used to go there all the time as a kid, and it holds this sense of home for me. 

If you have any comments or concerns regarding how this was covered, email duclarioneditoralteam@gmail.com.