Executive
continued from page 1
had the most influence on her pas
sion for the job.
“Race and gender issues were a
very important aspect of my family
life,’ she said. “Working on issues of
oppression and dynamics of power
were a part of my life from day one.”
She added that because her father
died several years ago and she grew
up in a multifamily unit in Seattle
with gay parents, her sense of family
is a little different than it may be for
others. Her surroundings as a child
also taught her that some people do
not tolerate “different” families.
“Because my parents were open
ly gay, I learned pretty quickly that
that wasn’t always accepted by
everyone,” she said. “As hard as it
is to see people have a hateful re
sponse to people I love and adore,
that inspires me to work towards
educating people and working to
make homophobia less prevalent.”
Now a planning, public policy
and management major at the Uni
versity, Brooklyn took a year off to
travel after graduating from high
school in 1997. During her journeys,
she lived in Thailand for a summer
and in Guatemala for a few months,
and she also visited New England
and Europe. She only came home in
between her trips to work — usually
as a maid because it was the easiest
job to find for short time periods.
Brooklyn’s first year of college
was in her hometown, Seattle,
where she attended the University
of Washington.
But Brooklyn had already decided
that Husky life would be temporary
and only to fulfill some general re
quirements. It was the University of
Oregon’s 1999 student sit-in at John
son Hall, when students demanded
the administration create specific di
versity objectives, that made Brook
lyn sure she wanted to be a Duck.
“At UW there’s not a real sense of
student activism,” she said. “I real
ly liked that here there were some
students who cared so much about
the University that they were will
ing to sit in at Johnson Hall to make
improvements ... I wanted to come
sonality. We can spend all day to
gether working and then still go
home and laugh on the phone for a
good three hours.”
After a year of working side by side
with Nair, Brooklyn asked her to run
with her in this year’s ASUO election.
“All the characteristics I wanted
Tom Patterson Emerald
Nilda Brooklyn and Joy Nair take the reins as ASUO executive today.
be a part of the action.”
And that’s when she first set foot
through the doors of the ASUO office
as a volunteer, later becoming an in
tern, then a staff member and finally
a candidate for ASUO president.
“The second I came to the UO, the
ASUO was an outlet that allowed me
to work on the issues that were im
portant to me,” she said. “It gave me
the skills to work on things effective
ly and to make real change.”
And that’s also how she first met
Nair, who later turned into one of
her close friends. “She had a great
smile,” Brooklyn remembers. “She
just has this way of making people
feel comfortable and at ease imme
diately, and she just has a great per
in someone to work with ... she
had them all,” Brooklyn said.
Nair’s first response, however,
was not very encouraging.
“I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s funny,’”
Nair said. “The [executive] always
got made fun of, and I was like, ‘I
don’t want people to make fun of
me — that’s lame.’ I just didn’t want
to end up like that.”
But after some consideration —
and after former ASIJO President Jay
Breslow told her not to run — she fi
nally accepted Brooklyn’s offer.
“Jay told me not to do it, and that
made me want to do it even more,”
she said. “And then specific people
told me I couldn’t do it, and that re
ally made me want to run.”
Nair, who was diversity recruit
ment and retention director this year,
also realized she shared many com
mon goals with Brooklyn, especially
as far as diversity was concerned.
Born in Fiji, but of South Indian
descent, Nair recognized diversity is
sues through her personal experi
ence as a resident of Hillsboro, Ore.,
a predominantly white area. She ob
served how much she felt the need to
adapt herself in particular situations.
“I knew I was different because I
would dramatically change my per
sonality from home to school, and I
noticed that a lot of students of col
or did that,” she said.
Realizing the importance of having
a community within the high school
for people who experienced the same
thing, Nair became president of the
diversity committee and head of the
international program in high school.
But in college, she saw that diversity
issues reached an even greater level.
“It was something I was always
passionate about working on, and
when I got to school I realized it
was a lot more political,” she said.
Now a sophomore business major
at the University, Nair has held posi
tions in the Ambassador Program,
Students of the Indian Subcontinent,
and the ASUO Executive, which is
where she met Brooklyn.
Nair said because she had seen
how hard Brooklyn worked in the
ASUO, she was intimidated to run
with her.
“I felt like an idiot compared to her
... I was like, ‘I don’t want to do this.
I’ll be the dumb-ass in the group,”’ she
said. “She has to be the most amazing
person I’ve met on this campus."
ASUO Legislative Organizer
Melissa Unger said she has wit
nessed how strong the pair’s rela
tionship is, and that this will be ben
eficial to their presidency next year.
“They work really well together
and respect each other an immense
amount,” she said. “They also have
complete trust in each other... You
need that to do the job.”
Even though it took some persua
sion to run, Nair said now she sees
how her and Brooklyn’s different
experiences and personalities will
make them a strong, “awesome”
team next year.
“The more I worked with her, the
more I realized her strengths are my
weaknesses and my strengths are
her weaknesses,” she said. “We
complement each other perfectly.”
Calendar
Friday, May 25
Sociology Colloquium: Michael
Dreiling, Sociology, discusses “Cor
porate Political Action and Globa!
Trade Regimes: Fortune 500 Firms
in the U.S. Trade Policy Formation
Process.” 3-4:30 p.m. Room 332,
Gilbert Hall. Free. For information,
call 346-5366.
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Saturday, May 26 and Sunday, May 27
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