As a junior transfer student from Georgia Perimeter College, a small community college near Atlanta, Georgia, Tatiana Cadet had a tough time adjusting to Syracuse University at first.

“I thought that everything was going to be cookies and cream and fairy dust,” Cadet said. “But it wasn’t.”

Cadet describes herself as extroverted, despite spending the majority of her first semester on campus alone. It was difficult to find a group that would accept her, she said.

If feeling alone wasn’t enough, Cadet said, she also had to deal with being a transfer student and all of the baggage that comes with it.

She had only been on campus for half a semester when she went to her first meeting for THE General Body after seeing the organization’s flier, a group Cadet credits with making her feel at home on campus.

Now after one semester, Cadet is running for Student Association president. As a part of her campaign, she’s interacting with the student body and making herself visible. She is advocating for and talking to transfer and nontraditional students on campus, and she is a part of a group that she cares about. She isn’t alone anymore.

Cadet attributes the change to THE General Body.

“I felt safe and cared for with THE General Body,” Cadet said. “It gave me a drive that I didn’t know I had.”

When she first saw the flier for the organization, Cadet was living in an off-campus apartment by herself. She found that she was alone most of the time, and she was comfortable with that to some extent, but she wanted to find a group that she felt safe with. She wanted to find the best friends that would eventually become her bridesmaids, Cadet said.

When first seeing a flier for THE General Body, Cadet said her reaction was, “sure, why not.” She had no idea what the organization was or what it stood for. She said she didn’t know what they were protesting or what they wanted done.

She didn’t even consider herself an activist.

“Had I known there was a lot of campus activism, I probably wouldn’t have even come here in the first place… I’ve never thought of myself as an activist, I never thought about social justice issues — that had never been a thought in my mind,” Cadet said.

Cadet now prides herself on making others feel the same way she felt being a member of THE General Body, she said. Her campaign is being run on the promise of inclusiveness, not just for students of color, but also for students with disabilities and transfer students.

“There was a student who reached out to me on Facebook. She’s a nontraditional transfer student, and she was telling me about how she moved out here from Seattle and when she came here she couldn’t find an environment that was safe for her,” Cadet said. “There’s no real safe space for transfer and nontraditional students.”

Cadet added that the needs of transfer and nontraditional students should not be lumped together with the needs of first-year students.

“There’s the Office of First-Year and Transfer Programs, but those are reaching to two different separate groups,” Cadet said. “Our experience isn’t like the first-year experience.”

Cadet hopes to use her position within THE General Body to help other students, like the one who reached out to her on Facebook.

Although THE General Body endorses Cadet and her running mate, Fatima Bangura, the group had no intention of running a member as an SA presidential candidate. Most of THE General Body didn’t even find out Cadet was running until after she declared.

She added that THE General Body didn’t necessarily want to get somebody to be in SA, but rather just wanted SA to be more open in communicating with THE General Body.

Cadet added that she acknowledges being a member of THE General Body might be a liability to her campaign, but has no plans to distance herself from it.

“I’m fully aware there are a plethora of students that are not behind THE General Body,” Cadet said. “But I am not ashamed of THE General Body, nor saying that I’m a part of it.”

Avery Ebron, a finance and economics major as well as a friend of Cadet, said her work with THE General Body is a benefit to her campaign because it shows dedication and where she stands on the issues.

“Based on her work with THE General Body, I know that she would be a great fit for SA,” Ebron said.

Published on April 14, 2015 at 11:22 pm

Contact Rachel: rsandler@syr.edu