When transfer sophomore Ethan Clay was elected as President of the Student Union last spring, one of the first actions in his administration was to telephone his mother.
“Mom,” he shouted into the phone. “I’m the f—-ing president!”
Clay, who said he usually doesn’t use such profane language with his mother, had just been informed the slate with which he was running for Student Union Executive Board had won; in turn, Clay became Union president.
Clay said his mother started crying — out of joy, presumably, not because her son just used a curse word.
While Clay’s mother cried over his success, Clay was already plotting facets of his presidency. In the first month as Union president, he’s already made a bold claim — he said he believes Chancellor John Silber will change portions of the Guest Policy, a sought after issue for last year’s Executive Board.
“I think there’s a lot we have to discuss about in what areas the policy will change,” Clay said. “From my discussions with Chancellor Silber, I can say there will be changes to the Guest Policy this year.”
However, the presidency is nothing new to Clay, who grew up just outside Pittsburgh. Clay said he was active in his high school’s student government and, eventually, he became president of the National Association of Student Council.
And while Clay was heavily involved in student council, he still continued to participate in other activities, such as track, cross country and theater. However, Clay said he received real lessons outside the classroom, when his grandparents gave him control of the family miniature golf course at age 16.
“I paid all the bills, and I took a $2,000 loan from my grandfather,” Clay said. “[It was tough because] I was 16 years old, and I was a sophomore in high school and had two sophomores in college working for me and they had no respect for me.”
Although Clay’s operation of the mini-golf gave him real world experience, he said one of the main events that shaped him was his parents’ divorce.
“The manner in which it proceeded was integral in that it made me who I am today,” Clay said. “My parents went beyond fighting and petty arguing. They made sure respect was paramount.”
During Clay’s senior year of high school, he said he worked at a Haitian orphanage and decided he wanted to work in third-world development. He said he hoped his double major in international relations and economics would help facilitate a profession where he could one day represent people who could not represent themselves.
“I want to work for individuals in this country or other countries that don’t have the means to represent themselves,” Clay said. “I want to make a difference and help individuals who are in need in our country and others.”
With all of his experience, Clay’s ascension to the presidency of the Union last year may not seem like a surprise to many students. However, there have been no recent cases of a student being elected to the position when he or she attended the University for less than a year.
One year before Clay was celebrating with the “True” slate, he said he had been studying for finals and raising hell on his floor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
“I was a deviant little guy and involved with my freshman floor,” Clay said. “I think I had the best freshman experience anyone could have asked for. I was an integral part of the floor and helped lead us in our rabble-rousing activities every weekend.”
Though Roger Ma, Clay’s freshman roommate and now a junior at Carnegie Mellon, said he remembered great times on his freshman floor, he said also noticed Clay wasn’t too keen on Carnegie Mellon because he felt it did not have an adequate international relations department.
“His major wasn’t really good here,” Ma said. “He wanted to get involved, but the campus was so apathetic and a lot of people don’t know who the president is of the Student Council.”
Clay said he wasn’t involved with anything at Carnegie Mellon and was the type of lackadaisical student he’s tried to change during his time at BU.
“I was having a great time there, but something was off. I was apathetic, I was deviant and I wasn’t satisfied,” Clay said. “There were certain aspects of [Carnegie Mellon] that I would dread waking up to in the morning, and I decided I had to leave.”
Although Clay said his entire family had attended Carnegie Mellon, he made the decision to transfer. His mother, Jana Clay, said she believed it was a tough decision for him.
“I think it was like a family tradition to go there on his father’s side, and they have a spring carnival in April,” Jana Clay said. “They were taking pictures of himself and his father and grandfather and grandmother who had been there. I think it was hard to break that tradition.”
Ethan Clay said he narrowed the list to BU, Georgetown University, Stanford University and Pamona College, finally settling on BU. Though developing a social life was difficult at first, once Ethan Clay assimilated to his new surroundings, he began work on his goal of creating a new school organization.
Contacting the Student Activities Office with high hopes, Clay realized he could only found one of the two groups he had in mind. His decision was between founding BU Free or BU Sandy Pants Beach Artisans, a group Clay said would receive funding to finance group trips to Revere Beach.
The Carnegie Mellon prankster made the right choice, and left his hell-raising, devious persona behind.
Clay said upon arriving at BU, the Guest Policy shocked him, and he wanted to do something about it. However, he acknowledged that his former university didn’t have a guest policy, something he felt was also unacceptable.
“There was no Guest Policy [at Carnegie Mellon],” Clay said. “That wasn’t right either because there was some guy named Batu, whose girlfriend was a homeless woman. She used to live with him in the dorm.”
Clay said until he arrived at BU, he hadn’t even heard whispers of the policy that dictated dormitory life.
“It was not in any of the admission letters. There was no hint of the Guest Policy,” Clay said. “I know they mention it in the tour, but whenever I came in, I had to swipe an ID, and then I realized the seriousness of the situations. I was shocked.”
Clay said BU Free was originally started to see if he could garner interest and enact change. This goal was eventually accomplished by May 2002.
“I started BU Free to see how big this could get and how much noise I could make on an undergraduate campus of 16,000 people,” Clay said. “I had to figure out what the easiest ways to get people involved were and by the end of the year, there were 700 students on the mailing list.”
Clay said through his initial start up efforts with BU Free, he became interested in joining the Student Union but was initially turned off by a representative in the GSU Link.
“I looked at the Union and walked by one of their tables, and I remember asking the guy what his goals were,” Clay recalled. “The guy looked at me and laughed. From then, I wasn’t interested in being a part of the Student Union.”
While Clay’s first experience with the organization wasn’t the one he had hoped for, he later figured the only way to spread the message of BU Free was through the organization’s Senate. When Clay heard there were openings, he applied for the positions.
“I overheard [former SUEC Chair John] Macom and another Senator [talking],” Clay said. “John happened to be looking for a Senator for Myles, so I told him I’d do it.”
In little more than six months, the sophomore transfer had gone from a raucous lifestyle at Carnegie Mellon to a member of the Undergraduate Student Government at BU.
However, Clay was unaware when he joined the Union that a student could be reprimanded for becoming too involved with University organizations. Just three months and one week after he was sworn into office as a Senator, Clay was given a choice: resign his Senate seat or give up the presidency of BU Free.
“They were concerned about me having too much power,” Clay claimed. “A president of a grassroots campaign and a senator is not having too much power, but they were concerned about it. Having them think they were setting me back, gave me the impetus to push the campaign to the next level.”
Clay announced his resignation from Senate on Feb. 25, much to the surprise of his colleagues.
“During my resignation speech, I said, when things were settled with BU Free, I would return,” Clay said. “I was insinuating I would come back as a senator.”
After resigning, Clay turned his attention to changing the Guest Policy. Although Clay moved off campus for the current academic year, he said the policy still affects him today.
“There are friends of mine that live in dorms, and [signing in] adds more time to the whole trip,” Clay said. “Even beyond that, it affects me in the sense that that’s what students are saying is a big concern of theirs at the University.”
After combining efforts with then-Student Union President Zachary Coseglia, Clay and Coseglia presented their proposal to change the Guest Policy to then-President Jon Westling. Although Westling told Coseglia he would respond within two weeks of March 21, no response came.
In retrospect, Clay said the wait discouraged him from thinking Westling would enact change.
“When I looked back at the situation, and that it was taking this long for someone to look over something he should know so much about, it became questionable whether he was considering any changes,” Clay said.
However, the experience of working on the proposal with Coseglia brought the two closer, Clay said. Toward the end of the year, he received encouragement to run for Union president from Coseglia, now a BU law student.
“He pretty much said ‘I would like to see the Student Union carry on in your hands’,” Clay said, of a conversation he had with Coseglia.
Clay said it was difficult to select slate members, since he had only been at the school for about six months. However, he said he relied on outside recommendations from Coseglia and others in forming the “True” slate.
VP of Public Relations Frances Cosico, who was appointed VP of Academic Affairs last year, said when Clay approached her, she didn’t think she would run for any student body in her final year at BU.
“I came to the meeting thinking I was not going to run than run again next year because it was my senior year,” Cosico said.
“I really felt this energy that was very different,” Cosico said. “I knew that I had to be a part of this group with these people and him.”
After campaigning against two other slates, Clay’s slate won a majority of the vote, locking in 1,762 out of the 3,292 students who cast ballots during the three-day period.
“We campaigned our hearts out,” Clay said.
Looking back on the election, Clay said the reason he ran for student body president at BU was to try and fulfill the goals he had planned.
“I have these goals for BU and it just so happens that I felt the best way for them to be accomplished was for me to take a stab at student government here at BU,” Clay said.
Clay made it clear that he felt no one should aspire to be a politician, but added if they need to take that road to accomplish change, then nothing should stand in their way.
“You should not aspire to be a politician — you should aspire to accomplish your goals,” Clay said. “For me, politics is not the goal — the goals are something that forces me to do politics.”
“So yeah,” Clay said jokingly. “I probably will be running for government.”
This year, Clay said one of his main goals will be changing the Guest Policy, in which he will need to work with Silber. Clay said he had an excellent relationship with the Chancellor, although he said he does not always agree with his decisions.
“I can’t tell you how well we get along. I think he’s a great guy,” Clay said. “I disagree with some of his actions, but I respect him for his resolve and his ability to speak his own mind. I have great respect for the man.”
Cosico stressed observations that Clay thinks about the Union almost constantly.
“The Union right now pretty much is his life,” Cosico said. “At home, I’m his roommate, and he’s always talking about it and working on it, and it’s something we love to do.”
Cosico said Clay spoke about the Union all the time at home, and at times, she had to try to put a moratorium on the student government issues.
“When we’re watching TV or having dinner, he’ll bring up something about the website,” Cosico said. “I admire him for that, but sometimes we decide that we’ll have no Union talk for the next half hour.
“He usually can’t make it through it.”
