Q & A with Sarah Sullivan, BU candidate for state legislature

Most seniors wait until their second semester to start looking for a job, but Sarah Sullivan, a College of Arts and Sciences senior, has been campaigning all summer for one.

Sullivan, a Florida native, is running a sticker campaign for the state representative of the 17th Suffolk District, which lies partially on Boston University's campus. We talked to her about Allston parties, budget woes and how she's planning on balancing midterm elections with midterm exams.

<strong>So, Sarah, why are you running for state representative?</strong>

Well, I'm currently a senior at BU, a senior undergraduate, and from my three years at BU so far I've been really active on campus. I helped to start the Women's Resource Center on campus and have been a really involved student. At the same time I was also interning at the State House, I was working with the senate president of Massachusetts for two years... and what I noticed is what I feel is a great disconnect between the state and university students here in Massachusetts. And I felt like I sort of had an interesting perspective, where I could see both what was happening at the state level and what was happening right here on campus. And I thought I'd be a great voice to sort of bring that student perspective to the Massachusetts legislature. So I decided to run.

<strong>How are you planning to manage both school, and, if you win, governing?</strong>

The primary election, which I'm running in, is next week on Sept. 14. And should I win, the election would be in November. So it could be a situation where I could graduate if need be in December but probably I would finish a class or two in the spring before taking office.

<strong>But would your new responsibilities get in the way of your spring classes?</strong>

I could finish my one or two classes sort of on the side while also transitioning into the workforce and assuming responsibility. So no, I think that I could finish my undergraduate at the same time.

<strong>What is a sticker campaign, anyway?</strong>

A sticker campaign is actually Massachusetts' version of a write-in candidate. Whereas in many states a write-in candidate was commonly done for someone not on the ballot, in Massachusetts candidates not on the ballot can provide voters with a sticker with their name and address printed onto it, which they affix onto the ballot. And once my sticker is onto a ballot, it will count as a vote for me.

<strong>You say you want to give voice to Massachusetts's students. How are you planning on advocating for us?</strong>

Well, it's not really that I want to be an advocate for student interests, I do, but it's really also offering a student's perspective. In Boston, out of the 600,000 residents, 160,000 of us are university students. And young people in Boston become actually about a sixth of the population. And of course, our universities aren't in Boston alone; We have a lot of great universities statewide. And so I thought that a real student perspective is missing, not only being a representative for student interests, but also being a perspective for students more generally, is something that I'm interested in. And I think that this will benefit not just students, but sort of the greater population as a whole, because I feel that a lot of students who come to Massachusetts' universities are very bright, some of the best from other states, the best in the country. And I feel like if we can have a voice that kind of can connect students to the state, we sort of will all be better off.

<strong>Right now Massachusetts is having a lot of trouble filling the hole in our budget. What are some ways that you, as a representative, would fill the gap?</strong>

One thing is that I believe that students, because they are so great in number, could help with some of the economic issues facing Massachusetts. And one issue I would help to address, and I could work on this issue, is student retention in the state. I believe that more could be done to help keep our university students here after they graduate and this could help us create jobs in the Commonwealth. I also believe that we can be doing more to help connect students to the Massachusetts workforce, not only after they graduate, but even before they graduate, so working more closely to help university students understand about internship opportunities and get to know businesses here currently already in the Commonwealth, I think could help us to sort of fill these economic gaps.

<strong>You say you wouldn't have voted for the casino bill last session. Why?</strong>

I don't think it really addressed all the criticisms that people were having. . . another issue, and this is sort of related, something that is really a concern to me at the community level, is, and it's related to the casino bill, is sort of the attention that's given to venues for people 21-plus, and again, this is semi-related to the casino bill because it's something that obviously receives state attention. I'm actually hoping to be a big advocate for increasing 18-plus venues in the community, and I'm actually hoping that some of my attention, should I be elected, be moved to sort of more this sort of conversation and hope that actually this be something the state takes some time to address.

<strong>What issues are you primarily running on?</strong>

I have concerns of the great tension I see that exists between long-term residents and students in the Allston-Brighton area, which is the district that I'm running in. I feel that as a community member in Allston, I can see that this tension, that is of great importance to the community, I think is really frustrating to long-term community members &amp;- I think that's also really frustrating to students as well. So I'm hoping to help address that. I think initially that even just having someone looking out for students and kind of recognizing the problems &amp;- I do believe that it's sort of a great problem that's facing the area and I don't know that it has really been addressed by our leaders yet. So this is something that I'm hoping to help begin work on and I do believe that it's a great problem in the community.

Some of the solutions I have &amp;- we know that a lot of the tension exists because of sort of the late night culture of university students. I was hoping that I could help sort of work on this. As I mentioned, being an advocate for more 18-plus venues, activities that we can provide that aren't of drinking age, who maybe aren't interested in going to bars but are interested in doing things at night, maybe in more supervised settings than the alternative that exists for students right now.