From sports to student government, Lindsay Botsford is a Rice Leader

From sports to student government, Lindsay Botsford is a Rice Leader

BY DANA BENSON
Rice News Staff

In high school,
Lindsay Botsford always was an enthusiastic supporter of
her school through sports and spirit clubs. Now as a Rice
junior, she’s applied that same zeal toward student
government.

Elected as president
of Rice’s Student Association (SA) in March, Botsford
is gearing up for the fall and spring semesters.

At a recent
planning retreat, Botsford and other SA members discussed
issues of importance for the coming six months, including
concerns about the quality of introductory-level and graduate-student
teaching and the revision of the Student Association’s
constitution.

Green space
on campus is another significant issue for the Student Association.
It’s particularly important to Botsford because she’s
always been interested in sports and recreation.

A club rugby
and soccer player at Rice, Botsford takes her sports seriously.
A recent knee injury has her sidelined, but the Cincinnati
native promises it’s only for a week or so.

Her commitment
to student government is a more recent interest. As a Rice
freshman she joined the Student Association as a new student
representative and later served as a representative of Wiess
College.

“I had
never been involved in student government before I came
here,” Botsford noted. “I was super-involved in
leadership and spirit and sports, things like that. But
I had never been involved in government. So it sounded interesting.
I wanted to get to know people from other colleges and meet
more people.”

The history
and policy studies major thought her interest would turn
elsewhere, but she found that she really enjoyed being a
part of Rice’s student leadership. She especially likes
“knowing what is going on and being a part of it. I
like knowing how to effect change and being a part of that
change.”

The most “amazing” aspect of being the SA president, though, is learning about
the university, Botsford said. One thing she learned is
that communication on various levels tends to be a problem
on campus. While improvements could be made in many areas,
she said the Student Association is focusing specifically
on communication between students and the administration.

“In the
past, students have felt like they don’t have a voice
or that the administration doesn’t care what they have
to say. Both parties are sitting on opposite sides saying
‘They don’t care what we’re doing,’”
she explained. “So we hope that by working with students
more to say what the administration is doing as well as
getting more input from students and bringing it to the
administration, both sides will communicate better.”

Botsford’s
role as SA president includes regular meetings with members
of the Rice administration, including Zenaido Camacho, vice
president for student affairs, and Dean Currie, vice president
for finance and administration. She and other members of
the organization also have met with Rice’s new provost,
Eugene Levy, and with President Malcolm Gillis.

She notes that
participation in the Student Association is improving. Attendance
at the association’s weekly meetings, held on Mondays
at 10 p.m. in Farnsworth Pavilion of the Ley Student Center,
has increased. But what really has improved, she said, is
that more students feel comfortable taking their concerns
to their elected representatives and letting them bring
the issue to the Student Association.

“Things
are getting better,” Botsford said. “In past years,
the Student Association had a pretty bad image, and it struggled
to find a place and get student support. It’s an uphill
battle.”

“[Botsford’s]
goal this year is to encourage students to use the Student
Association as a resource for information as well as a support
to take initiatives to improve the campus community,”
said SA adviser Mona Hicks, who also is director of student
activities. “It is tough to be the SA president; with
it comes so much scrutiny and peer pressure. She too is
tough and stands firm on doing what is right and what she
believes, all the while balancing serving as a facilitator
to student ideas.”

Botsford is
an active student at Rice. She is a member of the Rice Fellows,
a group of students who get together with mentors to talk
about current issues; a member of the Club Sports Committee;
and a Leadership Rice LEAP mentor to freshmen. She’s
especially excited about one Rice freshman, her sister Whitney,
also a member of Wiess.

Botsford never
thought she would consider attending a college that didn’t
offer intercollegiate soccer, but she’s never regretted
her decision to come to Rice. And she’s excited about
the opportunity to play soccer through Rice’s women’s
soccer team, which will start play in fall 2001.

“I visited
other places like Harvard, Princeton and other Northeast
schools, but I never found one that I liked as much as Rice,”
Botsford said. “There’s no place with a better
sense of community and also with a beautiful campus and
small size.

“There’s
a lot of things about Rice that I didn’t even realize
at first. None of the other schools had a college system.
I love it now and would recommend a college system. Because
I come from a small high school, it gave me a similar feeling.
It was a good setting for me.”

Botsford combined
the family feel of her college with her involvement in clubs
that allowed her to meet people from across campus. “I
love my college, but I’m really fortunate for having
gotten involved early and meeting a lot of people,” she said.

A participant
in the Rice University/Baylor College of Medicine Scholars
Program, Botsford is interested in orthopedics and health
policy. She would like to ultimately get involved in public
health administration.