News

Student body leaders: Brian Harris — man of the people

Posted on Nov. 16, 2009, at 1:14 a.m.

Brian Harris hopes to be a professional musician someday, but in the meantime, he’ll settle for his job as President-elect of Student Government.

In the recent student government election, Harris won the presidency in a tight squeeze between himself and Zachary Jackman. Harris beat Jackman by a mere four votes in a final tally of 832 to 828. The third candidate, Ross Wolland, received 521 votes.

“It’s kind of tough because where you’re running against your friends … you don’t want any tough feelings. But knowing Ross and Zach, I knew that wouldn’t be the case,” Harris said. “But at the same time, it was kind of good too, because it was fun. … We kind of had the playful rivalry.”

Now that the numbers are official and Harris is in, he plans to begin work this semester.

A third-year psychology student with a minor in music, Harris has always wanted to pursue music. He plays the viola and drums and hopes to make a career out of music therapy.

But Harris has a love for politics as well.

“I love debating. I love having intelligent discussion with people about issues,” Harris said. “When people disagree with me, I just love learning different points of view.”

Coming from a high school with 48 students in his graduating class, Harris was intimidated about the political scene at the University of Maine when he arrived as a first-year. As he started to get involved in his fraternity Sigma Phi Epsilon, Class of 2011 Council and student senate, his fears were eased.

“I really met a lot of people who were really involved on campus and really encouraged me to get involved,” he said. “Over the past year I’ve been meeting a lot of people, and I’ve seen changes in myself.”

Harris will begin to work with current President of Student Government Owen McCarthy this semester to learn the ropes of the position. He plans to spend time meeting administrators and learning the “parliamentary procedure,” so he is ready to go when classes resume in the spring semester.

His goals for his presidency revolve around making student government more transparent. He plans to utilize the media to inform the community about important issues. He also wants to hold senators more accountable for their actions by encouraging them to engage the community more. This may include speaking in Memorial Union and in classrooms or just being present at campus events.

“It has to be the job of the entire student government to reach out to the students, or else the legitimacy of our group is going to fall,” Harris said.

His focus on people is evident in his other part-time job as an alcohol and drug counselor at Manna Ministries, an outreach service in Bangor. One night a week, Harris works overnight providing help to the program.

“It’s something I’m pretty proud of. I really love my job,” Harris said.

Harris plans to bring this commitment and pride to his new position as president.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 16th, 2009, 1:14 am. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.