At 20 years old, Jessica Lee is a career politician.
Since her first semester at VCU in the fall of 2004, the former president of her senior high school class has been one of the most active members of the Student Government Association, serving first as a senator and later climbing to the elected position of senate chairwoman, the highest position in the legislature.
Now, after winning the April election for student body president and being inaugurated in May, Lee reigns at the top of the whole student government. As the primary student lobby group to university administration, the SGA allocates student activity fees to campus organizations. During the 2006-2007 academic year, it appropriated more than $500,000.
“We actually have the ability to change things here,” said Lee, a senior political science major, about the organization. “It’s not like in high school where SGA was just kind of a social group. You can pick an issue and see real progress made on it.”
Lee’s ascent to Monroe Park Campus student body president (the MCV SGA has its own president) might be a fitting ending to her years of service, but the position was hardly guaranteed to her. After Lee and her executive running mates won the spring presidential race with 908 votes (more than the other two candidates’ votes combined), a contentious series of events led to accusations of illegal campaign tactics against Lee.
William Moehl, the presidential runner-up who received 527 votes, spearheaded the allegations, which included claims that she distributed campaign fliers that purposefully resembled parking tickets and lied about stumping for votes in the James Branch Cabell Library, an area designated a no-zone for campaigning.
The SGA judicial board reviewed the charges and voted unanimously to dismiss all but one of them. The justices found Lee guilty of allowing her vice presidential candidate, Emad Maghsoudi, to forge her signature on an SGA packet and ruled later that she would have to apologize for her error during her inaugural speech.
Lee was unable to sign the document, she said, because of car problems she was experiencing off campus right before the form was due.
Moehl pressed on with the other charges. Shortly after the judicial board’s decision, he sought an appeal, which the board subsequently rejected on the grounds that he provided no new evidence.
Convinced the judiciary would not give him a fair trial, Moehl then requested arbitration from university administration, filing formal charges that Lee and Maghsoudi had lied about their activity in the library, thus violating VCU rules and regulations.
Reuben Rodriguez, associate vice provost and dean of student affairs, took up the matter and assigned Karen Belanger, director of judicial affairs, to investigate. In a letter provided by Moehl, dated June 5 and signed by Rodriguez, the dean stated that after reviewing Belanger’s report on May 25, he decided no further action against Lee was warranted. Another letter revealed the same outcome for Maghsoudi’s case.
Although Moehl may still request a three-person panel of administrators to review the judgment, the case is over for all practical purposes.
Moehl, a senior business major, said he finally accepts the outcome, but his feelings have not changed.
“Obviously, as I grow further away from it, it has less personal or emotional impact. But I’m still disgusted,” he said. “When it all came out, the first thought that came to my mind is, ‘I am disgusted to be a VCU student. How can I go to a university that’s lacking integrity?’ “
Moehl said he pursued Lee so vigorously because he wanted to demonstrate how committed a leader he would have been.
“I fought for a while for the SGA presidential (election) because I believe that it would have been the best option for the students. It turns out that’s not what happened,” he said. “If I’m asked to come back, I’m going to fight for the students.”
Lee said she expects challenges as the head of the student body, but Moehl’s campaign against her tested her personally and professionally in ways she had never been tested before. The hardest thing, she said, has been trying to get people to stop talking about the scandal.
“It has been really disappointing,” Lee said. “There’s so much I want to do, and there’s so much excitement that I have, but I can’t share that with people because I have to do so much damage control.”
Looking toward the upcoming academic year, Lee and her running mates said they are ready to put the conflict with Moehl behind them and begin tackling the issues that really affect students.
Among her top priorities, Lee said she wants to overhaul parking and make it friendlier to VCU’s large commuter population, create a resource center for undergraduate students interested in graduate school and improve campus dining by, among other things, offering more vegetarian fare. Lee said what will set her administration apart from others is an overarching effort to ensure VCU recycles and utilizes green technology in its expansion and construction.
“The whole theme is making sure VCU stays student-centered,” she said. “We keep growing and growing, and we have to make sure we are still providing for the students we have here now.”
To get this message across, Lee and her executive teammates will launch a major publicity campaign when the fall semester commences. Many students either know nothing about the SGA or have misperceptions about it, Maghsoudi said.
“Some people see SGA as a bunch of dorky, nerdy poli-sci kids,” said Maghsoudi, a senior political science major. “We want to introduce it to more art kids, more graduate students (and) more theater kids.”
Lee said involvement in student government can be one of the most rewarding university experiences.
“SGA makes me feel like the school’s a lot smaller than it is,” she said. “It’s just really exciting because it gives you access to a network of really motivated, really awesome people.
“It’s really addicting,” Lee added. “Once you get one thing done, you get so excited about the next thing you’re working on.”
Lee’s drive to “get things done” traces back to an epiphany she had when she was an environmental sciences major her freshman year, a point in her life when she was not nearly as concerned about politics as she is today.
“I started realizing that all of the stuff I did didn’t matter if people who are making laws don’t agree with you,” she said. “You could shout from the rooftops that global warming’s going to kill us all tomorrow, but it doesn’t matter if there’s not a politician listening to you.”
Since then, Lee’s political activism has expanded beyond student government. The president of the VCU Young Democrats and a member of the Virginia Young Democrats executive board, she has volunteered for notable Democratic politicians, including Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry during his 2004 presidential campaign and Sen. Jim Webb in his 2006 Senate campaign.
Lee insists she is not an ideologue, saying, “I’m not loyal to the Democratic Party as much as I am the ideas that they represented,” namely civil rights and multilateralism.
She demonstrated recently her bipartisanship by working as a field director for Republican state Senate Majority Leader Walter Stosch in his successful bid for the 12th District Republican primary. A well-known supporter of funding for higher education, Stosch and the rest of the General Assembly will face voters Nov. 6.
Kelly Porell is executive director of the young voters interest group Virginia21, where Lee interned in her role as field director for Stosch.
Porell said one of the most admirable things about Lee is “her ability to put aside partisanship when she recognizes what’s important.”
Jessica “did the right thing for students and their families by getting involved,” Porell said.
In addition to political campaigns, Lee has gotten involved in other activist causes, participating in such groups as the Sierra Student Coalition, VOX at VCU (Voices for Planned Parenthood) and the Muslim Student Association.
Lee said all of her activity derives from the same source: the need to connect to others.
“I love people. I like to analyze people,”
she said. “I like to listen and hear their crazy stories or their complaints or whatever it may be. I can absorb people all day long.”
By the same token, Lee hopes that being active will help others better understand her.
“People in general see me, and I’m always running to meetings. I’m ‘Little Miss SGA,’ ” she said. “They think I’m a very serious person, but really at the end of the day I just come home and put on some music and try to pass like everybody else.”
Lee, who wants to study human rights law after graduation and is unsure whether she wants to aspire to a career in the competitive world of professional politics, said modesty will be one of the guiding principles of her administration during the next year.
“I like to think I’m a student who just happens to be able to know how to contact administration.”