Meet Tara Bansal, new DSG President

Last week, as I am sure you have all heard, Duke held its annual DSG elections.

After weeks of campaigning, the student body elected Tara Bansal as president and with whom I had the opportunity to sit down and ask a few questions.

What have you enjoyed finding the most at Duke?

I started going back home over breaks and I would refer to Duke as “home” and that was unexpected. Finding that you can have a group of friends that really feel like family is a beautiful thing. Also to be on a campus that is so big and still so connected. Duke is really a place where you can walk around campus at any time of day anywhere and feel like there are people that you know.

Since freshman year, you have been involved in DSG. How does it feel to have started on the Academic Affairs committee and now to be president?

As a freshman, I was so intimidated the first week to speak. I remember seeing Stefani Jones as president and she was just the coolest person – I could never imagine being in her position. Being able to see my own growth and see freshmen senators and their growth, knowing that one day one of them hopefully will be president, is really cool.

I remember the first time I ever had the confidence to speak up in the room, the first time I had a successful project, the first time I worked with an administrator. All those feelings of pride and accomplishment that come stage by stage that lead to being able to be president. I’m really excited other people are going to have the opportunity to feel that also.

What is the biggest difficulty you have faced in DSG?

I think it has been trying to keep people inspired and motivated. Student Government is something that I think can be bureaucratic at times but you really have to push and be inspired by the projects you are working on. I think if someone loses passion for the project, loses passion for the job, it becomes a lot harder to be a part of Student Government.

As president, one of the biggest things I want to do is keep kids inspired longer, try to keep them hyped-up by picking projects that are more personal to them and making sure that we are working with students to communicate the cool things that we are doing to show them how passionate we are about the work we are doing.

Have you always been interested in politics?

I was that kid in the third grade that ran to be class representative. Early on, I loved these sorts of position you get to bring people together and work on something that you feel is impacting a lot of people.

To impact anyone else’s life is a rare and precious thing. I have always been drawn to positions where I feel like I can have that sort of positive impact.

How do you stay engaged and passionate about your work responsibilities?

A big part of it is remembering whom it’s impacting and where the work came from. A lot of the projects I have worked on are things that I really wished I had at Duke. Freshmen year, I wished there were more different opportunities for living communities rather than just Greek life and SLGs, and that’s where the idea for the living-learning community came from.

I think the biggest way to stay passionate is remembering that this is something that I myself was really excited about and that by trying to bring it to Duke maybe could make someone else’s life better.

For me, an important moment was when a group of freshmen reached out saying that they were incredibly excited to apply for the living-learning community. I think that what really keeps you engaged is to see individually how you are impacting someone.

As of now, how are you feeling about our institution?

I think that what is great about Duke is that we are young so we have so much room to create and innovate in a way that I think a lot of our peer schools don’t. I think this is a really incredible time to make Duke better because it is so willing to adapt and change and you can see that physically through Duke construction and academically through the new curriculum. It’s a really cool time to be president, to be engaged in making this university better.

It’s also important to recognize that the campus’ culture has been tense as of late and that’s because Duke is becoming increasingly stratified and now groups are coming into conflict with one another. So I think this as an opportunity to create more dialogue on campus, to make us really the innovative and engaged campus that we are suppose to be.

Can you think of one person that has always supported you and inspired you in life?

Obviously the biggest ones are always parents. For me it was a big decision to run for President, a really hard decision actually, because I also had the opportunity to graduate a year early. Deciding what was most worthwhile to me was really difficult but my parents have made sure I had a very strong sense of self throughout the process.

If you could go somewhere for a month without any worries or concerns, where would it be?

I really love Bali. I got to go there for a weekend after I was working in Indonesia. It’s the most beautiful place in the world. I would go there in a heartbeat.

You have 30 seconds to describe yourself. Go.

I am a woman. I’m wearing glasses and a striped sweater. I had a crepe for breakfast. I would say that I am driven and I want to say that I am funny. I could use a chai latte right about now.

Anything else you would like to tell us?

I’m very excited to bring DSG down from this weird behemoth that people don’t really understand down to just another normal student organization. It is filled with the same people that are your friends and your peers. They are just doing slightly different types of work and the campaign process is more intensive because the work is suppose to be representative of all students.

I would love for people to be more involved with DSG and to realize that we want to continue to work with students more closely because we are made of students.