Illustration by Mariko Kuroda/The Gazelle

This article is about my experience of the recent events surrounding the elections and the Constitution. I’m not interested in continuing the debate or making any further arguments. I just want to share my story of what the experience was like for me as an individual.

Recently, an issue was raised about whether students on leave of absence, including myself, are considered to be part of the student body. This issue ended up spanning over 600 emails in my inbox and hundreds of online messages in the four days in which it occurred. This is the story of what it was like for me as the person in the middle of it all.

In Fall 2014, I visited my friend Brett Bolton at his home in Missouri. Brett was the second president of NYU Abu Dhabi and one of the original authors of the NYUAD constitution. I got to know him well while working with him throughout my tenure on the Executive Board in my first semester at NYUAD. It’s from him that I’ve learnt a great deal of what I know about the philosophy of Student Government, how the Constitution works and parliamentary procedure.

We were in a car on a multi-hour drive between his hometown and St. Louis. We struck up a conversation again about Student Government, sharing anecdotes of good times we had and also talking about what the future holds for NYUAD. We both were concerned about what the rights of students would look like in the future. This is when I made my decision to run for Student Government.

I spent a few months preparing with sophomore Quan Vuong, having discussions on principles we thought were important and what actions we could take to protect those principles. The outcome of this work is on our campaign website. I announced my candidacy with the Elections Commission and all seemed to be going smoothly. However, hours before the candidates were announced, I received an email that said I had been disqualified because I didn’t meet the requirements as a member of the student body because I was on a leave of absence, studying martial arts in the Wudang Mountains in China.

I was a little surprised. I was aware that you needed to be a member of the student body to run in the elections. However, having worked with the Constitution for a while, I thought it would be highly unlikely I would run into problems. In this case, my first impression from the Elections Commission email was that this was just a simple mistake that could be quickly fixed. Quan filed an appeal on my behalf.

A day later, the Elections Commission rejected the appeal. In this case, I decided to seek help from higher powers. I wrote to all three of the original authors of the clause in question. They assured me not to worry, there shouldn’t be a problem as they never intended to exclude students on leaves of absence and had crafted the language specifically to ensure that wouldn’t happen. I also spoke to Amel Yagoub, who has served as Parliamentarian from her sophomore to senior year. She said my case was solid and that she would recommend to the Elections Commission a reversal of their decision.

Having these four assurances, I was relieved and thought that this matter would be over quickly. However, shortly afterwards, the Elections Commission announced that they would not be reversing their decision.

Things broke down quickly after that. As I was informed of their initial decision right after the last General Assembly before the election, the only option remaining was to go public and hope for a special GA. On one hand, I didn’t want this to blow out of proportion. On the other hand, I felt the Elections Commission was clearly disenfranchising students on leaves of absence in a dangerous way. How could I claim to run on a platform strongly supporting student rights if I wasn’t willing to stand up for my own?

I posted an open letter and the issue blew up. People started chiming in with strong opinions in favor and against. The debate was good. However, what was not good was that it seemed like factions were forming. I strongly believe an us-versus-them scenario almost always should be avoided. I was starting to get tips that there were rumors that I had forged a document. I found out that there were meetings about me though I wasn't sure who was meeting and what they were talking about. As things progressed, it seemed that the overpowering voices were not those taking a balanced consideration, but those that were strongly polarized either in favor or against my case.

Suddenly, it felt like I was in a court case. Actually, it felt like I had done something wrong, or had an opponent. Only I had no idea what I had done, who my opponent was or why I had an opponent at all.

At this point I was getting round the clock messages from people in Abu Dhabi, New York and Shanghai. It took a really strong toll on me. I could barely focus during the multiple classes I attend each day at the martial arts school, and I missed the 5:20 a.m. morning activities every day due to lack of sleep.

I was informed that the Executive Board moved to have a special GA to vote on this issue. However, I would not be able to speak or vote at this GA due to my contested status as a member of the student body. People close to me told me to try not to say too much on the issue. The situation was now entirely out of my hands, to be decided by a process in which I was not allowed to participate.

The situation might be described as Kafkaesque, a confusing and frightening situation where one keeps getting stuck because of complex rules and systems that don't seem to make any sense. A situation in which bureaucracies overpower people.

A few hours before the vote, a few of the kids at the martial arts school invited me to go lobster catching with them. We took our fishing-rods, made of sticks and string, and hiked to a forested meadow higher up in the mountains. There, we spent the whole afternoon under the sun, catching frogs and small lobsters near the lake. We caught about 50 tiny lobsters. At one point we were resting, and one of the kids asked me, “How long are you going to stay with us?”

“I have to leave in two weeks," I told him.

He looked at me and said, “What happens then, will you come back?”

“I don’t know," I said. "I hope so.”

His questions put the entire episode into perspective for me. It made me step back and realize how stupid the entire thing was. I still have no idea why such a little issue became so big or why there was an issue at all. My best guess is that although no one ever intended to exclude me, it was the side-effect of the bureaucratic system.

Not being allowed to run in the elections feels somewhat unjust, but all of life isn’t fair so it’s pretty easy to accept this. However, being voted by your peers that you and the other students on leaves of absence shouldn’t be considered part of the student body, I have to admit, kind of hurt. I'm concerned about what this means for students on leave of absence, the way we run Student Government in the future, as well as our culture of inclusivity. However, the student body has voted that I don’t have a right to participate in those discussions, so it's out of my hands for now.

All things said, I’m most glad that it’s over. Though the episode was Kafkaesque and unnecessarily dramatic, I hope something good might come out of it in the future. It was also a good reminder to not let drama dictate your life. I'm happy now to shift my energies back into the more meaningful things in life.