Leadership Institute grad 'committed to serving all students' in new student gov position
Conservative Ansel 'Aimee' Garcia was confirmed as an associate justice on Mar. 28 by a mostly liberal Student Senate at the University of Houston.
Garcia, a participant in a Leadership Institute Campus Election Workshop, is 'commited to serving all students' as an impartial justice who will give each party 'a fair and equal trial or opinion.'
Ansel “Aimee” Garcia calls her Mar. 28 confirmation as an associate justice at the University of Houston (UH) “very intimidating.”
As she stood before the mostly liberal Student Government Association (SGA) senators, Garcia knew that they knew about her “conservative ideology.”
[RELATED: Leadership Institute workshop yields another student government victory]
“I just had to … push my case through, just speaking about judicial bias and my ways of avoiding it,” she told Campus Reform.
Garcia, a participant in a Leadership Institute Campus Election Workshop and recipient of a Victory Grant, made her case before the Student Senate by describing her “commit[ment] to serving all students,” leaving behind any notion of bias or an “unproductive agenda.”
Student government, she says, should “be apolitical” and “not necessarily left or right.”
“That’s what my president saw,” she continued, describing her appointment by the student body president and her strategy for winning over a liberal Student Senate. Only two senators voted against her confirmation.
Under her watch as an associate justice for the SGA Judicial Branch, Garcia says that all students will “receive a fair and equal trial or opinion.” She plans to pursue law school after graduation, “preferably [at] the University of Houston Law Center.”
Garcia is a political science and Spanish double major obtaining a minor in law, values, and policy. Though she leaves her politics at the door as an impartial justice, she suggests that the Leadership Institute taught her how to enact positive change on a campus where polarization prevents liberal students from engaging with conservatives.
“Whenever people see a conservative, they view him as, like, a red, flashing light of danger,” she told Campus Reform. “In reality, it’s not like that.”
