The Daily Gamecock: What experience makes you qualified for this office?
Trey Byars: I’ve served in leadership roles within Student Government for three years, but I’ve also served in leadership roles in other organizations. I really understand what the position entails, especially when I served as Jonathan Kaufman’s Chief of Staff. Being in the room with him when he made tough decisions, when he picked the executive cabinet ... You’ve got 70 people who’ve applied, you’ve got to pick 12 and a lot of them are your friends you have to pick from and tell them you’re not going to be given this position. That’s tough as a college student. So I think I’ve definitely learned from that, but the biggest thing I’ve learned from Jonathan ... is advocating for students at Board of Trustee meetings. That’s really where students can get their voice across.
TDG: If you could accomplish one thing during your term, what would it be?
TB: I want students to be able to create their own Carolina Community ... My best friends aren’t very involved in student government, they’re not involved really in anything. They're your typical students, they go to class, come back, play video games, watch TV and then they go downtown. They really don’t do much else. And they’re fine with that, and that’s okay. But they told me, "Hey, our freshman year, we should have gotten more involved, we regret that. We should have joined the bass fishing club team or something like that ... We just didn’t know how to get involved." We've got to make sure students are getting the most out of this opportunity. There’s a lot of students who also transfer because they just don’t feel at home and don’t feel like we have programs here that fit them, but we actually do. We just got to do a better job of making sure we’re connecting students to where they need to be ... It’s the greatest time of your life because each day you could meet your future best friend, best man, wife, husband, anything, and it's just so special. Everyone's here for a similar purpose, but in many different ways, they've got different reasons for why they’re here, and I think its kind of a melting pot ... I definitely want students more involved and just make the most of their experience here.
TDG: What inspired you to run for office?
TB: For the longest time, actually, I really didn’t think I was going to run, and then I talked to my granddad ... He’s the biggest influence in my life ... He would always talk to me about where I want to go in life. He would always really, really push me. He came from nothing. His parents died when he was 12 and 14 ... He really wasn’t given an easy life, but he made the most [of it]. He worked in the West Wing, he was the FBI liaison for the White House, he worked with Kennedy and RFK and Johnson and Nixon, all these crazy people, and he would just never really brag about it. He would never act like it was some big deal. I didn’t even know about this stuff until five years ago ... A couple of days before he passed away, (during) one of the last conversations we had, he said, "What are you going to do this next year? Do you want to do anything?" ... And I was like, I don't know ... I could work on the [Marco] Rubio campaign, and if they go to the general I could do that and take online classes and go straight to the White House ... And he like stopped me and was like, "No, you’re not doing that." ... He made me promise to him that this (running for student body president) was something I would really look into, I'd study up on. I’m not one of these candidates that’s running for student body president with two ideas and hasn’t really been experienced much in Student Government. I’ve been experienced inside and outside. And I know the problems our students face. A lot of the problems are problems that my mom and dad faced when they were here in the late '80s. And it’s time for us to kind of expect more and start realizing that we can find reasonable fixes for the problems we’ve been facing for years. It just took a little pushing from my granddad to make me realize that and it stuck with me for a while, because there were times where I really just did not want to run, and doing this and working on the Rubio campaign, being a student ... It's a lot, but at the end of the day, I know that this is something. Bringing issues to the forefront that I want to bring and I’m making a difference in my own way, running a positive campaign, I think that means something. So that’s kind of what inspires me in a long, roundabout way.
TDG: What food do you think embodies your personality and why?
TB: I’m a picky eater, so this is even harder for me. Probably steak, because I’m consistent ... You don’t really have a bad steak very often.