Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 15, Number 5, 1 May 1998 — Madame President [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Madame President

By Paula Durbln AYEAR AGO, Mamo Kim headed the Native Hawaiian slate whieh swept an unprecedented number of kānaka maoli into the offices governing the Associated Students of the University of Hawai'i. Before graduating on May | 17, she looked back on her term as ASUH president. "I hope we made a dent" she commented. Kim became the first candidate for the ASUH l presidency to take the election by identifying herself i as a Native Hawaiian. "I believe I won because it was time," she said, "but there were other factors. Fbr many years the UH elections were owned by the i sororities and fiatemities. Student govemment was ' a social thing, and the rest of the student body really didn't know about it. It was the sororities and ffater- ! nities we had to beat. So we needed a sorority or | fraternity ourselves and ours was the Center for > Hawaiian Studies." | The Native Hawaiian slate otganized at the Center when out-going ASUH senator Healani Sonoda urged other studenLs to run. "You know," she said ' when she got no response, "it pays." So Kim, a Hawaiian studies major, stepped forward. Shehad returned to school in 1995 afiter a 25-year hiatus dur- | ing whieh she worked variously as a model, singer, designer, small-part actress in big-time productions j such as MASH, and mother to two sons, now three and 23, and she needed the $230 stipend. "That's the crude reason why I did it," she laughed.

But Kim immediately

got serious. "I knew I would win," she recalled, "so I asked about what I would need to know." Kim discovered ASUH's $6 million investment portfolio and $350,000 discretionary budget as well as the opportunity to enhanee the experience of 12,000 students and influence policy. "I developed a platform," she said. "I wanted students to know about the kind of money ASUH had and to realize they had more power than they knew. The students needed their consciousness raised and to me the fastest way was to bring in speakers." Under Kim's leadership, ASUH became a primary sponsor of a lecture series that included African scholar Ngugi Wa Thion'go, activlsts Angela DavLs and Mililani Trask, authors Aliee Walker and Ishmael Reid, Maori actress Rena Owen and 19% Nobel peaee laureat Jose Ramos Horta. "We never had fewer than 1,000 people for the speakers," eommented Kim. "We were thirsty and it filled us." ASUH paid the guests' honoraria from iLs portfolio ineome, funded activity requests ffom among the 300 eligible campus otganizations and increased tuition scholarships 500 percent in 1997-98. Additionally, the student senate passed some eontroversial resolutions, among them its demand that Porteus Hall be renamed, to whieh the Board of Regents recently agreed. Less well-known is ASUH's opposition to axing the Department of European Languages as suggested by a faculty task force whieh has since backed ofi". "ASUH is to be congratulated on being so enlightened," said the European Languages Department Chair Austin Dias of that resolution. " It made a difference for us." Led by Kim, the ASUH senate has also criticized the oversight of the observatory on Mauna Kea. "Only astronomers ean go up there. Why not biologists, geoscientists, anthropologists? The environment was supposed to have been kept elean, but there are no toilets. Historic sites have been mined," said Kim indignantly citing a scathing state audit "Worse yet, the university could be getting $13 to 20 million a year renting out the telescopes. They haven't been doing thaL and this has been going on for 30 years." Kim hopes her schoolmates have seen that if they don't like the system they ean fight it. She will be back in class this fall as a graduate student in politi-

eal science. As for her interest in public office, "I don't know" she said. "But from what I've seen it would be easier than what I've done here." To those following in her footsteps she advised, "Make sure you are driven by

something other than ego. Because the work is hard and the responsibility is great. But so are the rewards." ■

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Mamo Kim presides over the ASUH senate whieh includes many others from the Hawaiian slate.

PHOTOS: SIMONĒ OBĒRMAN