President of Spectrum Autism At Cal

So I'm President of the Spectrum: Autism At Cal,

 Student Org at UC Berkeley, for 2020-21

I had not even tried for the President role to begin with. Though I was offered the role, I was not planning to take it on. In fact, I was helping the outgoing President with our new org structure and interview candidates for all the board positions including the position of President. The experience of interviewing for positions was quite interesting actually as I got to know a lot about the candidates - both in terms of their skills and personality for the tasks required and their general attitude toward autism and what was their driving motivation. I got to witness this additional side of them which you don't see in your day to day interactions and was so impressed by their passion. This was very different from the interviews I do to get student reactions and experiences for Daily Cal articles.

Spectrum: Autism at Cal (SpectrumAtCal.org), had its first autistic President last year - Cole Hasserjian (Cole is also featured in my Daily Cal article on autistic students at UC Berkeley - It Really Is A Spectrum). The org has had neurotypical presidents in the past. So that will make me the second autistic President of Spectrum and the first Non-Speaking President. 

The org has grown quite a bit since the time I've been at Cal.  So much so, that the board org structure was expanded and updated for the coming year. The org has both autistic and neurotypical students and around half of this year's board are on the spectrum. There were also way more more applicants than the number of positions on the board. There will of course be need for even more people for the various committees that we will be forming for the different tasks; recruitment efforts begin in fall. The intern positions will be advertised in the first two weeks in fall as well. What was encouraging about the high number of applicants is that it seems to indicate a higher level of interest and awareness about autism and wanting to do something around it. A bigger org also means a lot more work for the President. In the final analysis and after much discussion with the outgoing President, I found myself in the role of President along with Eli Oh. It will be good to have a "speaking" person as there will be tasks which will be challenging for me to do physically either due to spoken-communication-challenges, sensory-challenges, fine-motor challenges or the oft unexpected vagaries of my particular brand of autism.

I will of course be leading the Autism DeCal class in 2020-21 as well. I absolutely love running this class. The DeCals are student-run, "democratic education", which are faculty sponsored and for academic credit. The Autism DeCal falls under the Psychology Department and is offered for 1 academic unit and runs for 1.5 hours a week for the semester (Psych 98/198 1:54 Autism Spectrum Disorders). Where possible, the Autism DeCal instructors work with the Spectrum Org; students in the class also get a chance for more exposure to Autism by volunteering with Spectrum. As both an autistic and as the Autism DeCal instructor, I have been quite involved with all that Spectrum has been doing since my second semester . 

Hoping to build on the momentum in the next year.  Especially want to see us expand our volunteering given our university actively encourages and is known for volunteerism and activism. Berkeley is an incubator for social justice change-makers. The Covid-19 threw quite a spanner in the works for Spectrum's biggest fundraiser of the year- our Annual 5K Run / 3K Walk in April (Autism Awareness/Acceptance Month). We keep our fingers crossed for fall and will have to course correct to online alternatives where possible if access to campus is still restricted.