Jo
Jensen ’07
Trades Junior Class Presidency for Capitol Hill Position
The MHC class
of 2007 is looking for a new president.
Jo Jensen ’07
reluctantly resigned the position late in the summer to serve
as chief of staff
for a student lobbying group in
DC. While giving up the class presidency was difficult, for
a young woman with political ambitions, the opportunity was too
good
to pass up. Her group, Students
for Saving Social Security,
is a nonprofit, student-run organization that enlists college
students in support of President Bush’s plan to reform
Social Security through personal ownership by promoting personal
retirement accounts.
Despite long hours and makeshift living arrangements, Jensen
is getting an extraordinary education in grassroots politics.
S4,
as the group is known, was started last spring by two college
students, Jonathan Swanson of Yale and Patrick Wetherille of
Haverford. The two met last year while working as White House
interns for
the president’s Social Security adviser, Charles P. Blahous.
Having seen older Americans actively participate in the Social
Security debate, Swanson and Wetherille believed that college
students should also have a voice in the future of the program,
in which
they have a substantial stake. They decided to start an organization.
Jensen,
a politics and economics major at MHC, received an email
last spring about the new group. When she went to Washington,
DC, this past summer to work
as an intern for Connecticut Congressman Rob Simmons, she volunteered for
S4
in her spare time. It wasn’t long before she was putting in more
and more hours with them and ultimately ended her internship so she could
work
for S4
full-time. “I was planning to come back to school in the fall, but
the Social Security issue has taken off. We met with President Bush and
Karl Rove
in the White House. I thought, ‘Wow, I should stay,’ ” Jensen
said.
The group S4
has received some in-kind assistance, including free office space,
email lists, and technical advice. But the group has received
very
little cash
and operates on a shoestring budget. Jensen and the other full-time staff
members receive a modest monthly stipend.
As chief of
staff, Jensen has major supervisory responsibilities that keep
her working 90 to
100 hours a week. She oversees ten staffers in
DC, approximately
60 active volunteers nationwide, and the seven departments within the
organization, including education, outreach, and media. In addition,
she supervises the
more than 230 campus chapters around the country. “The number
grows every day,” she
said. “I make sure everyone has what they need. It’s a
lot of work.”
But the long
hours have not fazed her. “We’re
all students; we’ve
never done anything like this before. It’s definitely a great
experience to work for something you really believe in,” she
said. “It’s
so motivating.”
In addition
to learning how to prioritize and manage her time efficiently,
Jensen has come to appreciate the impact
a group can have on public
policy. “I’m
actually talking to senators and telling them why students think
this issue is so important,” she said. “And they say, ‘We
had no idea students felt strongly about this. Keep up the good
work.’ ”
Jensen, whose
family moved from New Hampshire to Connecticut last year, has
been active in politics since she
was 16. She worked
for the three
previous
summers
as an intern for Congressman Charlie Bass of New Hampshire. In
April 2005, she was elected cochair of the Massachusetts Alliance
of College
Republicans
(MACR),
an organization that connects college Republican chapters across
the state and provides the clubs with a network of resources
and events.
This year,
Jensen founded the MACR's Conservative Women’s Caucus,
which connects Republican college women in the state with conservative
women role models and provides the
tools for them to establish themselves and take a leadership
role
in the competitive world of politics.
Being a Republican
on a strongly Democratic college campus like Mount Holyoke is “interesting
and a challenge,” Jensen said. “I like it in
the sense that I’m challenged every day. It makes me
reevaluate my position and makes it stronger.”
Jensen plans
to return to Mount Holyoke spring semester. She looks forward
to “educating
people about the other side [of the Social Security issue].” Last
year, she explained, Massachusetts Congressman John Olver
spoke at Amherst College,
and had a letter and an article in the MHC newspaper, expressing
his view that personal accounts would negatively impact students. “Now
I can present the other half of the argument,” she
said. “I
believe that young workers and students have the most to
gain from voluntary personal retirement
accounts, mainly due to compound interest and ownership.”
Jensen
is certain she will have a career in politics, but is not
sure whether she’ll work on the inside for the government
or outside at a lobbying firm or nonprofit organization. “In
the future, I’m not sure which role
I will play in shaping policy debate and legislation. I
have always had an inside perspective as an intern on Capitol
Hill, and now I am learning what it’s
like to be an activist trying to affect legislation from
outside the government," Jensen
said. "This experience has definitely opened up new
doors.”
On the Web:
Students
for Saving Social Security
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