Campus felt alive Thursday afternoon as UC Santa Cruz settled into the first week of spring quarter. Greek organizations engaged with the crowd in Quarry Plaza, itself loud with the bustling of students — most without masks — walking to and from class. The sun was shining. It felt … normal.
Shivika Sivakumar, 21, expressed her delight and shock. In her fourth year on campus and her second year as UCSC Student Union Assembly president, she’s seeing students reemerge from the chaos and uncertainty of the past two years.
The Student Union Assembly is the university’s student government and is made up of a president, five vice presidents, interns and about 40 representatives. The president, vice presidents and some of the representatives are elected, but many representatives are also appointed by the colleges or are the leaders of student groups. They manage a budget of about $500,000, which goes to clubs, events and initiatives.
Sivakumar, who served as a representative her freshman and sophomore years before running for president, said she always knew she wanted to be involved in community service. From the southern Indian state of Kerala, Sivakumar grew up moving often as her dad worked for the Indian Air Force. She learned how to adapt to constant change, become a problem-solver and embrace her background of international and global perspectives — which is the theme of her college, College Nine.
She lived there her freshman year but currently lives off campus. She’s enjoying having a car and slowly integrating herself into the greater Santa Cruz community.
A politics and computer science double major, Sivakumar just attended her first in-person class in about two years last Monday. It’s quite a final quarter at UCSC for her. She’s doing both what she can to enjoy what’s left of her time before graduating — and reacquainting herself with campus as if it were all new again.
“I feel like a first-year, getting lost on campus,” she said, laughing. “But the professors have been understanding.”
In her two years as SUA president, she put a lot of time and energy into crisis management. The pandemic and the challenges of remote instruction combined to create an unprecedented situation for a student body head to confront. Now, as those challenges ebb, Sivakumar shifts her priorities, focusing on rebuilding student connections on campus.
The following interview has been edited for clarity.
Shivika Sivakumar stands for a portrait at the Geneva House on the UC Santa Cruz campus.
(Kevin Painchaud / Lookout Santa Cruz)
Lookout: What is campus life like and how are students doing?
Shivika Sivakumar: Being in this online, pandemic setting for two years, we’re so used to the Zoom world. People are socially anxious, you don’t really know who your classmates are, and everyone’s new. So I think there was …….