Officer Spotlight: President Shairee Arora

From last year's secretary to this year's president, meet Shairee Arora! Arora’s student government journey began at Roberto Clemente Middle School, where she met former SMOB, Nick Asante (RCMS SGA president at the time), who encouraged her to involve herself in MCJC.

“I immediately fell in love with advocacy and student government so I continued all throughout middle school and then joined MCR my freshman year!” In her years of advocacy, Arora accomplished a lot, but was not yet satisfied.

After serving as secretary, Arora “felt like there was still more [she] could do and [she] wanted to continue the work [she] had begun. President just felt like the natural next step and the position in which [she] could really accomplish the goals [she] wanted to achieve in order to improve MCR.”

Shairee described her goals for the year: “to increase transparency, equity, and accessibility in MCR by improving MCR’s application process, focusing outreach on underrepresented schools, increasing accessibility to meetings and materials, and so much more.”

The way MCR runs will be different this year from years past. The COVID-19 pandemic brings challenges considering MCR is done mostly virtually. Arora brought up the fact that the MCR community is different this year. “A huge part of MCR is the community and family that you create and that bonding aspect has been challenging to recreate in a virtual setting.”

Some positives she brought up were “I think that the virtual platform has exponentially increased accessibility to MCR and has allowed many more students to get involved, which has been amazing. I think that going forward even after COVID, we will continue to utilize the virtual setting in order to engage more students.”

Balancing school and extracurricular activities never fails to challenge a student, especially the MCR officers. Arora expressed the difficulties of balancing school and MCR. “It took some getting used to and I still don’t think I’ve completely found a balance. However, I love what I do in MCR, so it doesn’t feel like work. I just manage my time as best as possible and make sure that by planning out my days, I’m able to fulfill both my duties as MCR President and as a student.”

Aside from her hard work as president, Shairee enjoys playing piano and watching Netflix. She also loves grabbing bubble tea, enjoying noodles and cheesecake, and shopping with friends.

She involves herself in her high school, Richard Montgomery, by participating in mock trial and drama club. Her favorite class at school is psychology; she is even thinking of studying it more in the future!

Currently, she has no pets, but she used to have parakeets named Sky and Pickles. As for her music taste: check out her playlist on MCR’s Spotify to get a peak at some of her favorite songs!

Written by Allison J Khani

Published by PR Department