Jewish student to head SGA for second year in a row

Next year's Student Government Association President Jonathan Sachs isn't new to politics or to being a leader and organizer. The sophomore government and politics major has been involved in politics since he was 12, when he was a film runner between White House photographers and editors during the 2000 U.S. presidential elections. Sachs has also demonstrated a history of taking action to help others.

"He is definitely a 'we' person and not an 'I' person," said Beth Sachs, Jonathan's mother.

To help illustrate this point, Beth Sachs said Jonathan once organized a community bowling league for his sister Melissa's special needs group home while attending the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, Md., after an employee told him the residents needed more activities, Beth Sachs said.

He knew his older sister enjoyed bowling so he started calling bowling alleys and about a dozen group homes to get more people involved. The league is still active almost eight years later, his mother said.

"He really cares about the people he's with and he's very sincere," she said. "He always says he wants to make things better no matter where he is."

This translates into his role at the university with a student body of more than 25,000 students.

"My strength, and this comes from my background, [is] to be able to see beyond numbers and see one and one and one," he said.

While Sach's Jewish background has not affected his campaign or plans for running SGA as far as targeting one specific campus community over the other, he does have hopes for the university's Jewish community.

"I would like to get more Jewish students involved in the Jewish Community," he said, adding "I want to make people more activist" by implementing various community service projects.

"I've wanted to be in SGA forever," Jonathan Sachs said, despite losing a campaign during his freshman year in which he ran for class representative in SGA. Still, he continued his activity in SGA by helping out with campaigns such as Get Out the Vote for the Maryland presidential primaries earlier this semester.

After those primaries were over, "I remember being really bored and I wondered 'well, what am I going to do now?'" he said.

He then decided to run for president because "outreach, representation and resources were missing last year and I knew I could commit to it and I would be really good at it," he said.

"He is obsessive in a good way," said his best friend Jacob Berman, a sophomore criminology and criminal justice major. "I think SGA needs him and I'm glad they found him."

Sachs plans to take the community's voice into account by holding public meetings so people can voice their concerns, and he built a comment box on his Web site for the same reason.

"SGA is a very close-knit community, and I want to change that," he said.

During the campaign he went to every door on campus three times over several weeks and plans to continue using this method in order to find out student interests, he said.
He plans to hold unconventional office hours and send people out to talk to students rather than sitting and waiting for students to come in.

"Every year we say we are going to mobilize students and its time now," Sachs said.

"I'm just trying to put together the pieces so the second after I'm inaugurated, I can start making changes," he said. "I made promises and I have to keep them.