The Student Assembly's newly elected vice president, Case Dorkey '99, is busy, to say the least.
Dorkey, a third-generation Dartmouth legacy from Brooklyn, has pulled consecutive all-nighters working on Assembly projects.
He has lived at the College without housing for two terms. And he has spent every term on campus since the summer after his freshman year.
"When I do things, I do them 100 percent," he said. "Right now, I'm doing Dartmouth."
A former player on the Dartmouth Rugby Football Club, Dorkey got an early glimpse of the College when his father, a former lacrosse player and brother of Theta Delta Chi fraternity, took his 18-month-old son to that fraternity's basement.
The art of influence
Dorkey, a history major, said he dedicates large amounts of his time to student government to "make an impact, make a difference on the environment that I'm in."
In high school, he said, he was involved with student government through his two best friends, although he never held a position himself. In college, he said, he wanted to become a member rather than exert only an indirect influence.
During his freshman fall, Dorkey was elected Assembly representative of the River Cluster. Later in the year, he became involved with the 1999 Class Council as its treasurer.
"This began my involvement with money," he said.
In his sophomore fall, Dorkey joined the Undergraduate Finance Committee and was appointed Student Liaison to the Board of Trustees Committee on Finance.
"I'm involved with just about every group the UFC distributes to on every level or financial tier," he said.
Dorkey said one of his main extracurricular involvements is the Assembly's administration and faculty relations committee, which he joined his freshman fall and now chairs. He said he realized very soon that the Assembly did not have any real institutional power. Its influence, he said, depended on its ability to convince the administration.
Dorkey said he joined the committee, and "that's what I've stuck to ever since." He said he has turned down offers to chair other committees in order to devote enough time to administration and faculty relations.
Dorkey said he thinks the Assembly has "improved enormously in influence."
"It has risen to the challenge of improving relations with the administration," he said. "Now the next challenge is that more students need to believe in it. That's really why I ran for vice president."
Dorkey said he thinks students look to the president and the vice president to "set the tone for the organization, defining what it is." He said his goals as vice president include "making projects more efficient and effective and making the Assembly more representative."
"We still have a lot to do with the student body," he said. He added he wants to increase interest and trust in the Assembly, and attract students with different perspectives.
"Everyone here cares about something. I want to get more people involved in working on what they care about," he said. He explained that he intended to have working groups that operate on a project basis, for those students who do not have the time to attend meetings but still want to contribute.
People first
Dorkey is also a member of the Committee on Student Organizations and is involved with the Programming Board and the Social Life task force, where he focuses on finance. He has also worked as a Dartmouth Dining Services intern and is currently the Coed Fraternity Sorority intern for the Office of Residential Life.
He explained that he is not a brother of any house, because he did not want to have to choose a single fraternity. But he said he is still interested in issues that affect fraternities.
"I'm pretty independent in terms of association with things," he said.
As the CFS intern, Dorkey publishes the CFS newsletter and works as the administrative assistant for the CFS Visions Committee, which recommends changes in the minimum standards for the Greek system.
As the intern for DDS, Dorkey was involved in financial discussions and gathered student input about DDS. He also played a role in redefining and shaping the College's meal plan by writing an online referendum to which a significant portion of the student body responded.
Dorkey described this referendum as a "success for student input," as it led to a change to meal plans that are more suited to students' needs.
During his freshman spring, Dorkey was appointed chair of the Leadership Conference Committee of the '99 Council.
He said the overnight retreat where representatives from different groups come together to improve leadership and facilitate communication offers workshops and encourages a flow of new ideas. Both the idea of DarCorps and Dartmouth Up All Night were born during this conference, Dorkey explained.
"I learned so much about organizing, leading and getting people involved," he said, describing the process of planning as a "learning experience." He added that he was grateful for the opportunity to work with Nahoko Kawakyu '99, with whom he became close friends through the program.
"We learned a lot from each other," he said.
Dorkey said his time-consuming extracurricular involvements cut into his studying time considerably and lead him to spend many nights sleeping on the couch in the Assembly office.
He said although he has spent every term but one on campus, he often takes trips on weekends.
"The summer after my freshman year, I was in a different city every weekend. The Greyhound people knew me," he said.
Dorkey added that he loves meeting new people, and spends much of his time socializing, because people take first place for him. Even so, he said he has never sacrificed his extracurricular involvement, and called his Dartmouth experience "very fulfilling."
