Ryan Harman has been walking through campus for about 20 minutes, talking about Chinese takeout and season two of House of Cards, when he pivots to his campaign.
“The only way I stay sane is to be rounded,” he said.
It’s also why there’s no one organization he’s dedicated all his time to in college.
The candidate for student body treasurer, a third-year finance student, has been a Student Government comptroller, secretary for South Carolina Pride, treasurer for BGLSA and vice president of internal affairs for Carolina Productions. He also likes cycling, hiking and woodworking.
“This isn’t just business,” Harman said. “I feel like I have a skill set that is the financial understanding of campus. To be able to apply that with the basis of ‘Oh you’re doing that? That’s awesome’ — that’s the dream job. I can’t think of a job or anything else on campus I’d rather be doing.”
In those roles, he says, he’s been on both sides of SG’s process of divvying up money among student organizations — helping groups make sense of the process and going through it himself.
But as treasurer, Harman says he wouldn’t be interested in just doling out cash. Instead, he says, he’d rather work as more of an adviser, advocate and matchmaker for organizations.
His time at Carolina Productions was the best when he was talking to people about what they could do with the organization’s money, not when he was just divvying it up.
“If all you do is play the businessman, I think you get left behind, because ultimately that’s not what people really, really care about,” Harman said. “I want to stay relevant and stay excited about what’s going on on campus.”
That is, he wants his staff of comptrollers to help organizations make sense of the process and plan their events and pair them with other groups with similar goals. He also wants them to hold regular office hours so they’re more active and accessible.
That, he said, would make the treasurer’s office more relevant on campus. He’d also like to make the treasurer’s job more focused on life outside SG.
Over the last few years, Harman said, treasurers have let comptrollers take care of the office’s work with student organizations, and they’ve focused their attention on SG’s internal work.
To fix that, he said he wants to start building a staff to handle internal issues. That way, the treasurer’s job would better reflect the dual roles of the office, he said.
That, he said, would allow him to keep an eye on both sides of the office — and to keep a focus on things outside of Student Government, making the work more relevant.
That, he suggests, might be the trick to making sure student organizations spend the money they’re given, a problem in SG for years.
“You can’t be the last resort for student organizations,” Harman said. “You’ve got to be the catalyst for the excitement.”