Written by Queens College STAND member, Tiffany.
On February 18, 2011, four member of Queens College STAND; Jenn, Xavier, Kaseem and myself (Tiffany) had a meeting with Queens College President Muyskens about using conflict- free technology .At first, I was really nervous because I had no idea what to say since I still have more to learn about conflict free technology. The second thing was that I have never met the President before, and I didn’t know how he would be like. It also didn’t help that a certain someone (Jenn) said that he was “alarmingly tall”.
President Muyskens was actually really nice, and he was really tall. The office was really impressive. When we entered the office, we introduced ourselves to President Muyskens and got right to business. Xavier asked President Muyskens how much he knew about the DRC and informed him of what was going on in the Congo, Kaseem informed the President about the stats and the options that were available, I asked him for advice on how to make QC’s technology conflict- free, and Jenn had a lot to say. For something that was serious, everyone ended up laughing and having a good time. President Muyskens was attentive and eager to help. Even though he said that he would like to help, QC’s technology is purchased by City University of New York (CUNY), so President Muyskens gave us an outline on how to go about making the change towards conflict free technology. Now all we have to do is wait for President Muyskens’ statement, raise awareness about conflict free technology on the campus among students, meet the person in charge of the technology department at QC and make sure that with the right amount of poking CUNY can become conflict free.
So in a word the meeting with President Muyskens was a HUGE success!! I was really happy because this was the first time that I have ever done something like this, and I’m sure Xavier and Kaseem were really proud of themselves too. Jenn was happiest of us all. She practically went nuts on the elevator—that is until we got to the ninth floor and other people got on. I suggested that Jenn contain herself; she did somewhat.
This was a great experience. I keep thinking to myself, if I haven’t stopped by the quad on my first week at QC to ask about the tents, I don’t think I would have ever gotten to meet President Muyskens or any of the awesome people again.
More info about conflict free technology can be found at these sites
http://bit.ly/caSbw
http://bit.ly/fHYeeg
http://www.raisehopeforcongo.org/sites/default/files/Enough%20Conflict-Free%20Campus%20Toolkit.pdf
http://www.raisehopeforcongo.org/content/conflict-minerals-company-rankings
http://www.enoughproject.org/publications/getting-conflict-free
