Building Community and Resilience: An Interview with Isabelle Rietz

“Community” is the first word Isabelle Rietz uses to describe SASSE. Perhaps that is why she chose the cafeteria as her favorite spot in the school and as the location for our interview. Here the people of SASSE can be both seen and heard, which reminds her why she’s seeking the presidential role: The warmth and connection that SASSE can bring.

As president, she wants to help more students feel this warmth by making it easier for people to start new projects and engage with the organization. She says it is important for the president to know SASSE well and Isabelle has an impressive resumé of previous engagements. The list of committees that she has worked with include IDU, Handelsdagarna and PU, and all first-year students should recognize her as this year’s Big Mommy for Retail Management.

I ask her about Retail Management’s special place in SASSE. The engagement from Retail has historically been lower than from B&E, perhaps, Isabelle believes, because they are separated from the majority of SASSE members both by course and building. This has however changed with Isabelle’s class. There are now more students from Retail in various roles, which is a shift she says could be attributed to people being inspired by seeing a few Retail students from previous years in important roles. She explains that it just takes a few to motivate others to try. “It becomes a domino effect”.

We move over to discuss her election promises, the first one being “Engagement”.

This is a broad topic, but Isabelle focuses on the engagement of international students. She herself has lived outside Sweden and knows what it is like to go to a school with a completely different culture, and therefore she wants SASSE to make sure all international students feel welcome. She has a positive view of the international projects, such as the nations, and wants to simplify the process of starting more. She also notes that SSE: s shift to be more international necessitates SASSE do the same. “It’s only fair for SASSE to become more international as well”.

What might be Isabelle’s most unique election promise is “Mental strength”. She says it is important for SASSE to help students “bridge their academic journey with their mental wellbeing”. Her plan to do this is by collaborating more with the Center for Wellbeing, Welfare and Happiness, providing more resources to students who need help with planning their studies as well as increasing awareness of the resources SASSE and the school already offer. “I didn’t even know we had a curator” she says, and I realize neither did I.

While speaking of increasing awareness of SASSE’s resources, Isabelle moves on to her third election promise: Accessibility. She seems especially interested in the accessibility to information, which she says could be improved. For example, she would like to see a “study map” of SSE to inform students of the best places to study. This is particularly important with the school soon going through renovations, she adds.

As we are wrapping up the interview, I ask Isabelle a final question: why does she love SASSE? Her answer, I believe, explains the description she gave as we first sat down: “It’s really the center and the heart of our student community”.