Ashley Pagaro discusses respectful disagreement and AI policy workshop
Ashley Pagaro says student government taught her to work with people she disagrees with. She describes an AI policy workshop where no students had experience with community boards, showing the need for early civic tools.
And just to kind of add off of both of them, you're saying two points.
The point about having a respectful conversation with your colleague, I think.
at student government at our local level, right?
We have a president who is a little apprehended to continue having good relationships with people they may have lost with.
And I think, like, if you were to learn from a very early on, like, that that's part of life, like, you're going to lose, and it's not nothing personal.
I think that if you're taught that in civic sense, you're able to actually have a better college experience and are able to, and as a student government, we try to always encourage, even if we don't get along with other people, or even if in the past they've gotten
maybe kicked out of another SGA, a different school, we try to still encourage them to still be included and still include their opinions.
And I think that if we had that in high school, already had experience like that, going into college, we may not have those characteristics anymore and they would have already been taught by.
Another thing I wanted to add with a whole education sense, I was born and raised in the Bronx.
I have a Bronx education and I was not taught most of the things that we need to learn.
And I feel as though I'm an AI.
We're doing a lot of AI policy this year.
I taught very recently a city camp at Hunter College, and my workshop was based on creating the worst AI policy.
And so then we worked backwards and decided on the best AI policy.
And the whole thinking of it was, now raise your hand if you're involved in community boards with all your great ideas.
And nobody in the room raised their hand, right?
So I think that's the thinking of so many people have so many great ideas, but they're not equipped with the tools they need to figure out where they're going to put those ideas.
So if you're teaching the kids this now, they're able to actually know, okay,
I have this great idea.
I know where to take it.
Let me take it there.
And we're able to actually get more voices heard in our council.
Thank you.