A Year of RosePAC

By AILEEN BURKE
News Editor

The Saint Rose Political Awareness Council has not always been the organization that it is today. The three-year-old organization has taken many forms since it’s initial conception by members of the political science major, but always has had the same goal: to make the science of politics more accessible to the members of the College community.

Tyler Bushey, the president of the Council better known as RosePAC, started the Political Science club in the Spring of 2016. There were political organizations active on campus at the time he arrived at Saint Rose, but none of them appealed to Bushey.

“At the time there were a lot of other political clubs, such as YAL [Young Americans for Liberty] and the Saint Rose Democrats,” said Bushey. “I put together a small group of friends to start the political science club to connect ideas across the political spectrum.”

In the Spring of 2018, Bushey came up with the current name of the club, RosePAC, in an attempt to boost the attendance.

“I wanted to come up with a name that would sound intriguing,” said Bushey. “…but wasn’t intimidating to people who weren’t political science majors.”

RosePAC started actively seeking Student Association approval, which they received within the course of that semester.

The meeting structure has remained simple. Each week the group delivers information on a different “hot topic,” as Bushey likes to call them, and then they discuss accordingly. According to Bushey, it’s interesting to see how the discussions within the meetings transition from topic to topic quite fluidly.

“It’s important to have a place where people from both sides of the aisle can discuss important issues in a productive way rather than arguing,” said Blake Vaisey, political science alumnus and former Treasurer of RosePAC. “It shows that despite [discussion] being a lost art in the modern political climate, bipartisanship is possible and something to strive for.”

RosePAC meets Tuesday evenings at 6 p.m. in the student lounge of Cavanaugh Hall, a student residence across the Campus green from the library.