Leadership Lingo (w/ Mateo Portelli)

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You're listening to locally produced programming created in KUNV studios on public radio. KUNV 91.5. Ladies and gentlemen. I'll brainstorm this later. We'll edit it later for now.

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Welcome to Leadership Lingo. My name is Matteo Portelli.

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Today, we'll be hearing from a few folks and their experiences as leaders and find out

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the best principles and practices that make our community a better place. Welcome to Leadership Lingo. Vanessa. Hi. Welcome. Welcome to Leadership Lingo. How are you today? I'm good. How about you? I'm trying to stay hydrated. I'm tired. I'm doing all right, though.

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Yeah, I feel that. It's school, it's work, it's a million different things. I'm not going to lie, though. I got 100% on my last English quiz.

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I'm kind of feeling myself.

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I'm not going to lie.

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I'm not going to lie.

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I got 100% on my last English quiz. I'm kind of feeling myself.

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I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to lie though, I got 100% on my last English quiz, I'm kind of feeling

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myself.

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What was the quiz on?

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I don't remember.

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You already forgot? No, it was pretty, you know, quintessential college experience, taking a quiz, getting 100 and completely forgetting as soon as you leave the classroom.

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You got to do what you got to do, you know what I mean? Well I'm glad that you're here on the show. I wanted to pick your brain about a few things. I understand that you are the current Chief Justice of the Judicial Council for the Consolidated Students of the University of Nevada. I don't know how you fit that title on a resume. I just say CSUN Student Government. Okay, all right, very cool. Well, I'm sure we'll have a lot more folks in the future from CSUN, but you are the first person on the show to be interviewed.

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I feel so special. I mean, you are. I mean, special enough to be leading an entire branch of government. Fair enough, fair enough. Humble brag, you know.

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Why don't you tell us a little bit about CSUN, what CSUN is, what do they do?

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Yeah, so CSUN is, like I said before, the student government on campus, and so we have the same as the actual national government, we have legislative, executive, and judicial branch. And so with our legislative, we have senators that represent the colleges. The executive, you have president, VP, Senate president, and then for the judicial branch you have me, the Chief Justice, and nine justices total to kind of equal that branch. So same as normal government. So I know that CSUN applies for all undergraduate students here at UNLV. Do we have like a code of criminal laws? Like why do we need a judicial branch? What do you guys do? Right, so we interpret CSUN governing documents that can include the bylaws, the Constitution. These are not the actual Constitution or anything, it's the CSUN Constitution, so we have kind of a specific to this organization set of, for lack of a better word, yeah, they are kind of laws, but they're more of a code of conduct. You're not going to get criminally charged for anything, but you can definitely get reprimanded, you can definitely get, you know, removed from your position if you do something that severe. We rarely have ever had any case like that, though, for the most part. A lot of our cases have dealt with more election-related stuff, just because during the elections, you know, tensions are high, people want to win, and sometimes people cut corners, and so

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that's when we step in. That's good. What does the branch kind of look like, right? Because I know in the Senate, right, every college is represented by at least one senator and they meet on a regular basis. They debate, they pass, you know, bills to fund student organizations, stuff like that.

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How often does the JC meet? What's your structure like? That's honestly dependent on if there's a case. So we normally don't really meet unless there's a case going on. We have the requirement in our judicial council operating policy that we have to meet once a semester at least to look over our operating policy, see if there's something we need to, you know, fix or change or update with it. If not, we just pass it as is, we bring it to the Senate, and that's about what we're required to do per semester. Other than that, though, we are kind of expected to attend certain Senate meetings if we have to swear in any new senators, any new members of the executive branch, we're expected to go there. Also, if we do have a case, that's when we start actually meeting more. We'll have certain time frames in which we have to meet, have to render a decision whether you want to accept the case or not, render an actual opinion on the matter, discuss, vote, do all this stuff, write the opinion, and then post it for everyone to see so that it can become cease and law. I've seen a couple of these these opinions before they look pretty official they look like they're modeled off of you know Supreme Court case opinions and stuff. Do you guys have advisors or is it just part of the culture of you know once you're a justice you get trained on this stuff? How does your professional development turn into looking like actual legal documents here? Well I'd say that I mean we do have CSUN has an advisor and we're actually in a period of transition where our previous advisor actually left for a different job, so we have a new one now who I have yet to meet with her just because of the hecticness of the semester, but we have a meeting scheduled next week I believe. And so we have like, CSUN as a whole has an advisor, a faculty advisor, and other faculty members who are, I don't want to say adults because we're all adults, but they're older adults who are, you know, exactly, they're not students, and they help us out with stuff. But as far as within the JC and how our structure is, it's kind of passed down. I wasn't really given a lot of direction from necessarily the advisors. I was given a lot of direction from previous justices and previous, for example, this position I was in, the past person who held it, the previous chief justice, he was the one telling me like, this is how it goes But obviously I had been on the council before you don't just you know jump right in rise to the top like that's not How it goes you start off as an associate justice and then? Normally you progress into associate chief justice and then chief justice, which is what happened to me So by that point in time by the time I became chief justice I had already Been on the on the council for over a year and so I knew how to do things, but initially going in, honestly if I hadn't had the clerkship, I have no clue how I would have gone through. What is the clerkship? Yeah, so basically it's the same as like the legislative and executive internship that they had for a while. The clerkship is basically, what you're going to do is you're going to learn about what the JC is, how to, like you're saying, write opinions, how to analyze a case, understand the bylaws, the precedent that we have, read past court case or counsel cases to kind of understand where the counsels lied in the past on certain issues, and to understand, most importantly, how to render decisions and what that even looks like. So there's this whole program set up and the main point is to be able to educate whoever is, you know, a prospective justice, for example, on what it looks like to be in the JC.

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It's almost like you're creating a bench pun intended to have, you know, justice is appointed to exactly, you mentioned that there's a bit of a ladder to climb. When you become a member of the JC, could you tell us the sort of what the workload is

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for an associate justice compared to some of your duties now as chief justice? Yeah, so initially going in, you just, as an associate justice, it's like, I guess the bare minimum, for lack of a better word, like you can render, you know, decisions and write your pieces of the opinion. The way that we kind of section it off is that we'll actually say, okay, well, we'll meet, right, for example, we'll deliberate on an issue. And when everyone kind of like agrees, the people who disagree, which has happened before, they do their own thing. They'll write a dissenting or some people can write a concurring if they want. That just means you agree but for different reasons in the majority, but for the majority, to simplify it. If the majority agrees on something, we'll all meet and we'll say, okay, well, this is what we're trying to say, right? This is the issues that we have and we'll kind of outline it and say, all right, so we want to talk about this section's going to be this, this section's going to be this, this section's going to be this, we have an intro conclusion, boom, the opinion, right? And then all what we'll do is, it's a Google Doc thing, right? We'll just say, okay, well, this is your part, right? So, you know, highlight this part, comment it, that's yours, and you write about the specific issue. And the goal is that you understand that issue enough that not only are you able to understand it for yourself, but that you're able to explain it to somebody else. And I think that's kind of the biggest part of this is when we're writing opinions, like, I always intend for anything that I write to be read. So I want it to be understandable. So when we talk about like, what an associate justice has to learn how to do just bare minimum is learn how to be understood by the general public and understand how to kind of parse out something that might be really complicated, really complex case and take it and then at least for that little section make it so somebody who has absolutely no idea what CSUN even is could understand what's going on here. So the workload is essentially, I mean, you have less responsibility initially just because you're not trying to set everyone's schedule up, you're not trying to lead the clerkship program, which that would be the associate chief justice's role. So once you kind of leave that and get promoted to associate chief justice, that's where you're in charge of the clerkship program, managing who gets which clerks. Normally you'd want it to be that, you know, one clerk per justice kind of thing. And then, and then make sure that they're talking to each other, that there's mentorship. It can include, you know, anything from about the JC, a lot of us in the council want to go to law school, there's a lot of pre law advice going on here to just general advice, because obviously, people in the council tend to be upperclassmen, you know, clerks tend to be lower classmen. So just guiding them through even just college experience, that was kind of what the clerkship had been for a really long time. And so the associate chief justice's role is to manage that. Going up to my job now as chief justice, I oversee all of it. So when there's a case, I'm the direct contact, right? They send their briefs to me. I send it out to the rest of the council. Everyone pretty much interacts with me, and then I go interact with everyone else. It's not like you can necessarily, like, you don't really directly send something to an associate justice. You send it to me first and I just, you know, parse it out to them when there's a deliberation that we need to have. I'm the one who sets the schedule and say, okay, when is everyone available? We want it to be flexible. We don't want to say, okay, we don't have like a hard day. Like for example, Senate has to meet like Monday the 6th, right? That's their dedicated time. We don't really have it like that. It's more like, okay, we're all kind of busy. We've all got work, school and a million other responsibilities. When are you free? When can we find the time where the majority of us are free and we can talk about this? And obviously, you have to make some concessions here and there. But for the most part, I try to be really lenient on people's schedules and say, okay, well, let's accommodate for everybody. And, you know, whenever there's any sort of opinion, I kind of take it upon myself to do the explanation within the beginning aspect of it. And I didn't understand when I was an associate chief justice why the previous chief justice did this until I became chief justice. And I realized, oh, it's because it's the hardest part to try to explain what the background is and explain in a way that makes sense, because obviously you're getting a lot of information in the case. And I was like, Oh, that that makes a lot of sense for, you know, the Chief Justice take that role on because you want that to, you know, you don't want to put that level of responsibility necessarily on somebody else, because it's going to be really difficult for an incoming associate justice to do all that.

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Sure.

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So I want to ask you a question both about, you know, your experience as a leader and and sort of the troubles you faced. But before I do that, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on on the JC itself. I don't think it's a secret that most students on campus don't know about seasons existence, let alone care much about its internal mechanisms, right? What do you think the season that CSUN as both the entire government, or perhaps your branch in particular, could do either better or explore more about to increase awareness? Because obviously, I mean, you're spending a lot of time doing this, your fellow justices are spending time doing this. And at least in the confines of an election, the JC does have a lot of impact, obviously, deciding contests or controversies. So what can we do better in terms of marketing? Because you know, every student here pays through their registration fees, through the CSUN fee. Every student is a shareholder in student government. So what can we do better to increase awareness?

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I feel like, I mean, definitely when you go to involvement fair, you'll see CSUN tabling and marketing and talking about the programs that they have and positions that they have available vacancies, asking people to apply. It's difficult because we do kind of operate in a vacuum for the most part. A lot of things happen internally and the JC is the most internal aspect of it all. You know, same as the Supreme Court, out of all the different steps in the Supreme Court, like two of them are public, right? The actual, you know, discussion of the issues and then releasing the opinion. Everything else happens behind closed doors. So that's essentially how it is for us too. And it's difficult because I would love for people to come and watch what we do and and we've had in the past open hearings for that exact reason to say, hey, we want you to understand that we're not just like making these decisions in shady circumstances. It's just sometimes it is easier to do a Zoom call than like hold an open hearing in a bigger setting just for the sake of convenience. But I think, you know, when a student wants to learn more about how CSUN works in general, but specifically at JC, I mean, y'all can reach out to me, but obviously, but I think it helps when professors know too and they can talk about it. I know specifically some political science professors are aware of CSUN, do talk about it quite a bit in their classes. I'm not a political science major, so I don't know how, to what extent that happens, but also I think it's really unfair to confine it only to political science because like you said every single College is represented in the Senate in our in the JC. I don't even think I mean maybe one or two political science majors But most of us are not I'm a psychology major for reference. We have criminal justice majors. We have pre-med major in there And we've got like different I think everybody should be aware, not just the ones who want to go into the kind of politics pipeline. But it's it's so tricky. Sometimes I always talk about CSUN, I always brag about the JC and I'm like, go for it. You know, right now, I mean, actually vacancies just closed. But I was telling when the vacancies were open, I was like, go apply. And we had quite a few people apply because I saw the form. And so I was really excited for that and I'm really excited to see how the interview process goes and what happens. But, you know, it's really just a matter of like students feeling like they're not represented and that they don't really care. CSUN has to operate internally for a lot of things. And because of that, it can kind of isolate them from the student body. And the JC is also an issue of this too, but it's genuinely for the students. Like you said, everyone pays, every student pays money for this organization. So besides tabling and professors marketing it, another thing, I know that RSOs, registered student organizations, are huge when it comes to the UNLV community and what it means to be a rebel in general. To get funding, they have to go through CSUN if they want funding for their organization, for merch, for stoles, for anything that they want. That's some people's only interaction with CSUN. They see CSUN as almost like just a bag of money instead of people who actually do things that can help the student experience. And so I think obviously there's a priority on getting funding for these organizations, but there's something to be said about maybe initiatives that could be pursued that genuinely do help the student experience instead of just saying, oh, well, we'll just give you 3000 bucks, you know, go splurge and that's nice. And that really helps, don't get me wrong. But you know, there's kind of an interactive nature that sometimes seems to be lacking, I'd say. Yeah, I wonder what could be done in terms of boosting professional development. It's really interesting to me that a lot of clerks that come into the JC obviously have that sort of pre-law tilt, or maybe they're interested in being a paralegal or maybe they're just interested in being a court reporter, right? Like there's something that attracts them to the judicial process compared to, you know, being a student senator or being the exec. So, I wonder going forward, like, if there could be a relationship that's fostered with, you know, prospective Boyd students, that that might be something, you know, maybe, maybe JC officers are invited to speak at the at the pre-law fellowship program, for example, something like that. That's really cool. I love that program. For reference, that's a Justice Douglas pre-law fellowship. And I did that actually in 2021. So it was still virtual. They had started in 2020 and they had planned it not with COVID in mind naturally. And then COVID hit, threw things out of whack and they did it online. And then I thought, I was like, well, I'm not gonna apply this, you know, inaugural year because it's online. I don't want to do that. So I applied 2021 thinking it'd be in person. They didn't know. And then they were like, JK, it's online. And I was like, oh man, because I really wanted it to be in person and have that experience but either way it was really really cool to just talk to all these legal professionals and and get that feedback from Boyd admissions and and just anyone in the pre-law space for me as a first-generation law student who's going to be you know Going in practically blind. Congratulations, though. Oh, thanks. Thanks. Yeah, it's it's gonna be crazy. So I'm really grateful for any sort of advice, any sort of mentorship. But I think there's definitely an opportunity for the JC to interact more in the pre-law community, to engage with some of the organizations on campus that are pre-law, to engage with the literal school of law that we have here on UNLV's campus, and to interact in general more with the legal community and I think there's just an issue of like COVID through things completely out of whack. Sure. And so there's kind of a shift happening. We're trying to get back into it and initially like I took office and we had only done things virtually and so all of a sudden I was scrambling to try to figure out how do we do things in person now like that's we've never we just I've never done that before. I've been a justice, you know, since November of 2020, right? During the council, obviously things weren't virtual. And then now to come into this role, step in this role, trying to transition back is, has been tricky to say the least. All right, well, it seems like you're doing just fine. Thanks. Let me ask you, you know, you're president of a branch of government. It's not the same kind of role as, sorry, you're presiding over a branch of government, you're not the president. But in your capacity as Chief Justice, you're not managing a budget, to my knowledge. You're not really doing like membership recruitment. What, you know, in the same way as tabling on campus to try to get somebody to join a fraternity, for example. So how do you sort of see your role as a presiding officer, because that is what you are, and what is some of the lessons that you've learned? Because it seems to me, and I don't want to seem crass when I say this, but it seems to me that your biggest job is herding cats to make sure that these highly, you know, really qualified, really competent students can actually get into a room to have these discussions. So what is some of the lessons that you've learned

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as a leader in this role?

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Yeah, sometimes it's been that. Sometimes it definitely is like, okay, can we all just get together and dedicate ourselves the way that we plan to, the way that we, you know, it's a job, like we do get paid, believe it or not, and so it's not like it pays the bills, but it's still a paycheck of sorts. Pays the gas. Yeah, fairly. But no, it's still, you know, it just shows that like every time I get the paycheck, for example, like it reminds me like, hey, no, students are counting on us, right? So we need to make sure that we're on our A game. And so it is, it is sometimes, it looks like to, for example, members of the council or just anyone on the outside that that's what I'm doing, that I'm just getting people into a room. But internally, it has been like long nights looking through the case law library and checking and double checking triple checking that Nothing in precedent is going to conflict with what we're doing It's you know Once everyone has written the opinion and written their section it's going through and fine-tuning it and making sure this really does sound as good as possible it's it's going through and and and making sure that people who can get them involved in the clerkship. If they want to know about my experience, I'd love to share it because I love talking about this. I've been doing it. I was a clerk my freshman year, all the way through, worked my way up into the chief justice role. And, you know, and sometimes it is a lot of work and and we me specifically like I do take it very seriously. So in this role and obviously you interact with a lot of other student leaders both in student government and outside, what's a sort of working definition of leadership to you? For me I always think of leadership like I'm like a service role like I don't think of it like a position of power and I think people really shouldn't see it as a position of power, like in the traditional sense of like, oh, I have authority and I'm just going to, you know, use that to, no, I don't really see it like that. For me, leadership is you're leading others. So it's an act of service, right? You're trying to help other people become the best version of themselves, reach their full potential in the roles. And at the end of the day, like, that should be the priority. And so as long as you're as long as the people you're leading or people on your team like if you can lean on them You know support get support from them and feel like they're actualizing their potential then like you're doing a good job as a leader So it doesn't need to be some stressful thing We're and I have an issue with this sometimes where I feel like everything's completely on me. I have full responsibility I have to do it all right And sometimes it's nice when I can just lean back and say wait I have people on my side who are going to help me out. You know, I don't have to always do this all the time. I'm doing the best I can. And then just saying, hey, could you do this, like delegate something, for example, and and just being being able to kind of have the duality of, OK, understand your role is not a position of authority necessarily over others. You might have to make tough calls and get people in line for some things. But for the most part, it tends to be an active service like, okay, you know, you want, for example, if you want to write an opinion, and you're having difficulty understanding something, how can I help? That's the biggest thing, whenever I'm talking to anybody in the JC or any other leadership role, it's like, how can I help? What can I do to help you out here? And make sure that you feel like you can do this. Because if you don't believe in yourself, then it's gonna be really tricky, it's gonna be an uphill battle. So being able to kind of have that in mind and also leaning on people around you when you know that, hey, maybe this is too much at this point in time.

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So let's say that instead of a history major sitting across from you, and it's okay if they are a history major but let's say that a freshman is sitting across from you and you know they're listening to this they know quite a bit now about what CSUN is and what the JC does. What advice would you give them if they're interested

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in being a clerk or one day interested in being a chief justice of the JC? Yeah I mean well I'd love to talk about it, I'd love to just like give my number be like hey let's go grab some coffee like let's talk about it because I have you know almost four years worth of CSUN experience to disseminate with anyone but I'd say like one understand that it's not going to be insanely difficult but it's not going to be something you can brush off either like know when there's going to be times where you have to commit and times where it's okay to take a breather you know and then just overall understand that this is for other people like at the end of the day this whole CSUN in general, student government in general, but especially the JC, it can feel internal, it can feel isolated, but it's not. It is very much for the students, very much has real impacts for students. And at the end of the day, like it's all for each other pretty much. So I'd want them to just kind of understand like why they want to go into this What they what they're hoping to get out of it understanding those goals and saying, okay Well, this is how the JC can help you and kind of tailor it to whatever they have in mind Your honor. Thank you for your time Thanks for having really appreciate being on the show. Thanks for being a leadership lingo a lot of great advice But yeah, if they want to hear from you or learn more about you, how can folks learn more about the JC and hear from you? Yeah, so obviously we have, you can look up CSUN on our website, but if you want to contact me directly, it's Vanessa.Aponte at unlv.edu and you can just look up my name and you'll find me in the directory. But otherwise, you can just reach out, send an email, and I always love to chat, so yeah.

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Awesome. Well, thanks so much for being on the show, Vanessa. If you want to find out more information about the folks we interviewed here today or just learn more, you're more than welcome to follow us at Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn at Leadership Lingo. You can also shoot me an email at mateo at leadershiplingo.show. That's M-A-T-E-O at leadershiplingo.S-H-O-W. We'll catch you next time. We'll catch you next time. Stay safe, stay hydrated, have a great day.