Journalist: Ean Cloud (ORU)
Today I interviewed Heba Saleh, a grisled 4 star veteran of O.I.L. representing the University of Tulsa as a House Representative, in addition to being in the press and recently ascending to the role of Assistant Attorney General whose story in general shows off her unwavering resolve and determination to do things her own way, and in a lot of cases, the right way.
The self-described loudmouth (in a positive light, of course) first encountered O.I.L. as a Tulsa native. One day, as she sat in class one of her fellow nerds absolutely could not stop talking about the experience in front of the entire class. Evidently, she was convinced and from the moment she stepped foot in the O.I.L. House of Representatives, she has never wanted to leave. Today, she is a triple major in Political Science, History, and Women’s and Gender Studies, and this feeds her two main passions in regards to government: Free Speech, and Sexual Assault and Violence. Witnessing and participating in a large-scale protest when she was 8 years old, fully convinced her of the importance of voices in politics and her love for the 1st Amendment in general.
And she has put these beliefs into practice, moving her school’s voting system for student government to ranked-choice voting, and even one of her ideas has made its way into Oklahoma law, stripping away the state’s authority to force private businesses to boycott any foreign nation. Using her position in the student government at the University of Tulsa as part of the internal affairs committee, she also currently has a large influence over the Senate voting rules for O.I.L. In all this political involvement and effort spent, however, she maintains that she has a certain detachment from the traditional political spectrum, and dismisses claims that she is who she is due to religion. For her (and most of humanity) Religion informs morals, and morals inform someone’s general world view. Yet there is one prevailing safe guard that Saleh has put in place to prevent this from taking over her decisions: if she believes that her position on any legislation is solely backed up by her religion, she will abstain.
That is how Heba Saleh keeps a level head in the craziness of the modern day.