John Huss is the parliamentarian for the TJC Student Senate, and he is a backspot on the TJC Cheer Team.
Q: Describe your involvement at TJC.
A: I served my first year here as a senator first on the Student Senate board. And then the second semester, so the spring semester, I switched over to the Sergeant at Arms, which is an appointed position. This year, I served as the parliamentarian, who keeps the meeting in order, makes sure it’s going according to the rules, and then the Sergeant at Arms is makes sure that everybody in the meeting is behaving themselves and just keeps order in the meetings. I’m also on the cheer team. I do co-ed, with partner starts, and then I’m backspot for the grips notes.
Q: What is the backspot?
A: So when you look at a stunt group, you will have the flyer, and then you’ll have someone on each side of the flyer. So like the left side and the right side, those are your bases, you got the main base and the side base, and in the backspot is the person in the back that really controls the whole stunt. So without the backspot, you’re really not going to be able to keep it up.
Q: So tell me a little bit about cheer. How did you get into it? Why did you choose to do it?
A: So at the Ya-A-Te retreat, I was a Ya-A-Te leader this past summer, we had to present a cheer on the stage with each small group. I was fortunate enough to have six or seven cheerleaders in my small group, and they wanted to do a stunt on the stage. And so they asked if I’d back spot for them. And I was like, yeah, sure just teach me what to do. And I said I’ll do it. So they showed me and then we tried it. And it worked out real great. So we did it on the stage. The group there was saying I should join the cheer team. And me and the head coach talked and she invited me out to a practice. They showed me a few things at that practice, and I was getting it pretty quick. It made sense to me, and I liked it. It was fun. And ever since then, I just hadn’t stopped going back.
Q: What is your favorite thing about cheer?
A: Competition. It’s not easy to throw a flyer up in the air and hold her over your head, and whatever stunt that you’re trying to do, at least for coeds. And then for group stunts, it’s really when you have the more advanced stunts where you can make the flyer do a flip or she’s doing all the spins going up, and you have to settle on catch and hold it up. It’s just fun.
Q: Tell me a little bit about the Student Senate.
A: So the Student Senate is the middleman from the student body to the people on campus that have the ability to change things around campus. So if a student has a problem, they’ll come to the Student Senate, and then if the Student Senate can’t figure it out, they will we will take it up to the higher-ups, and then they will go in and figure out the problem and see if they can make a change to help fix that problem.
Q: Why did you choose to be a part of the Student Senate?
A: I want to be in the government when I finish college. So I want to join the military, and leadership skills are required to be in the military. The higher you get in the military, the better you have to be at being a leader. Student Senate was something you had to have leadership skills for, and you will also learn how to gain more leadership skills, something you didn’t know already. So I figured that’d be a good opportunity to gain more knowledge and leadership.
Q: What do you do for Student Senate?
A: What I do for the Student Senate is, when we’re in a meeting, I make sure that the meeting is going according to Robert’s Rules. Robert’s Rules is a way to conduct business. There’s multiple different versions out there of ways to conduct a business meeting. We have chosen Robert’s Rules, and I will make sure the meeting is going in accordance to Robert’s Rules.
Q: What made you want to come to TJC?
A: Right out of high school, I was going to go straight to the military, got talked into going to college by my parents, and I didn’t want to go to a huge university yet. Just because I didn’t really know if college was actually the thing I wanted to do yet. So having TJC being so close, and my high school, Van High School, offering the TJC Promise, I made the decision to come to TJC to figure out how to go through college because college isn’t an easy thing to go through right out of high school. The TJC Promise helped a lot, as well.
Q: What was the step to becoming involved at TJC?
A: For the first three, four weeks of class my first semester, I just came to class and went home. I knew there were ways to get involved; I didn’t really know how or want to at the same time, but I mean, if you stick your head out there, you will find something. You just have to find something that you like and want to do, and then just reach out. I fortunately had Timon Ovard, who was on Student Senate already, reach out to me, and ask if I wanted to join Student Senate, so that was kind of a helping hand at getting involved. Once I got in Student Senate, everything just came natural.
Q: What made you want to get involved?
A: I was kind of tired of just going to class and going home. Going from high school, I was in everything. I was a three-sport letterman. I was in FFA, so I was always in the AG shop building something. I was doing some competitions for FFA. Then I went from all of that to coming and going to class and going home, and it was weird. Just something felt off. So once the opportunity arose to get involved, I jumped on and took it.
*Interview has been lightly edited for clarity. Interview and photos by Marissa Krnavek.
