Get to know SUUSA President D'Mia Lamar

To some extent, she fits the archetype of a pageant queen: she’s attractive and a member of a sorority. But what makes the 2017 Miss Legacy Utah different is that she is a leader with aspirations for legal work.

D’Mia Lamar, who was recently elected as the Student Body President, grew up in Roy before coming to SUU, where she is about to enter her final year as a philosophy and political science double major.

Lamar ran uncontested, but that didn’t mean she was guaranteed the position, so when she found out she was elected, Lamar said she felt a mix of emotions.

“I was really relieved, but it meant that my current position was coming to an end soon,” she said. “It’s a lot of responsibility being the Student Body President; it’s a job with a lot of behind-the-scenes work. That was running through my head as well as being excited to get my hands in the mess and try to sink my teeth in.”

This year, SUUSA operated under a new constitution, which was one of the main reasons Lamar decided to run.

“I thought it would be really beneficial to have someone who was a member of SUUSA, if not a member of the Executive Council, just so we can keep this continuity between governments,” she said. “We have worked out a lot of kinks in the system, and I want to make sure that next year we don’t run into the same problems.”

Going into this next year, Lamar said she wants to continue working on projects that won’t be completed by the end of the year.

“If you think about it, being in office for a year in student government is not a lot of time to do a lot of big things,” she said. “I was talking with Jeremy Osborne and he said that student government is not a sprint, it’s a relay race. You have your year and you do your leg and then you need to pass the baton on.”

One of these projects is a midterm policy that would require professors to have a grade listed halfway through the semester. Although it wouldn’t show up on a transcript, it would allow the student to see where they’re at.

In addition to working on a tobacco initiative, Lamar said wants to be “heavily involved” in the health center project the President’s Council is considering.

Jon Baker, the Vice President of Clubs and Organizations, will work on the Executive Council with Lamar again next year.

“I’m excited that we aren’t starting from scratch,” he said. :I think having the foundation we made this year is going to allow us to help the students even more next year.”

In her current role of Vice President of Finance, Lamar serves as the chair of the Budget and Finance Committee and manages the budgets for both SUUSA and the Student Programming Board. For the most part, she said her daily tasks include updating budgets and reviewing funding requests before Committee meetings.

Baker worked closely this year with Lamar on club financing, saying she was willing to work through problems as they arose and “she is a great leader because she tries to understand other people’s point of view.”

In addition to student government, Lamar has involved herself in Greek life as a member of the Theta Sigma Chapter of Alpha Phi. After her freshman year, many of her friends graduated or went on LDS missions. She joined to meet new people.

“Now, most of my close friends are in Alpha Phi, which I’m super grateful for,” Lamar said. “It’s given me a lot of opportunities to do service projects, and getting to be part of an organization that is international that has strong values and standards is something that’s helped me develop personally and professionally.”

Like many students, Lamar was skeptical of Greek life at first, but after becoming involved, her opinions have changed.

“There’s a lot of leadership positions in our organization, but also connections,” she said. “I have sisters all over this country and in other countries as well… It’s also just fun; we have formals, we have unities, we have socials.”

Outside of SUU, Lamar is the title holder for Miss Legacy, a pageant that is open to anyone in Utah. She was Miss Roy in 2015, and the next year, Lamar was the first runner up for Miss Legacy, which inspired her to compete again in 2017.

When she won the pageant, Lamar said she went through a lot of emotions.

“I was really excited when I found out that I had won, and a lot of my friends were there, so it was a really exciting moment,” she said, “but an hour prior to winning that, I had found out that my friend had passed away.”

When competing in pageants, Lamar uses the platform “Kindness is Contagious: Betterment, Courage and Innovation.”

“What I do is I talk to people about being kinder to one another,” she said. “It seems kind of odd because it seems like something that is very obvious, but I’ve found that because it seems to be obvious, it’s sometimes lost.”

Between her commitments both on and off campus, Lamar said she’s learned how to manage time effectively.

“I’m usually running around, but it’s purposeful,” Lamar said. “It’s never like ‘Woah, I forgot about this,’ although that does happen sometimes. I’m very scheduled, so when I’m running around, it’s purposeful.”

Time management, as well as her involvement, is helping Lamar prepare for law school. After graduating next year, she plans to take a year to study in Spain before working toward her law degree.

Lamar ultimately wants to practice law for a few years before becoming a judge or a lobbyist. At the moment, she’s unsure of which cause she would want to lobby for.

During her life so far, Lamar said she has learned that although hard work leads to success, it is impossible if too much time is spent on the fear of failing.

“I find that it’s definitely hard to achieve your goals or try to branch out when the fear of failure is constantly in your face,” she said. “I would advise students to not allow the idea of failing to prevent them from doing something they’ve always wanted to do.”