Hoping to run a selfless presidency
During his freshman year, Christian Thrapp and his friends talked about sliding everything that had wheels down Old Main Hill. In fall 2008, someone left a shopping cart on the hill.
“I would not recommend this to anybody, but we fit five people onto the shopping cart, one inside the basket, two on each side, and two on the back, and we took that down Old Main Hill,” said Thrapp, a junior majoring in international business. “We started going down this hill a lot faster than we expected, hit a hole on the ground, and we all just flipped over, like we flew down the hill.”
This was one of the most memorable things the new ASUSU president said he had experienced at USU. Hailing from West Jordan, Thrapp was also the student body president and lacrosse team captain in high school. At USU, he served as an ambassador, Game Day chair and a member of the President’s Cabinet.
Thrapp said he has been coming to USU since high school to visit his brother and sister who were studying at USU at that time. He said he decided he was going to come to USU after attending basketball games and learning about USU traditions, he said.
Thrapp said his biggest influence in running for ASUSU president is his sister, Ariel Defay. Defay was ASUSU executive vice president in 2004.
“She always encourages me to do my best and to go out there and risk something because you get a lot of reward out of it,” he said.
Thrapp said when he was student body president in high school, his role was to unite the student government to obtain a goal. He said he wants to do the same for ASUSU.
He also said his experience as an ambassador will help him carry out his duties as ASUSU president because, like ambassadors, the ASUSU president has to relate to diverse groups of people. Thrapp said he will put his ambassador position on hold for a year, however.
Corey Mikkelsen, associate director of Recruitment, said he saw Thrapp working regularly with prospective students and described him as personable. The fact that Thrapp will be leaving the ambassador program for a year is bittersweet in a lot of ways, he said.
“He’s one who will take a student and a parent by the hand and help them show what Utah State has to offer,” he said. “We know this is an opportunity that he can’t pass up, and we want him to continually be involved on campus to try to make it a better place.”
Joey Burt, a sophomore majoring in economics, created the “Thrapp Rap” for Thrapp’s campaign, which garnered more than 700 views on YouTube. Burt and Thrapp met and worked together for a month and a half while both serving LDS missions in Brazil.
Burt said he remembered seeing Thrapp approach homeless people when they were on their missions.
“A lot of times people would not really want to talk to them, because they asked for money and often were addicted to drugs,” he said. “Christian would just go up and talk to these homeless people and just get to know those people.”
Eric Richardson, a junior majoring in psychology, said he has known Thrapp since elementary school. Richardson was the senior class president in high school when Thrapp was the student body president. He said Thrapp was punctual in everything when they were planning events in school.
“I felt kind of crappy, because I hadn’t done half the things I should’ve done, and he had already done everything he needed to,” he said.
Luke Ensign, a sophomore majoring in political science, said he has known Thrapp for a year and a half and is currently his roommate. He said sometimes he does not know what Thrapp consumes, because he hardly sees him go grocery shopping.
“I’ve never seen him coming in the house with a bag of groceries, because he hates spending money,” he said.
Thrapp’s parents, Ruth and Ron Thrapp, were present for the final ASUSU announcement of the election winners. Ruth Thrapp said as parents she and Ron have always been supportive love being involved with their kids. She said she thinks the results have paid off.
Ron Thrapp said he helped his son juggle between his studies and other activities, like athletics, during high school by driving him around.
“He’s like any kid. It’s like, ‘Go do your homework, I know you’re tired, you just got done playing five hours of baseball, now go do your homework,’ that kind of thing,” Ron Thrapp said.
Blake Devries, an undeclared sophomore who is also one of Thrapp’s campaign managers said Thrapp is innovative with his ideas.
“For example, he had the idea to have a car and shuttle people to their classes during the campaign week,” he said. “It’s such a small simple thing, but originally Chris thought of it, and we just took it to the next level as his campaign managers.”
Thrapp said although he had doubts about running for ASUSU president, he recognized the benefits of taking risks. He also said one of the things that he picked up from past ASUSU presidents is to not be selfish.
“I’ve learned that one of the most important things that you can do is to be selfless because this position is not at all about me, it’s all about the students,” he said. “So that’s biggest thing that I want to try to do is to to be as selfless as I possibly can.”
– nadiah.johari@aggiemail.usu.edu