At a decade old, Lindy Mabuya had her first real interaction with a baby. Her sister, one of Mabuya’s eight siblings, had just brought home the unrealistically small bundle to show off to the world.

She couldn’t believe her eyes, frantically counting the fingers and toes of the baby.

“‘She can become whoever we want her to be,’” Mabuya recalled her mother saying. “‘We just need to help her be a good person.’”

This moment drove Mabuya to not only shape her own life but the lives of others. As an ASUO Senator and member of the Programs Finance Committee, she can spend up to 15 hours in the ASUO office helping people fill out special request forms or advocating for what they need — even if it’s out of her jurisdiction.

“I always do more because there is always more to be done,” she said.

As a Family and Human Services major, her dream was to work on a group level to help and support people. Recently, she realized policy is where changes are really born, which inspired her to go to law school — a revelation that is less than two weeks old.

After high school, she found herself moving from her hometown in South Africa to Oregon after a stop on the East Coast. Once she arrived here, she began to run into a problem: No one looked like her.

For example, just a few minutes late to a lecture in Columbia 150, a particularly large lecture hall seating 510 students, Mabuya began looking around for a seat.

“In looking around to find a seat, I couldn’t find a single person that looked like me, and I freaked out that I was, like, one black person (in the lecture hall),” she said.

This feeling isn’t uncommon for her or other students of color on campus, according to her. For Mabuya, the problem starts with the University of Oregon failing to create a diverse space for all students. A large problem in her eyes is that it’s hard to retain students of color at the UO.

“I think that the whole university really needs to look at who’s here and why are those people here, and then to go even further and ask themselves ‘Who’s not here? Why aren’t they here? Why can’t they be here? Why can’t they stay here?’ It’s hard, and it’s not easy — and I get that — but someone has to do it,” she said.

Students can be recruited to study at the institution, she said, but once they get here, there aren’t enough resources to make the individual feel welcome or even safe.

“If you’re not providing the services to retain the students, you’re not going to retain the students,” Mabuya said. “You can recruit them until you’re blue in the face, but can you keep them here? Probably not.”

What’s the answer? Even she doesn’t know.

“If I had the answer, I’d be running this university,” she said laughing.