The Justice

ALL IN A DAY'S WORK: Union Treasurer Choon Woo Ha '08 at his desk in the Student Union Office. "It's a non-paid, full-time job," he says.

Student Union Treasurer Choon Woo Ha '08 walks through the Shapiro Campus Center with the air of a CEO and the knowledge of an experienced entrepreneur. Clutching his cell phone and a walkie talkie (one of his assistants holds the other), he no longer looks like just another student.

His demeanor suggests business and his workspace in the Student Union office, on the third floor of Shapiro, seals the deal. His desk, only used by Ha and his assistants, is a meticulously categorized array of papers, folders and financial forms, and even comes with a "family photo."

"My lovers," he says as he picks up a framed picture of him and his treasury team. "I'm such a family man that I treat the office of the treasurer as my family," he says. Ha spends an average of 40 to 60 hours per week organizing the student body's finances. On any regular day, he wakes up before 6 a.m. and goes to bed well after midnight. It's not even unusual for him to sleep in the Union office, he says.

"The only thing that's the same about my days is that they're all busy," Ha says.

Each morning he glances over a professional-looking printout of his schedule, carefully put together by Tia Chatterjee '09, his executive assistant.

Alison Schwartzbaum '08, who was Union president when Ha became treasurer, remembers thinking: "OK, who is this Choon Woo guy?" when he ran for the position. Her very first impression of him as a quiet guy at a candidates' meeting in the Student Union office, turned out not to be fully accurate.

"He just sat there. … It seemed to me that he did not know what he was getting himself into," she says. Now, almost two years later, Ha has transformed the position into a full-fledged office of the treasurer that consists of eight people.

While these days it's hard to imagine a Student Union without him, Ha says he'd never even heard of the Union's existence until he ran for treasurer.

The position of the treasurer is known to be one of the most demanding in the Student Union. Ha ran in a special election for Union treasurer in 2006 after then-treasurer Harrison Chizik '07 left the University.

"It was just one of those days," he says. "For some reason, I decided to run."

Continued...

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