ASU grad looks forward to career in criminal justice reform
As the ASU Downtown Phoenix Undergraduate Student Government President, recent ASU grad Nora Thompson is no stranger to making tough decisions and changes. As a transfer student, Thompson arrived at ASU with her heart set on attending the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication and one day becoming a journalist.
Less than a month after her arrival, however, the Tucson native said goodbye to Cronkite after she realized that she wanted something else. Thompson ended up discovering the Public Service and Public Policy Program at the Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions. Thompson graduated this month with a bachelor's degree in public service and public policy with a concentration in criminal justice.
Shortly after switching majors, Thompson took another leap and applied for USG, despite not having a lot of experience in student government. Thompson said that the experience of being in USG impacted the person she became during her college career. Thompson began in USG as a senator for the Watts college and was eventually elected as president of the Downtown campus her final year.
“The course of my life was going one direction. I decided to do student government, and went in a completely other direction,” Thompson said.
ASU grad Nora Thompson
She also said that the experience helped her develop leadership and crisis management skills and helped her become a better public speaker.
“It's given me more of a sense of what I want to do and what I'm good at. At one point I was thinking that maybe I would run for public office or maybe the president someday. But doing this has made me realize that the way to help people isn't always running for office and being a politician, sometimes it's more of just being the person who does the work and that finds the numbers and is able to make the actual change happen,” Thompson said.
While a presidential run might not be in the cards for Thompson, she hopes to spend her career making policy to help improve people’s lives. Thompson also credits her experience with USG with helping her make some of her best friendships.
“For my first full year at ASU, I didn't have a ton of friends. I hadn’t found a group of people yet, and then I went to some of the training for student government,” Thompson said.
During her college career, Thompson also spent some time writing for Downtown Devil and working as a first-year success coach. As she graduated, she reflected on her time at ASU and shared advice for current Sun Devils.
Question: What was your “aha” moment, when you realized you wanted to study the field you majored in?
Answer: There were a lot of little things that happened over the course of about three weeks when I had just transferred to ASU. I had just come out of this experience where I had been working with people who were experiencing felony disenfranchisement, meaning they weren’t able to get back the rights they had lost after being arrested and sent to prison. I had been working directly with people and had been explaining the process of getting their voting rights back. That was pretty formative for me, because I had been used to writing the story and not being involved with the people. [I had been used to] a distance between myself and the subjects. There was a whole need for change right in this little tiny area of just Arizona disenfranchisement laws. It was [a small change], but it was such a big deal.
When I started at the Cronkite School, they were showing me all of these really awesome things that the Cronkite School had to offer like Cronkite News, the professional programs and the internships. I just remember thinking “Wow this is so great, why am I stressed about this? Why don’t I like this fantastic program?”
I realized right then and there that I did not want to be a journalist; I wanted something else. I spent the next few weeks trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I had just happened to attend an event at the Pastor Center, where they mentioned public policy and I thought that sounded interesting. I went home and Googled it, and the next day I changed my major. I haven’t looked back. It’s the best major ever.
Q: What’s something you learned while at ASU — in the classroom or otherwise — that surprised you or changed your perspective?
A: You need to ask for help if you need help. Coming in as a transfer student, I had this idea that I'm not a first-year student. I know how to do everything. I don't need help. I don’t need to go to my advisor and ask what classes I should take. I can figure it out on my own. I don’t need to go to tutoring.
That’s rarely ever the case. As a first-year success coach, I felt like I needed to follow my own advice. The entire time I was working, I would say, “If you need help, let me know and I can get you in contact with resources.” I needed to ask for help as well.
That’s been a big thing that I’m still working on, the idea that you can’t solve all of your problems by yourself. You need to have a community, and you need to reach out to your community.
Q: Why did you choose ASU?
A: This is my favorite question to get, because the entire reason is that I wanted to go to the Cronkite school, which is funny considering that I’m not even graduating from the Cronkite school, nor did I spend more than a month there. It’s a good program, and I was very excited to go, and then I ended up realizing that it wasn’t for me.
Q: Which professor taught you the most important lesson while at ASU?
A: I don’t know that there’s one specific professor who taught me the most important lesson at ASU. A lot of professors taught me important things. My grammar professor, for one thing, was honest about the class and subject matter being difficult. At the same time, this showed me that college is not more difficult than I think it is. If I put in the right amount of effort and believe in myself, I can actually do good things. I’ll get through this class that everyone warned me was so difficult.
After I changed my major, I had a professor who was fantastic because he cared so deeply about the things he was teaching. It shows if you care and how much you care really comes across when you’re teaching. This taught me to go through life with a certain level of passion.
Q: What’s the best piece of advice you’d give to those still in school?
A: There are whole entire communities dedicated to helping you, no matter where you go, and there's always going to be people there who are like, “My entire job is to make sure that everything is going right with you.” Talk to these people, and ask for their help because they’re knowledgeable. You should utilize them while you still have them in college, because when you get out into the real world, you won’t have that as much.
Q: What was your favorite spot on campus, whether for studying, meeting friends or just thinking about life?
A: While I was on campus and walking to the Mercado, I would go through the Arizona Center, and there’s this big fountain area. The bridge that you go over is super pretty, so whenever I would go on these long walks to the Mercado, I would walk over that bridge and I would feel very calm and zen. It was always shady and never sunny.
A close second for me would also be the Post Office. It’s been kind of my home base since I started at student government, and so far a majority of my time has been spent in the post office. My office is here as well as the student government office, so pre-pandemic, there was always a friendly face.
Q: What are your plans after graduation?
A: My plan right now is to take a gap year and then start applying to some different public policy programs. I want to work on prison reform research and criminal justice, so I’m looking into grad schools. I need to save up a bit of money before, because grad school is expensive.
Q: If someone gave you $40 million to solve one problem on our planet, what would you tackle?
A: I would solve the problems with our criminal justice system and help fix the prison system. If I could, I would probably dismantle the way we talk about crime and the way we talk about people being criminals. I would love to change it so that we talk more about the economic reasons people commit crimes. And how as a society, we could do better.
I would work on basic-needs infrastructure, because we don’t really have that so people go without food or housing and are kind of driven into this life cycle of crime and poverty that you don’t really escape from. We end up filling our prisons with people who simply needed their basic needs met rather than to be treated like criminals. I would spend the money fixing that, and that’s what I want to go to grad school to do.