Meghan Heckelman came to Boston College by chance.
In an overachieving and perhaps overly-anxious spree, she fired out applications to 18 different schools. When most came back with waitlists and rejections, BC emerged as her best option.
Soon enough, it was move-in day, and her packed car was rounding the corner onto College Road as the gothic prongs of Gasson Hall peaked over the horizon.
“I remember that moment so vividly,” said Heckelman, LSEHD ’25. “I was like, this is the Disney World of colleges. This is the place. And like, I can make it mine somehow.”
That was the start.
Nearly four years later, Heckelman is wrapping up her tenure as UGBC president and preparing to leave behind the school that gave her a chance to lead it.
Heckelman wanted more out of BC than classes and grades. So, sitting on the floor of her hallway in Williams Hall during the early weeks of her freshman year, she filled out an application for an entry-level position in UGBC.
“I am a student and I’m a good student, but I’ve always been an outside-the-classroom person, and that’s where I love to put all of my energy,” Heckelman said. “This was an opportunity to do that.”
It was 2021, and the fog of the COVID-19 pandemic had not yet lifted. Aside from the lingering barriers of masks, frequent testing, and the occasional quarantine isolation, the student body was still reeling from the disconnect that had defined their late adolescence.
This was the context within which she entered UGBC and the driving force behind her decision to join it.
“I was just so ambitious and bright eyed and thinking we’re just going to fix this all at once, which I think is how a lot of people can be when they come into a new place,” Heckelman said.
By her sophomore year, she was running UGBC’s student initiatives division, organizing projects serving undergraduate interests on campus. Then came the opportunity to run for vice president. She hesitated.
“I definitely was afraid to run—and for good reason,” Heckelman said. “It’s really difficult to run and to put yourself out there for feedback and criticism. But I felt like I could be the best person for the job, and I wasn’t afraid to lose and so that was enough for me to say yes.”
She won, though not in the way she had hoped. While the opposing ticket received 11 more votes, a 25-point deduction for campaign rule violations handed the victory to Heckelman and her running mate Jonah Kotzen, BC ’24.
Somehow, they’d won the election and lost the popular vote in a student government election.
“Because of the way that we won, I was like, ‘I wish we didn’t even win,’” Heckelman said. “Like, why did it have to happen like this? It felt so illegitimate.”
But a few nights later, as she wandered through campus alone, gazing at the buildings and empty walkways, she was struck by a quiet sense of awe.
“This is one of the best universities in the entire world, and I have the privilege of leading the students,” Heckelman recalls thinking. “It’s not something that I take lightly.”
The thought stuck.
As an organization, UGBC is no stranger to criticism. As the head of that organization, Heckelman is no stranger to criticism either.
“Personally and professionally, I worry a lot, and I overthink a lot about how I’m being perceived,” Heckelman said. “I spend a lot of time trying to get out in front of what other people might think of me, which I think is natural and human.”
The reasons for the criticism cover a broad spectrum—UGBC’s management of a $400,000 budget, the issues they spend their time on, the issues they don’t. Some of the feedback is measured and helpful, she recognizes .
“There are areas 100 percent where we fall short,” Heckelman said. “That’s something that sophomore Meghan, who just got elected, was freaking out about and senior Meghan doesn’t bat an eye now, because I know that I have to do what’s best for everybody at the end of the day.”
Other bits of criticism, however, are cruel and anonymous.
“I know who I am, my friends know who I am, God knows who I am, and that’s all we can do,” Heckelman said. “So it doesn’t bother me as much as it used to.”
Though Heckelman acknowledges that UGBC has areas where it could improve, she doesn’t believe all the criticism thrown its way is valid—or at least not all well-informed.
“I think that what people get wrong is that it’s not easy to make change at a place like BC,” Heckelman said.
BC is well-run, she maintains, but it’s also not built for fast and loose changes.
“Sometimes you’re met with a ‘no,’ and you have to be prudent about when to push and when to understand, and to maybe try a different approach,” she said. “I’m a no B.S. kind of person—that is me unapologetically. When I’ve been representing students in rooms, that’s the way that I am, but I have to build relationships.”
You can’t strong-arm sweeping changes—and you can’t promise students you will, she said.
“Students are sick of hearing that—I’m not making that promise anymore,” Heckelman said. “I think that having strong, positive, cooperative, listening-heavy relationships with administrators has been the reason why UGBC is in the best place that I’ve seen it.”
Last spring, when Heckelman made her rise from vice president to president, her competition was non-existent. She and her running mate, Katie Garrigan, MCAS ’25, claimed their positions in the first uncontested UGBC election in Heights archival history.
The playing field of the most recent UGBC election was not as barren. Three tickets duked it out for the chance to head the organization, two of which were composed of students who had never been involved with UGBC and voiced hopes of offering fresh perspective.
Both of the UGBC outsider tickets pointed to a purported culture of micromanagement within the organization that they said led to frustrations among members.
Heckelman has heard the concerns.
“I would not describe myself as a micromanager, but you do have to manage, and you do have to lead,” Heckelman said.
She aspires to the kind of leadership that gives people the resources, connections, or money they need to take on their ideas and bring them to fruition.
“That’s the kind of leader I want to be, who is empowering and inspiring and uplifting, and someone who you feel like you can talk to at any time,” Heckelman said. “I don’t think a micromanager is that, but sometimes you have to make a decision, and sometimes I have to make a decision that not everyone’s going to agree with.”
After nearly two years at the helm of student leadership, Heckelman isn’t afraid of making big decisions anymore. She’s long accepted that no solution will satisfy all 10,000 students.
Still, some decisions come easier than others. Many of the issues UGBC deals with, according to Heckelman, revolve around the experience of marginalized students at BC.
“With some of those more controversial and difficult issues, different people have different thoughts, and especially me—as a straight, white woman—it’s hard sometimes to be the executive decision-maker when it’s about issues that might not directly impact me,” Heckelman said.
When students awoke on Nov. 6, 2024, to the news that Donald Trump had been elected as the next president of the United States, UGBC was dealt a dilemma: how would they serve the heightened emotions and fractured student body they were faced with?
“A lot of our Jesuit peers came right out and made what I viewed as pretty political statements that were kind of like ‘we lost the election’ statements,” Heckelman said. “While that might be a sentiment that is shared on our campus and in our community, there are people in our community who think differently and have different views, and that doesn’t necessarily make those people hateful and bad human beings.”
During a leadership meeting the next day, some UGBC members expressed interest in publishing a statement. But Heckelman was wary—a political statement from a supposedly non-partisan organization within the student body might lead to more polarization and tension, she thought.
“It’s hard to say that and say calm down when these are issues that are affecting a lot of other people, a lot closer to their hearts, when I still have to decide at the end of the day,” Heckelman said.
Just a day later, several students on campus received anonymous racist text messages targeted at Black people around the country.
“For me, that was a concrete event of hate in our community, and I’m not going to have that,” Heckelman said. “So I knew that we had to act.”
UGBC released a statement condemning the attacks later that day.
“I’m never gonna bend or forfeit my integrity to do this job ever,” Heckelman said. “I knew that doing a political statement was … not reflective of the needs in our community. But this statement about the text was.”
“This place is just so big—you’ll be a small fish in this big pond.”
Heckelman recalls her mother telling her something to that effect shortly before she started at BC.
She didn’t mean it disparagingly, of course, but Heckelman took it as a challenge.
“Part of me was like, ‘I’ll show you,’ but I didn’t know that student government was gonna be the mechanism,” Heckelman said.
Heckelman conducts most of her work from a blue armchair in the UGBC office, positioned at the tip of an oval of other chairs. At any given point in the week, students are seated around her, bouncing ideas, navigating crises, and taking on the challenges of student government.
“In this blue chair, I’ve really reevaluated my firmest held beliefs,” Heckelman said. “I’ve gone back and forth about what I believe is true about people and about our world, because of what I’ve seen and the conversations I’ve been privy to and what people have brought to me while I’ve been sitting in this chair.”
It’s also deepened her appreciation for the school she’s come to understand and love over the past four years. These days, Heckelman is appreciating the bigger picture of BC beyond the particulars—walking downstairs in her building to go vent to a friend, getting coffee with a random new acquaintance, waving to familiar faces as they pass by.
“I don’t know when I’m ever going to be in an environment with people who are as selfless and talented and empathetic and emotionally intelligent and special ever again,” Heckelman said.
She’s ready to pass over the reins—when you’ve gotten comfortable somewhere, that’s when it’s time to go, she insists—but that doesn’t mean letting go will be easy.
“Until I’m partner of a law firm or vice president of a company, I’m never gonna have this opportunity again,” Heckelman said. “I don’t know what’s gonna make me feel how this job made me feel.”
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