Senior Profile: Rachael McMillan, CC

For those who have told Rachael McMillan that her thick Southern accent suggests that her intellect or ambition operate at a slow drawl, bless your heart: You couldn’t be more wrong.

McMillan came to Columbia from Asheville, N.C. to study in the Middle East and Asian languages and cultures department, after reading about several of the department’s controversies. She took Arabic and enjoyed a summer study in Morocco, but a trip sophomore year changed her plans.

“In a lot of ways, Columbia really led me back to the South. When I first got here, I said that I was going to live here forever and become the next secretary of state,” she said.

During a visit to New Orleans, La. on an “alternative spring break” with the Columbia College Democrats, McMillan found herself peering into an abandoned school that had been destroyed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina almost two years prior. She talked to neighborhood kids who told her they had been on a waiting list for school.

“I don’t think anyone could be prepared for the destruction,” McMillan said. “But literally turning onto that street changed everything.”

She changed her major to political science, got more involved with the College Dems and worked at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. Also while here, McMillan has served as a resident adviser in Carman Hall, an intern at the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, and—perhaps most personally formative—the president of the Sigma Delta Tau sorority.

McMillan loves Greek life, and she said she wishes it were more often recognized as a positive force on campus—one that, for example, consistently hosts top fundraisers for events like Dance Marathon and Relay for Life. “It absolutely shaped my college life, and it’s an undervalued resource at this school.”

But she’s not the stereotypical sorority girl: The hip-hop lover (and esteemed West African dancer) has always taken her work seriously, even when others may judge her by the way she sounds.

“I’m a simple mountain folk, and I’m glad I’ve held onto that. This is my intonation, and you have to deal with it,” said McMillan, before mimicking the voice of “a Yankee.”

Her interest in politics blossomed when she spent her a year of high school in Washington, D.C. as a student at the House of Representatives Page School.

One of her favorite memories at Columbia was the moment when the College Dems found out Barack Obama, CC ’83, won the election. The group had just been campaigning in Virginia and were entering the Lincoln Tunnel back into the city when they heard the news.

“It was something out of the movies,” she said. “People were dancing in the streets.”

Though politics is an obvious passion, McMillan said she thinks that education has the ability to affect more change.

“Everyone is going to be in a school system at some point in their life,” she explained. “There are so many structural problems out there in the education system dealing with issues of poverty, but when you give people an education, it shapes your world view.”

McMillan will be entering another school system this fall—she plans on teaching middle-school math and science in Baton Rouge, La. through Teach For America.

To her, it’s the best place to start her future. “If every politician had been a teacher, the world would be a different place.”

So don’t be surprised if you see her become the next senator from North Carolina someday.

“I’m keeping those Facebook pictures clean.”