Skip to content
Apply
Stories

Parliament, the Scottish way

When Anthony Turner, SSH’15, arrived at the Scot­tish Par­lia­ment in Sep­tember for his co-​​op, it became imme­di­ately clear he didn’t cross the Atlantic Ocean to run errands or catch a glimpse of inter­na­tional pol­i­tics from afar. Rather, he was imme­di­ately thrust into action, working hand-​​in-​​hand with Jackie Baillie, a member of the Scot­tish Par­lia­ment for the Dum­b­arton con­stituency and Shadow Cab­inet Sec­re­tary for Social Jus­tice, Equal­i­ties, and Welfare.

“They had immense trust in me as a North­eastern stu­dent, and I was truly a part of the office,” said Turner, a San Fran­cisco native and an inter­na­tional affairs and eco­nomics com­bined major at Northeastern.

In his co-​​op posi­tion, Turner fre­quently researched bills and local sto­ries and responded to let­ters from con­stituents. He also par­tic­i­pated in writing par­lia­men­tary motions. After two weeks of writing those motions and run­ning them by the chief of staff, he proved his meddle and took over a much larger share of those responsibilities.

Oppor­tu­ni­ties like these—the chance to be a valued member of a global team while still in school—initially drew Turner to North­eastern. “I knew for a fact that the co-​​op pro­gram would would give us at North­eastern an invalu­able head start.”

He com­pleted his co-​​op in December and looks back at his time in Scot­land with deep pride. “Whether it’s work we did with the same-​​sex mar­riage bill cur­rently making its way through, or the work ensuring that money dis­trib­uted to coun­cils for public housing ten­ants was actu­ally get­ting to the people who need it, I cer­tainly feel good about a lot of what I did in that office.”

Turner’s first expe­ri­ence in pol­i­tics came in 2012, when he worked on co-​​op as an intern at the Mass­a­chu­setts State­house in Boston. The expe­ri­en­tial learning oppor­tu­nity, he said, served as a good spring­board for what he wanted to do—and where he wanted to go—on his next co-​​op.

Upon grad­u­a­tion, he aims to pursue a career that com­bines social ser­vice and his polit­ical experience.

“My expe­ri­ence with co-​​op has given me the oppor­tu­nity to figure out what field is the best fit,” he said. “When the time comes, the most impor­tant thing to me is to make a difference.”

– By Jordana Torres

More Stories

Photo of the Capitol Building at night

High stakes for politics, SCOTUS in 2018

01.04.2018
Photo of the crashed truck that was used in the October 31st attack in Manhattan.

Weaponizing Language: How the meaning of “allahu akbar” has been distorted

11.08.2017
Northeastern logo

Why I love studying Spanish

05.29.20
Uncategorized