“In Times of Stress, We Persevere” …
Welcome New ACUI President Ian Crone
In his appreciative address accepting the gavel as 2025–26 president of ACUI during the ACUI Annual Conference in New York City, University of Tennessee Student Union Director Ian Crone did not delay addressing a topic sensitive to his gathered peers. In the big picture, he noted through examples, student unions provide the “world with what it needs.”
“I think this is one of the reasons why this present moment may be stressful for some of us. The values associated with our work—building community, empowering students, critical thinking, finding consensus across difference, extending respect and belonging to marginalized populations, basically, unconditional human worth—are being labeled by some as problematic,” he said. “The very nature of how I’ve sought to positively impact the world for the past 30 years, supporting inclusive communities to foster learning, is now so clearly misunderstood, or misrepresented, by some, it’s hard to reconcile.”
One of Crone’s first jobs found him working with students at Colorado State University to mobilize peaceful and positive assemblies in response to homophobic demonstrations on campus on the anniversary of the death of Mathew Sheppard.
A few years later, the then-director of Elmhurst University’s Frick Student Center became involved with creating a community where student peers’ identities, faith, and genders were respected, and interfaith and intergroup dialogue was encouraged. While directing operations of the Holmes Student Center at Northern Illinois University, Crone championed student efforts to bring basic needs and college affordability to the forefront of the campus agenda. And today, on a campus witnessing recording-setting enrollment, he leads a student union team that prepares students to be successful leaders in a global workforce.
“I personally believe the relationships found in community are more precious during times of stress and change than during times of stability,” he said. “I believe the solidarity and motivation that results from sharing an exhausted laugh or working together to respond to change gives folks purpose and helps them to persevere. This community we advance on our campuses and the learning it fosters gives me hope.”
Recollecting even further beyond his career, as a student becoming a programming committee volunteer, he found value in transformative change. “My education was no longer a private good (getting an engineering degree in order to get a job for me), but a public good (working to improve my community while also helping others learn and grow),” he recalled. “For me, this was the start of my understanding the union’s capacity to positively change the world. I have loved the idea of the union ever since.”
Prior to assuming the role as president of ACUI, Crone served as an at-large member of the Board of Trustees, as a member of the Education Council, as Conference Program Team chair for the 2015 Annual Conference in San Antonio, a regional director, and a contributor toThe Bulletin.
