"The best interest of the student body is what is his focus," said Kim Parker '97, a friend of Woodfork and a colleague in student government. "I think that's what makes everyone believe in him, because we know he's not saying one thing and doing another."
Woodfork has done much more than simply react to student initiatives, however. In the State of the College address, delivered in conjunction with Colby President Bill Cotter last September, he made it clear that he intended to lead. For instance, he tackled a crucial area of campus discussion--the importance of semantics--in a deft phrase near the beginning of his speech. "If my name is Joshua and I ask you to call me Josh, you should respect me enough to do that. And if I am an African-American man and I ask you to call me African American, you should do that, too," he said.
Woodfork urged students to go beyond the classroom in examining potential hot-button issues like affirmative action and race relations. "We have a lot to learn from each other," he said. "We need to ask questions and hear what people are saying."
"He was really speaking to some of the conservative members of the community who may feel, sometimes, that their own voices are not welcome in some of these debates, that there is too much of a uniform view on some issues," Cotter said. "He was welcoming, talking about civility and respect for all points of view. It wasn't that he was saying his point of view wasn't represented or he couldn't get it across; he was talking to the others. And that's unusual."
Proof of the speech's effectiveness came minutes after it was delivered, when a first-year student went to a microphone, credited Woodfork with inspiring him to speak his mind and said he didn't approve of affirmative action. "That was so brave," Woodfork said later, "because he put the question out there. We don't do enough of that. It will have a life-changing effect on people if they can talk about these things in the residence halls and the dining halls as well as in the classroom."
Woodfork and the other members of the 1996-97 Student Association have tried to provoke that kind of discussion by bringing to campus speakers such as writer Jonathan Kozol (Death At An Early Age, Amazing Grace) who are unabashedly partisan, holders of strong and sometimes controversial opinions. And to some extent, Woodfork says, their efforts have succeeded. "People I'd never dreamed would go to these things are there, and they come away wanting to talk about them," he said. "Both of my parents, my grandfather and my aunt are social workers. In my family we talked about these issues around the dinner table. But some students have never been confronted with them before."
He is careful to expand his efforts beyond multicultural concerns, noting that he was elected by a variety of students who have disparate needs. When a proposal to institute a comprehensive fee at Colby went to the Trustee Meeting in January, Woodfork mounted a last-minute lobbying effort to ensure that the trustees were aware of student opinion, particularly their opposition to a reduction in the rebate Colby now pays students who live in off-campus housing. In the end, the trustees voted for the comprehensive fee but, in a compromise proposed by Bill Cotter, elected to postpone the rebate reduction for two years as additional housing is built on campus.
"Josh handled the off-campus rebate issue well," said James Crawford '64, chair of the board's Student Affairs Committee. "It was a controversial issue. He was afraid the students wouldn't be heard and that it would quickly pass a trustee vote. So he worked through the committees and the issue was reconsidered."
"That's a victory for student voice," Woodfork said. "That really is a validation that students do have a voice here at Colby and that we are being listened to, even at the highest levels."
Charlie Bassett calls Woodfork "a very, very, very astute politician."
"From the beginning," Bassett said, "he figured, `I can be a revolutionary, a bomb-tosser, on the outside of the system, and yeah, I can get some things done. But sometimes oil is as good as sandpaper.' He's a--and I don't mean this in any pejorative sense--he's a player."
Another facet of Woodfork's agenda for this year is, perhaps, closest to his heart. This month a project he first began touting in his sophomore year, Colby Cares Day, comes to fruition as hundreds of Colby students, faculty, staff and administrators do volunteer community service in Waterville. Woodfork says that he hopes Colby Cares Day will become an option during fall orientation for all students, so those who are bitten by the service bug will sign up, early, for programs sponsored by the College's Volunteer Center. "I think volunteering is part of a liberal arts education," he said. "You should recognize your privilege in some meaningful way. But it has to be student-led, not from the administration." (Woodfork himself has volunteered at a local elementary school and for Adults Reading To Children and coached Waterville Youth Soccer.) He also says Colby students should observe a Staff Appreciation Day to acknowledge that the College "couldn't run without custodians and secretaries and dining service workers and other people who sometimes seem invisible. We need to do a better job of showing them we care about them," he said.
"I think that's the legacy he wants to leave, that Colby people do care," said Kim Parker, who has known Woodfork since their sophomore year and who also spent the spring '96 semester at Howard. "I don't think he cares that his name is attached to it, he just wants to make the Colby community and Waterville aware that Colby students are more than selfish rich kids up on the hill. And he gets so caught up in his projects that you can't help but get caught up in what he wants to do."

Woodfork's drive was manifest well before he came to Colby. He was class president for three years and a three-sport captain at Swampscott (Mass.) High School and was a proctor during the postgraduate year he spent at Brewster Academy in New Hampshire--among many other activities at both schools. He and his brother, Peter, now an undergraduate at Harvard, were noted in their hometown for their success in high school.
Woodfork says it was a shock to arrive at Colby and "not to have all this involvement right off the bat." When his classwork began to suffer, he said, "I decided either to leave or to get more involved." It didn't take him long to make an impression.
"When Josh was a freshman he came to a Campus Community Committee meeting, and he raised some very important issues," said Bill Cotter, who chairs the committee. "He had been trying to do research for a class and was frustrated because the materials he needed on African-American topics weren't available here. Because of his initiative a meeting was set up with the librarians, and some of the things became available fairly quickly. It was a good indication of someone who saw an issue that hadn't been picked up elsewhere who was willing to raise it, even as a freshman." [CONTINUE]