CORRECTION APPENDED: This headline misspelled Sarah Barnard's name.

Sarah Barnard, the Defend Affirmative Action Party's vice presidential candidate in Wednesday and Thursday's Michigan Student Assembly election, doesn't want you to be intimidated by her - or her party.

"People think we take ourselves way too seriously," she said of DAAP. "I'm not as serious as people think I am. Because of that, people are intimidated by me."

The LSA senior said she's not the type of person who sits silently through her classes. She said it's her duty to represent a point-of-view she feels would channel the underrepresented minorities she finds absent from her academic life.

"I think it's an obligation to speak up for the people not in the class," she said.

Barnard wants to model herself after a strong female image that manifests itself in her favorite books and music.

In music, there's no question about who she loves - Corrine Bailey Rae, the strong-voiced British soul singer. Barnard said she's going to see Rae in concert, and Rae's music is one of Barnard's ring tones.

In literature, Barnard follows that same image; one of her recent favorites is Charlayne Hunter-Gault's autobiography, "In My Place." In the book, Hunter-Gault recounts her experience as the first black person to attend the previously segregated University of Georgia in 1961.

Barnard grew up in working-class Romulus, Mich., a town that is 30 percent black, but also a town with few minorities from other groups.

When she moved to Ann Arbor for her freshman year of high school, Barnard had a case of culture shock.

It was the first time she'd seen an Asian American in person, she said. She also said she wasn't prepared for the significantly wealthier population of Ann Arbor.

"I was kind of a black sheep when I came here," she said.

A lot of questions began running through her head, she said.

"Why should I be treated differently because my parents don't make a lot of money?" she asked herself.

She got involved with By Any Means Necessary, a self-described "militant" pro-affirmative action group, when she was a high school junior. The group helped her find answers to some of the questions she had about inequality, she said.

The same year, she became involved in DAAP, helping out on the MSA campaign.

With that experience under her belt, she was ready to step right in and work for MSA in her first semester at the University.

Sometimes, though, she worries that her party's platforms fall on deaf ears in its uphill battle against the heavily favored Michigan Action Party.

"Everyone thinks we're a one-point platform," she said about the DAAP's emphasis on fighting for affirmative action.

She said the party isn't concerned with "what new restaurants can we bring to campus," but instead attacking campus wide prejudice and tackling issues for what she feels can be a politically-minded campus.

"If (University students) were motivated to see themselves as leaders, they could definitely step up and make a difference," she said.