With a tall, slim stature, one might think he’s a basketball player.

However, he can be found spending most of his time on the first floor of the Communications Building in meetings with the Associated Students Organization.

But once the weekend commences, melodic tunes spark from his fingers through the mallets he maneuvers on the marimba.

Jake Smith, 20, is a political science major at El Camino College. He plans to transfer to the University of California, Los Angeles, during fall 2025 as a political science major.

He has been the commissioner of External Affairs for ASO since fall 2024 and is vice president of the Inter-Club Council.

Smith got involved with ASO during his first semester at ECC in fall 2023, initially as a division council member for Behavioral and Social Sciences.

His roles involve many responsibilities on campus, including planning student events.

“Our main goal in ASO is advocacy, which is what I do as far as legislative affairs and meeting with elected officials and lobbying,” Smith said.

Smith planted the idea of lobbying with ASO at the California State Assembly in Sacramento.

ASO lobbied for bills on homelessness and immigration issues, known as Assembly Bill 49 and AB 90.

“This is really what he does because he’s a political science major and this is what he is really passionate about,” Nabeeha Muhammad, ASO director of External Affairs, said.

Muhammad describes their collaboration efforts as always being there for each other when they need help.

Smith was also a Supplemental Instruction coach for political science and a member of the Political Science Club at ECC.

While his involvements on campus display his passion for political science, his other passion is playing the marimba.

Smith began using instruments in the sixth grade when he was part of a band and played the tuba.

During his freshman year at West High School, he joined winter percussion for the 2020 season and was part of it every year, except for 2021, due to COVID-19 restrictions.

“And then my senior year, I was like, oh, I want to learn mallet percussion, which is like marimba, vibraphone and xylophone,” Smith said.

Smith played the bell set for his last year of high school.

To continue his craft, he joined the Orange County Independent, which is an independent percussion group. He was part of its 2024 season and 2025 season.

Rehearsals are long and occur during the weekends at Gardena High School.

“So we’ll do like Saturday, 9 [a.m.] to 9 [p.m.] and Sunday, 9 [a.m.] to 6 [p.m.],” he said. “But, I mean, I love it.”

Smith said there are a lot of cool people he gets to work with because they truly enjoy what they do.

“He [Smith] is actually a really cool person and I like talking to him and he’s really knowledgeable on random things,” percussionist Daniel Garibay said.

Garibay said Smith’s good work ethic pushes him to practice every day, making sure he knows all parts of the marimba for the score.

“Every single weekend we would come back, he would be way better than the weekend before,” Garibay said.

Balancing school with OCI is a challenging but worthy experience for Smith.

“I just try to be really mindful of how I spend my time and being proactive about finishing stuff,” Smith said. “Like I don’t like to procrastinate on stuff, because if I do, I end up not having time to do it.”

This season, they performed “From the Bottom,” which is about addiction, but not any specific type of addiction.

“It’s more about the idea of trying to escape something and then being sucked back into it,” Smith said.

Their show is about seven minutes long, and they wore custom-made costumes colored with a mix of purple, red and cream.

For the 2025 season, OCI won seventh place with a score of 94.7 at the Winter Guard International World Championships for independent marching open, held in Dayton, Ohio.

It was better than taking 13th place last year, Smith said.

He recently bought his own marimba and looks forward to keeping it in his room to play.

When Smith transfers to UCLA, he will consider joining their marching band even though they do not have percussion.

Regardless, he still plans on playing the marimba.

He hopes people know that to find opportunities, they must look for them and that they can do many things at once that are not related and still be good at it.

“Part of being human is being varied in what you do,” Smith said.

Editor’s note: Video was added Sunday, June 1.