Deciphering the bureaucracy of the U can be a time-consuming ordeal for students who want to get involved in extracurricular activities but aren’t sure how. It’s no surprise that most students have no idea how to run for office or ensure their voices are heard in student-administration affairs, and the student representative body, the Associated Students of the University of Utah, only adds to university-wide incompetency.
Fact: $22.52 of your student fees per semester is attributed to ASUU. With a campus head count of more than 28,000 students, ASUU is sorely over-funded for how many students actually participate and are granted access to the organization that acts as the student representative body on campus.
Janzell Tutor, office adviser of ASUU, said that information on how to run for office is not added to its website until February. Tutor’s only available statistics for how many students actually turn out to vote during each election at the end of Spring Semester came from the 2006 and 2005 elections8212;with turnouts of 3,588 and 5,111 respectively. Seriously, 3,588 students voting out of a student body numbering around 28,000 students? Anyone with a calculator can multiply $22.52 by 28,000 people and come up with quite a hefty estimated budget. Let’s not forget that the students filling those seats are, in many capacities, getting paid for it.
