The newly elected ASUU administration is planning to increase student involvement in ASUU through reaching out to under involved student populations and making ASUU more accessible.
Student body president elect Nick Ferre, a master’s student in education, leadership and policy, said the incoming administration plans to reach out to student populations who are not traditionally involved with ASUU.
“We have invited them not only to become involved with us but to become part of the administration. I think it is very important to be able to foster good involvement from student groups who aren’t traditionally involved is to first make sure they have a representation within the administration a connection back to the administration,” Ferre said
The administration plans on working with married student housing and international students who are two of the largest populations of non-traditional students on campus said Vice president elect Sam Ortiz, a senior in social work.
“We’re hoping to have representation from those populations in our administration to really speak on behalf of those people,” Ortiz said. “We want to be somewhat intentional about who we hire to make sure that maybe things we can’t see are addressed by those who represent those backgrounds.”
Ortiz also said he wants to change the culture of ASUU.
“A lot of the feedback we received prior to the campaign and during the campaign is that ASUU is kind of cliquey not as open or welcoming as it could be,” Ortiz said. “Rather than waiting for students to approach us with concerns we want to really be more proactive in reaching out to students and going to where students are already at rather than assuming they will eventually get to us”
Another plan is to make ASUU meetings more accessible. Ferre said he wants to put meeting agendas and minutes online.
“One of the things we would like to do is explore the possibility making sure that all of our meetings are streamed, either podcast or streamed live, making those available for students who can’t make it at that time, but would like to gather the information prior,” Ferre said.
This year the ASUU assembly received $50,000 in rollover funds that were allocated to student groups in the 2011-2012 academic year but were never claimed. Ortiz wants to increase ASUU’s involvement with student groups to make sure these funds are spent.
“We will be asking our assembly representatives to be liaisons between several student groups. One assembly representative could pick two or three students groups and they would be responsible [for] going to one of their meeting every now and then, at least keeping in touch with their leadership,” Ortiz said. “This is more than just a typical follow up that happens after a bill is run through. We want to have more consistant connection with these student groups.”
Ferre said the another way is for the director and associate directors of the campus relations board, which oversees student groups to more closely monitor the allocated funds.
“After a certain period of time, two weeks a month, if [the student groups] haven’t submitted for reimbursements or if they haven’t made plans on using that that we are touchng base with them to find out exactly why,” Ferre said. “Perhaps they need the resources that ASUU has, our professional resources in planning the events that they had initially intended the money to be used for.”
The new administration will not have concrete sustainability plans until a sustainability board director is chosen, Ferre said. He said the goal is to have a more holistic sustainability plan the includes the whole university.
Ortiz said the administration plans for the sustainablity board to increase it scope and work with other ASUU boards to make their events more sustainable.
“We want to lead by example. I may not be able to tell the orientation office to be more sustainable. That is not in our purview. If we can show them how it’s done and do it effectivel then that will open the door for other departments to follow suit,” Ortiz said.