The Associated Students of the University of Utah, or ASUU, is the U’s student government. It has several moving parts, including judicial and executive branches and a legislative assembly and senate.
Enrolled students are automatically members of ASUU, but they might not understand exactly what it is that the organization does.
“We strive to provide much-needed resources and services to students, host events and programs, and advocate for students in our interactions with University administrators,” their website states. “We work to be a powerful, representative, transparent, and inclusive voice for all students who call the University of Utah home.”
The Senate is currently composed of 18 students from many walks of life on campus, with one senator representing each college. They also make up one-half of the legislative branch, along with the assembly.
While every college has one representative in the Senate, the number of assembly members depends on how many students are in the college, similar to the House of Representatives in the U.S. government.
Hannah Truax is currently serving as the Senate Chair and represents the College of Social and Behavioral Studies. She said she found a sense of community and actionable change through ASUU. Truax started her time at the U as a student-athlete for the Swim and Dive team. After an injury, she was looking for more connections and decided to run for student government.
Truax said that part of what the Senate does is draft and submit legislative changes and bills for ASUU and propose changes around campus.
“I oversee about 17 senators, a couple of them were elected,” she said. “… The other half were appointed by me via interview process, because [no one ran] but we needed to fill the position.”
Another role of the Senate is to work closely with the assembly regarding student funding initiatives.
Christina Dong currently serves as the Assembly Chair and represents the College of Engineering. She is in her second year in ASUU, after starting on the first-year student council. As the assembly chair, she presides over about 35 assembly members.
She said the assembly deals with the budget and student funding.
“Assembly is the branch of ASUU that deals with student organization funding, so we manage a pretty large budget and then throughout the course of the year, we meet about four times a month to try and figure out what is the best way we can allocate our resources to make sure that students on campus have the funding that they need,” Dong said.
Truax and Dong both mentioned an initiative that students of ASUU are working on – to connect better with students at the U.
“The goal is to help increase ASUU visibility by creating suggestion boxes on campus to give students more of an option to talk to us and realize that we can do something with their opinion about how campus is,” Dong said.
The Judicial Branch of ASUU consists of the Attorney General and several Supreme Court Justices who work with the ASUU Redbook. The Redbook contains “the ASUU Constitution and Bylaws, and it provides an overview and instructions for how the various branches, boards, and positions within the ASUU Student Government are supposed to function,” according to ASUU’s website.
Truax said one initiative the judicial and legislative branches are working on is making the Redbook more accessible to students.
Both Truax and Dong mentioned some misconceptions that students have about ASUU as a whole and their specific branches.
“I know that people either do not have an idea of what ASUU is, or they tend to have a negative image of what ASUU is, which I think is completely understandable,” Dong said.
The Executive Branch is headed by the ASUU presidency, who controls several boards.
“The ASUU Student Government’s presidency and eleven boards help oversee many of the resources, programs, initiatives, and events that the ASUU Student Government runs,” their website states.
About 13% of students participated in the last ASUU presidential election — a significant increase from the previous year.
The 2023-24 presidency consists of Jack O’Leary as President, Chloe Shewell as Vice President of University Relations and Parker Madsen as the Vice President of Student Relations.
Truax said that students should know the power of their voice.
“You have a lot of power as a student, your voice in government — you can do a lot with it.”
