ISU Bengal

Issue date: 8/27/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Dylan Guenther

After a long and busy summer, your ASISU student government is ready to get to work. I was able to meet with the executive officers of ASISU to ask a few questions about the plans for the upcoming year and to just get to know these highly motivated and involved students at ISU.

A lot happened over the summer with Matt Spencer, ASISU President, attending committee meetings that made decisions which effect student life. Examples of these changes include the possibility of ISU changing email services to gmail and the discontinuation of the laptop checkout at the SUB. Carissa Butticci, ASISU Vice President, got married. And Cortney Dickinson, Idaho Falls Vice President, was busy working with the Student Activities Board to organize a summer barbeque in Idaho Falls and begin getting students involved up north.

With the start of the new semester, your ASISU executive officers are ready to, in the words of Spencer, "Educate and then advocate" for ISU students. In order to get more students involved, the students need to know how to do this and be provided the opportunity to get involved. And this is exactly what the new ASISU student government is going to do.

"I think we are going to give a lot more opportunities for students to get involved throw it out there so they know how to get involved," explained Butticci about the new administration's view of student involvement. "Communication is a big problem, a lot of times students don't know how they can get involved."

"There are a lot of misconceptions about student government and there are a lot of misconceptions about how ISU works," Spencer said. "And I think that if more students knew that they have a voice here and if there is something that happens that they do not approve of, they can go to someone and talk to them about it. I think if more students knew that there are venues to complain or make suggestions, they would take advantage of those opportunities."

The newest leaders of the student government are pushing for ways to contact and communicate with the students. They are even going to hold some office hours and a few senate meetings in Idaho Falls, so that the students up north can actively participate in the process.

They even want to change the student government's role. "The way [student government] has been in years past, it has been effective," said Spencer. "But I would like to see the student leaders become more proactive. I would like to see them be a bigger presence on campus. There is no reason that the student government can't function as a kind of

ambassador to the community, or even an ambassador to students. There is no reason that student representation should happen only on Monday nights."

Dickinson sums up the new student government's views nicely, "We really care about students. As students we see what we need and then it encourages us to move forward and help out where we can."

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