SALP to introduce new advisory board fall term

In a move that many hope will provide increased accessibility to Portland State student groups, PSU Student Activities and Leadership Programs (SALP) will adopt a new advisory board for gathering student opinion this fall.

According to Tonantzin Oceguera, director of SALP, the new advisory board will serve an entirely different function than the previous board.

SALP advises the over 100 Portland State student groups on campus. The student groups are divided into seven clusters, each cluster with its own professional advisor.

The new board, composed of five students and three PSU staff or faculty, will be responsible for gathering student feedback through surveys, focus groups, comment boxes and open houses starting fall term. The new advisory panel will also be responsible for forming ad hoc committees to work on special projects.

The current feedback model is being changed in part because the advisory board did not meet at all during the 2006-2007 school year, prompting the Student Fee Committee to withhold SALP’s funding until the organization established a new system of feedback.

The Student Fee Committee (SFC) is charged with allocating over $12 million in student fees to over 100 student groups, including Greek Life, PSU Athletics and the Vanguard.

The new model will provide an “opportunity for more students to be involved in a much more open process,” Oceguera said.

Under the new model, board members will distribute surveys to the student body during fall term. During winter term, the board will use data collected during the fall to hold focus groups composed of student group members and non-student group members. The committee will then share its findings from the surveys and focus groups with the public during open house presentations.

Based on the findings from the information gathered during fall and winter terms, the board will present recommendations to SALP and the SFC in the spring.

After receiving the recommendations, SALP would present a plan for implementing the chosen recommendations to the advisory board and the fee committee. If SALP chooses not to adopt certain recommendations, reasons will be given to the advisory board and fee committee, as well as published on the SALP website.

Aimee Shattuck, who will replace Oceguera as interim SALP director on Aug. 1, said she is enthusiastic about the new feedback system.

“[The new board] is a way to communicate with students,” she said.

As the interim director, Shattuck said one of her first goals is to ensure that the board is staffed.

“I think it’s important that the advisory board has actual tasks and responsibilities,” said Shattuck. “If not, people are busy and they stop coming, and it fizzles out and there’s no point.”

“I personally think it’s a serious problem to not have any feedback mechanism,” said SFC member Aubrey Lindstrom. “SALP is 100 percent funded by student fees, but students don’t direct the program.”

Originally created to give students a voice in SALP’s affairs, the old advisory board met irregularly to review SALP policy and make recommendations to Oceguera. But the previous model, Oceguera said, was not successful.

“[The previous model] was not really working for PSU students. As a director it wasn’t really working as a feedback mechanism.”

Myron Kingsbury, who served on the board for a year and a half, said that students would become disinterested because the board had no real power to make change.

“If I had to point a finger, I’d say SALP leadership wasn’t doing a great job getting students to be enthusiastic about being part of the board,” said Kingsbury. “Nobody felt like they could make a change through the board.”

“The SALP advisory board kind of became a dead horse, so to speak,” said Madeline Enos, who served as the SFC chair for the 2006-2007 academic year. “We were disappointed that no real efforts were made to get it going. At the same time, I think we understand where Tonantzin was coming from.”

Oceguera said that she has been trying without success to attract students to the board.

“We can’t force people to be on a committee. If people don’t want to, I’m sure as heck not going to force people to be on it.”