After a year in which student government spent more time lobbying in Salem than interacting with students in the South Park Blocks, and its overly ambitious agenda led to incremental change—at best—we hope the incoming administration refocuses its energy on what is truly important: this campus.
With budget cuts and tuition increases looming next year, ASPSU cannot afford to forget that its constituency is comprised of the entire student body, and that this university stretches across 49 acres of urban landscape, not solely the ASPSU office.
We offer three suggestions for President-elect Jonathan Sanford and his staff, who assume office June 1, and challenge them to do what it takes to foster a greater campus community and impact student lives with tangible achievements.
Come back to campus
While we find this year’s administration did a commendable job advocating for students, to the everyday student it is safe to say that ASPSU remains quietly irrelevant.
Often cloistered in their ground-floor office in Smith Memorial Student Union or a meeting room in the state capitol, student government members need to reacquaint themselves with the student body and conversely force students to become reacquainted with ASPSU. They must send their staffers and interns throughout the campus, if only to remind students that they have a functioning, active student government.
And while they are out there, they must ask students the simplest of questions: What do you need? As services are cut and the recession continues to impact students’ lives, it is a question that must be asked, and ASPSU must be flexible enough to respond to the demands of its constituency.
Make tangible gains
ASPSU cannot afford another year where a dozen projects are tackled, only to leave the incoming administration saddled with a substantial amount of unfinished business.
Students deserve tangible achievements. Sanford already has a couple of projects that could help him establish credibility as a leader who can get things done.
During his campaign, Sanford worked with the fraternity Kappa Sigma to establish a food bank for students. He also has at least two incoming members of the Student Fee Committee—Chair Johnnie Ozimkowski and member Ron Lee—who are interested in creating a textbook exchange.
Turning these two projects into a functioning reality by fall term would give ASPSU momentum and would be an incentive to focus energy on fewer ideas that have a better chance of coming to fruition. It is with this handful of successful initiatives that ASPSU might be able to convince the student body that it matters.
In the end, it is winning concrete victories for students that will separate the incoming administration from the empty rhetoric that has been so common for too many years.
Community is not just a buzzword
Student government is not a cure-all for the university’s woes. It isn’t an all-powerful organization, and it cannot do everything at once or be everything to everybody.
However, student government has the potential to harness the immense human energy on this campus and make real change.
It has the power to be the agent that helps foster a true sense of campus community. Making students realize there is a place under the tent for everyone is perhaps the biggest challenge ASPSU faces, and it’s one that won’t be easily or quickly achieved.
The work starts on Monday. Good luck.