At ASUP, we are no strangers to adversity. Our goal in ASUP is to be transparent in what work we do with our wins and our challenges. This school year we have been working without a full-time advisor and spent much of the fall semester working internally to build a stronger team. Despite these challenges we have learned a lot about what our role is on campus. The role of a student government is to represent students and advocate for what students not only want but need. This fall we also revised our mission statement to better reflect the work we do.
We want ASUP to be accessible to all students and easy to engage with. Reach out to your Senator — whose photo is outside our ASUP office in St. Mary’s with their office hours — write a constituency report on our website and engage with voting in our spring election. When there are ideas for communication channels, resources students want to see, and projects students want to be done, we want to be the organization to help.
With that being said, it is important to ASUP that we hear all the needs and wants of students. We have heard your feedback and here are the concrete immediate action items we are implementing to address those concerns:
Thanks to the work of President Fuller we have reformatted our website on a platform we hope is easy for students to access and engage with.
We are bringing back our bi-weekly newsletter that outlines the work ASUP is up to and how you can get involved.
You can watch previous meetings and access the meeting minutes on our website, thanks to a new resolution passed this spring.
Resolutions will be posted on our Instagram stories as well as on the website by 11:59 p.m. PST on Sundays.
President Fuller will start meeting regularly with The Beacon to open the lines of communication
To provide an update, this academic year we have passed seven resolutions. These resolutions span from collaborating with the Wellness Center, organizing a green dot training for all ASUP members and promoting the event for other students to creating roles within the Senate to connect with the residence halls on campus.
As part of our Continuity Act, we have mandated an Owl to record all meetings to promote transparency of the business that occurs and allow students to witness the meetings if they were unable to attend as a guest.
The structure of a Senate meeting includes speakers from a variety of departments on campus with projects we can collaborate on, looking at authoring and passing bills and resolutions, hearing reports from the executive board, hearing committee reports, hearing constituency reports and any other groups that want to address the Senate. After our meetings, we take the new information we have learned and share it with our community and ask for feedback or share new projects. Constituency reports get sent to our committees to work on with campus partners.
After spring break, we plan on voting on a resolution to create a Mental Health Taskforce and another to donate some of our quasi-endowment to a new Student Engagement Center — more information about the donation to the center is coming soon.
As The Beacon said, we cannot advocate for a silent student body. It is our job to yield those ideas to students and turn them into action. ASUP needs to be accessible to students and we need students to attend senator office hours, come to Senate meetings, engage in constituent outreach, and ask questions in order for our work to be meaningful. We value and prioritize transparent and accessible communication and will continue to do our work with those values at the forefront of what we do.
Our spring elections are rapidly approaching with elections happening on March 21 and 22. Campaigning began on Feb. 28, so be on the lookout for candidates and start asking questions. Voting happens on Engage every year and we will be tabling throughout campus to encourage people to vote.
Your voice is important. ASUP reaches a wide range of groups on campus from setting club budgets to working with the President’s Leadership Cabinet. There are so many ways to get involved and we hope you do. Student Government plays an important role on any campus in being part of the fabric of what happens. Join us in doing that.
Missed the applications? Join our committees and play a part in the work that we do! Find more information at our website or contact wipfler23@up.edu if you have any questions.
Emma Fuller is the President of ASUP. She can be reached at fuller23@up.edu.
Megan Meckey is the Vice President of ASUP. She can be reached at meckey23@up.edu.
Angela Wipfler is the Speaker of the Senate of ASUP. She can be reached at wipfler23@up.edu.
