ASUSU funds Spirit Squad, information booth
The ASUSU Executive Council tentatively allocated $6,958 to the Spirit Squad and $5,000 for information booth renovations at its meeting Tuesday.
Both allocations came from the Capital and Support Fund. This fund accumulates money not spent during the previous fiscal year. The funds will not be allocated from this year’s student fees.
The funds for the Spirit Squad, which comprises Big Blue and the co-ed cheerleading team, the Aggiettes, will go toward the purchase of two new uniforms and five new flags for the squad. The current Spirit Squad wardrobe consists of six performance uniforms.
“Because they are very active in their uniforms, (the uniforms) obviously get pretty sweaty,” said Erik Mikkelsen, ASUSU president. “It takes time to get them dry cleaned, so it’s important they have multiple uniforms.”
Due to a new branding and logo agreement with Nike, the squad will be required to wear new uniforms and display new flags with the latest logo at all televised events. These events include all men’s varsity games and all women’s conference games and matches, said Linda Zimmerman, executive director of the Student Involvement and Leadership Office. The squad will be able to wear their current uniforms to community events and other non televised events. More information about the new logo will be released later this month, said Ryan Baylis, ASUSU Athletics vice president.
The Spirit Squad does a good deal of fundraising through cheer clinics for youths in Cache Valley and through local businesses, Zimmerman said. She said the squad has raised more than $10,000 this year for its various expenditures, and it will purchase one new set of uniforms with money from its budget.
“The squad basically has to start from scratch with uniforms,” she said. “It will probably be another three or four years until they are up to their usual number.”
The council also allotted $5,000 for renovations to the ASUSU information booth.
The booth – located on the first floor of the Taggart Student Center – will be installed this summer with four monitors that will advertise various on-campus events, activities and groups.
“This is part of a multi-pronged publicity stunt,” Mikkelsen said. “We want to install monitors in the bathrooms – we’re calling them ‘toilet talk’ – that will also advertise events and organizations on campus.”
As part of this publicity plan, ASUSU will be sending out weekly emails to all new freshman, transfer students, and any other student who signs up for the notifications. These emails will advertise various clubs and organizations on campus.
ASUSU officers have already provided half of $10,000 needed for the information booth project, and the Capital and Support Fund will pay for the rest. The public relations office supplied $2,500; the ASUSU president, $2,000; and the Administrative Assistant, $500. This money comes from the officers’ budgets, which come from this year’s student fees.
In other business, the council approved changes to the ASUSU Graduate Studies Senator Charter. These changes are mainly grammatical, said Cami Jones, Graduate Senate vice president.
Under the former charter, “the Graduate Studies Senator was supposed to sit on over a dozen committees,” she said. “Under the new charter, the responsibilities are delegated to the other graduate directors.”
The changes in the charter came in response to the Executive Council’s decision to dissolve the the Graduate Student Senate earlier this semester, she said. Currently, undergraduate and graduate students each have their own senates.
Beginning next year, the School of Graduate Studies will be represented by a Graduate Studies senator in the Academic Senate, and all graduate and undergraduate students within a college will be represented by a single senator.
A final vote on these funding allocations and charter changes will take place at the council’s meeting April 10.
– rouchelle.brockman@aggiemail.usu.edu