Candidates present plans to Greek community
Candidates for USU Student Association elected positions met in the Greek town hall meeting Monday night to discuss ways to improve USU for students.
Incumbent USU/SA President Doug Fiefia discussed his campaign to lower cost of tuition for student by bringing down the tuition level from 13 to 12 credits.
“At 12, we receive all of our financial aid and scholarships,” Fiefia said. “I would work to. bring the plateau from 13 to 12, and that would mean more money in your bank account and less paying tuition.”
Candidates Ryan Lambert and Josh LeFevre also presented their platforms for uniting students and helping students to become more involved.
“My platform is very general, but we have a very unique opportunity at Utah State to get involved and I just want to reach out to more students,” Lambert said. “My greatest qualification is that I am just a regular student. I participate in a lot of the same activities, and I would represent students and what they do.”
LeFevre also discussed the importance of communication from students.
“I think that it’s important to not only get feedback at a council levels, but also on the grassroot level, as well as offering a direct line of communication between student activities and administration so we don’t have activities one year so we have more consistency,” LeFevre said.
The meeting began with the College of Agriculture and Applied Science senator candidates. Katharine Nye, a dairy science and agriculture leadership major, addressed the challenges of uniting all of the majors from her college.
“I want to make sure agricultural science students are heard,” Nye said. “I want to get people to talk to each other.”
With Caine College of the Arts Senator Sam Wright not in attendance, the candidates for Jon M. Huntsman School of Business senator were next to present. Brian Godfrey presented his platform of changing the GPA system for USU students.
“It’s not about numbers. It’s about learning,” Godfrey said. “It’s about teachers teaching us what we need to know.”
A senator candidate for the College of Engineering, Kade Beck, presented his platform of creating field trips for engineering students where they could shadow professional engineers. He also addressed how field trips would benefit students in engineering despite the population of each major and create an opportunity to network with companies.
Geoff Andrews, a candidate for Organizations and Campus Diversity vice president, presented a solution to club leadership disorganization by having USU clubs connected through an online program.
“You can log in and have an updated club list and through this website, send a request like Facebook and receive information,” he said. “It would make it ten times easier to join clubs.”
The only candidate for Athletics and Campus Recreation VP, Dallin Laird, addressed issues students would encounter with campus recreation.
“I want to be completely open, there were a few things left out in the design plan – a rock wall and a lot of other things,” Laird said. “There’s an issue about fields not being there for club sports in the winter time. I want to start working out and make sure our club sports have somewhere to work out on the fields.”
Another issue that was addressed was the decrease in student attendance in sporting events.
“The Spectrum does have 4,000 seats, and that is tough to fill for every game, but I will work to make it fun for students to be there early, whether that be an actual campout or tailgate party, whatever it is,” Laird said.
– katherine.l.larsen@gmail.com