Tree project wins scholarship
A giant scholarship check was awarded to Arieanna White, the winner of the Fun Theory contest, at the USU Student Association Executive Council meeting Tuesday.
Developed at USU by former USU/SA president Christian Thrapp, the Fun Theory was derived from Volkswagen. The idea is fun is the easiest way to change behavior.
White, a freshman studying animal, dairy and veterinary science, created the dream tree, located north of the Taggart Student Center next to the Big Blue Terrace. Students wrote dreams on blue and white ribbons and tied them to a tree.
White was one of the many who applied for the Fun Theory. Out of several applicants, three projects were chosen by the Fun Theory committee to develop and pursue their idea.
“We had a bunch of applicants,” said Paige Robinson, a Fun Theory chair. “We chose three finalists. They implemented their ideas on campus. From that, we had students vote.”
Members of the committee used rubric sheets to grade students’ thoughts on the projects.
“One of our ideas was in the TSC from Ethan called flag,” said Josh LeFevre, another Fun Theory chair. “It was changing behavior by giving compliments. Tell someone you may not know or just ran into and give them compliments. A lot of students reacted positively. They were happy seeing students interact.”
Ethan Abbott was one of the applicants selected to pursue his idea. Vishal Patal and Ranveer Kushwahz were also selected and created a project called Snap Job.
“From everybody we talked to it about, everybody loved it,” LeFevre said. “They loved seeing it and taking pictures on the patio and the plaza.”
In other business, the Executive Council discussed increasing their budget by two percent.
“If you guys can all remember back to the end of last year in April, we not only took the budget from last year and made cuts from the previous year, but we took a straight two percent cut across the board from all our budgets.” said USU/SA President Doug Fiefia.
Student Involvement and Leadership Executive Director Linda Zimmerman and Fiefia looked at the current enrollment numbers with office administrator Lynne Singleton to determine finances.
The reason the budget cuts happened last spring was the anticipated drop in enrollment.
“We thought we were going to have a bigger deficit because of the amount of students that didn’t come because of the missionary age change,” Fiefia said.
Fiefia said he feels comfortable increasing the budgets after looking at those numbers.
The council started the semester with their budgets at approximately $906,000. With the two percent increase, their budgets would total about $914,000.
Academic Senate Pro Tempore Matt Anderson asked what would be done with the money if they didn’t approve the increase.
“It would be flushed into quasi saving accounts,” Fiefia said. “We could have a say where that money goes and make our student events better.”
Public Relations and Marketing Director Casey Saxton said he thinks if the money was originally intended to be in the budgets, it should be there.
“There’s no reason for students to pay money for a savings account,” said Athletics and Campus Recreation VP Charley Riddle. “It should be used for student services.”
When presented with the idea, Anderson voiced his concerns about the Academic Senate. He said he wouldn’t be comfortable voting without talking to the group.
After a quick discussion, the council determined there would be no harm in tabling the idea until the academic senate discussed it. Unless they push it back longer, the council will vote on the increase in budgets Tuesday, Nov. 12.
Twitter: @daniellekmanley