An overview of USUSA elections statewide
Utah State University provides leadership opportunities all students can get involved in, whether on or off campus. With 30 locations, USU spans Utah’s nearly 85,000 square miles, meaning that not all leadership is in Logan.
USUSA elections are set to take place for the Executive Leadership Board on Feb. 28 and 29. The ELB includes the student body president, student advocate vice president and executive vice president. Academic Senate and region elections will follow on March 4 and 5.
The Academic Senate contains a senator from each respective college and a senator for graduate students. The group meets under the USUSA executive vice president, a position currently held by Aly Cinq-Mars, to discuss the needs of students within each college.
“Our Academic Senate also represents statewide students, so our college senators are statewide positions,” said USUSA President Abraham Rodriguez.
Statewide offices represent any students not on the Logan campus. Each region elects a vice president to sit on the Statewide Campuses Executive Council. The positions are elected based on the following divisions: Blanding, Brigham, Eastern, Moab, Tooele, Southwest, Uintah Basin and Wasatch. The council meets with the ELB bi-monthly.
“Our statewide executive council serves as the overarching student government body, providing representation advocates for students in our 30 campuses and centers across the state,” Rodriguez said.
Aside from the vice president, each region also has at least one other representative. Smaller campuses such as USU Blanding have a vice president and only one representative, but larger campuses like USU Eastern have an entire board with a student advocate, events director, traditions event coordinators and more.
“We have a lot of non-traditional students,” said Madysen Probst, the chief of staff at USU Eastern. “It’s really important to include them, especially because some of them are coming back to school and they’ve never received the college experience.”
Non-traditional students include parents and older students.
Statewide students can get involved by running for a position on the Statewide Campuses Executive Council or the ELB. Although historically all ELB members have been Logan campus-based, nothing prevents a statewide student from running.
“USU has about 20,000 students and about 17,000 on the Logan campus,” said Rodriguez. “If we’re going to be a student government, we need to advocate for all students.”
With the majority of students at regional campuses being off-campus or online, voter turnout is less. For every 10 votes in the Logan elections, there is only one vote in statewide elections.
Current USUSA student advocate vice president Tyson Packer explained this is the biggest difference between Logan and statewide elections. He also explained the need for representation.
“There are a lot of different campuses around the state and each one has its own specific needs. What USU Eastern might need is different than what USU Moab might need, having different representatives over each region helps each region get the representation they want,” Packer wrote in an email to The Utah Statesman.
There are 56 students declared to run for office in the upcoming election season, with five of them running for student body president, and nine running for statewide offices.