Fiefia calls special election for ASUSU constitution changes
After weeks of debate about altering the ASUSU constitution, the Executive Council finalized their changes, and a special election is being held Oct. 22-23.
The election will be held next week for students to vote primarily on name changes and grammatical adjustments. Officers passed the changes through a second reading Tuesday during their regular public meeting.
A notable change includes renaming Associated Students of Utah State University to the Utah State University Student Association.
President Doug Fiefia proposed the idea of changing ASUSU to USU/SA at the beginning of the semester. His initial concerns came from this summer when he attended student government conferences.
Fiefia said students thought he was from Arizona State when he said ASUSU.
The officers agreed the student government needed a new brand. They want students to know everyone attending USU is a part of the student association.
Organizations and Campus Diversity VP Sonina Hernandez worried students would associate the abbreviation USUSA with something related to the U.S. government. To avoid the problem, the abbreviation was changed to USU/SA, or USU Student Association.
Public Relations Director Casey Saxton recently proposed his title needed to be changed. The Executive and Academic Councils approved his changed title of Public Relations and Marketing director.
Saxton said the main purpose was to better define his job. He also wants the position to appeal to a broader group of students when applications are being accepted in April.
The third name change adds “academic” to Matt Anderson’s title of Senate Pro Tempore. Anderson said Academic Senate Pro Tempore better describes what he does in Executive Council – representing the academic senate.
The officers passed the changes to the constitution unanimously.
The council also wanted a logo made specifically for the special election to show students what the name would look like if they approved the change of ASUSU to USU/SA. The logo is not official and needs to be approved by USU’s Public Relations department.
Students can vote at vote.usu.edu, where the revised version of the ASUSU constitution is also available. They can also vote at the info booth on the first floor of the Taggart Student Center. Executive officers will be present to answer questions.
Twitter: @daniellekmanley
MYVOICE
-myvoice training
will parking concerns really be read or heard? the head parking guy is so hard to get a hold of, how would we know if he really cares about student concerns? the responses are supposed to be sent to theresa.
INFO BOOTH HOURS
MEALS
-daryn tried to go but her meal card wouldn’t work.
COMMON HOUR
-first 200 people get a scottsman dog. start around 12:30. bobby mcmullen.
UNDECLARED STUDENTS
-27%, nearly 4000 students.
COUNCIL UPDATES
-mayoral debate held oct. 30 during common hour in the conference center.
-daryn/parking – bill is tabled until they meet again in december. doing a survey. want to make the red lot where ag building used to be student parking after 5, make XXXX parking lot close at 11.
-fee board thursday at 7 a.m.
-free ipad for student who logged most hours in ags – where does the money come from?
-casey – be careful what you say in these meetings, they’re public. you never know when you’re going to have a quote pulled out.
NEW BUSINESS
-SONINA: splitting of organizations and campus diversity VP position
-they’re different
-impossible to do both
-clubs are unorganized, uninvolved, inactive, etc.
-matt is cosponsor
-history (meant to create order and understanding
-only con mentioned was having it passed in the constitution – IT WOULD COST MORE MONEY TO ADD ANOTHER OFFICER! SCHOLARSHIPS, PARKING PASS, ETC.
-we currently do not have any religoius council on campus”
-disabled, LIFE part of diversity but not represented
-“there’s not detail no description what clubs are meant to do or what the purpose of having clubs on campus are.
-duties? presented mock charter (plan two club fairs, meet one on one)
-121 clubs showed up to cisco meeting, last year only 40 would show up.
-letter from jeff, cisco guy. cisco isn’t coming close to meeting its main goal. we must change how clubs and orgs are ran. they need someone to represent them in ec (what about the cisco jeff guy???)
-DOUG, 3 MAIN POINTS?
sonina – meeting with clubs, we’ve come across that every it’s inconsistent, they find cisco to be a waste of time. there’s no order, organization. making campus life better. what is a purpose of joining a club, good portion of them are interesting but it doens’t get them anywhere. the way that we’ve handled things, not supporting their clubs, it tends to die out.
brittney – financial implications?
sonina – looke dinto few different things. this would be a paid stipend. in 2010 there was a bill that gave my budget 6000 more. we took that away. we could bring it back and that’s what i would do for the new position. mariana used a little less than 6000 just for clubs and orgs. year before that they used a little over 8000. i would propose it would start with the 6000 because we don’t have a lot of clubs coming in a requestiong money.
daryn – what specific duties? that’s cisco should be doing now.
sonina – the idea would be to eliminate the directors. currently the way our council is set up, director tresurer secretary for cisco. director secretary pr for diversity.
kevin – ????
soinina – this would go into consitutions, it wouldn’t be until the following academic year.
kevin – make a difference?
sonina – the whole purpose of this is to be more personal with the student body. cisco hasn’t been funcitoning as
it’s been run for the past couple of years.
byu has charity week, we require clubs to do a service project.
it betters the experience of clubs here on campus rather than having them being at a meeting once a month
thomas – what happens when the list is done?
sonina – every year the club has to renew. that list is new.
thomas – instead of new position, how about fix your charter to add specific things, more detailed and clear. is it possible to add nontraditional or religious board director.
sonina – it’s just added more work when there’s already things being neglected on the charter. i don’t see the purpose of addiing more work when things already aren’t getting done.
thomas – instead of creating a brand new position, can we use org sync as an alternative? every other university has done it.
sonina – two programs we looked at that other universities have are org sync and XXXX. it would be cheaper to pay a position and have stipends than to pay for org sync.
charley – scholarship and stipend? 6600?
sonina – in a sense the money is there we just have to request it. it’s not going to charge students more fees if that’s anyone’s concerns.
charley – so essentially cutting budgets to fund a new budget?
linda – the problem about going into that rainy day fund, it would be year after year. those are my concerns about increasing your budget or cutting from other programs.
this is the first year we’re on budget with scholarships because we cut 3 positions down from 2.
sonina – my director’s purpose
charley – my only concern is the budget. what’s the current application process?
sonina –
charley – current clubs have to go through this every eyar?
sonina – yes. cisco manual requires clubs to have 5 members.
casey – last year i served on diversity council with sonina. it was a mess. the time it takes to update club info is long, monotonous. the set up now is much better than what it was, seperate cisco board and diversity board.
the budget allocated for academic senate pres….
brittney – is there some way that we can redesign it without creating a new vp? compensating director?
sonina – this is the first year that we’ve had to pay director, $300/semester. another position we’ve thought about is sticking diversity under student advocate. my concerns is that it’s going to be expanding. it used to be under student advocate. they took that out.
brittney – let’s maybe think a little bit more about compensating the directors. 300 is cool but we get it. you could compensate them a little more so they
sonina – presidents in academic senate are paid $300. concerns with service center. they have several director that aren’t paid.
brittney – you’re comparing apples and oranges.
sonina – it comes direclty out of my budget. if we raise it $1000 a semester…..that could BRING a speaker or programmer.
brittney – could we increase your budget?
sonina – we’ve had 10,000, 12,000 left over in diversity budget.
matt – yesterday in academic senate, sonina presented. the concern was brought up is that we haven’t had enough time for directors to carry out their duties. delegation. they talked about possibly increasing the stipend or scholarhsip for those individuals as well.
doug – how do you feel personally as the cosponser of this bill?
matt – i think it’s a realy really good idea. i like it. it can. now that the directors are underneath the position, i like to see them work a little bit more. but at the same time you don’t know if the directors are going to be as good as they’ve been this year. i’m leaning more towards in favor of it as an individual. but as a representative of the academic senate, the majority voted against it, so i’ll be voting against it.
daryn – it’d be nice to hand pick them. we need to give them a little bit more time in a trial run. i think increasing their stipend would be great. we’ve only been in school for what two months? granted they’ve probably been wokring over the summer. i am opposed to this bill for that reason.
THIS BILL ACT AS A FIRST AND SECOND READING.
thomas – i hope whatever the result is, there’s not hard feelings in any way shape or form.
sonina – this isn’t a new idea, this has been floating around for the past 5 years no one has pushed it. we’ve had directors before, it just hasn’t been official and things haven’t gotten done.
VOTE TO APPROVE ECB 2014-01
-in favor? NONE!
-nay – everyone
CASEY
ECB 2014-02…
expand title of public relations director to public relations and marketing director. daryn is sponsor, casey is cosponsor.
pros – more accurately describe. appeal to a larger group of students interested in applying for position.
cons – name will be longer. name changed on all official documents.
daryn – i am in support of this. this doens’t just do public relations, it does market.
matt – eveyrone on academic senate voted in favor of this as well.
brittney – i am in support of this. marketing and public relations are two seperate entities.
PASSED AS FIRST AND SECOND READING
VOTE ON APPROVAL
no one voted against it.
CONStITUTION READING
USU/SA name change
added “academic” to senate pro tempe (academic senate pro tempe)
public relations and marketing director
NOTE – if the distance campuses have representative why aren’t they skyped into the meeting? do they have a section on myvoice?
SECOND READING OF CONSTITUTION PASSED UNANIMOUSLY
DOUG – I HEREBY CALL SPECIAL ELECTION THAT WILL BE HELD NEXT TUESDAY AND WEDNESDAY, 22 AND 23. PASS AROUND SHEET TO SIGN UP FOR INFO BOOTH.
vote.usu.edu
APPOINT NANCOUN AS STUDENT HEARING BOARD CHAIR – doug. approved unanimously.
LOGO
we still need pr’s approval, but i need your approval. i just want to make sure this is okay.
charley – it’s petty but i still hate the tiger stripes on the bull. it’s so petty of me. it’s just my small petty opinion and it will probably change in 20 minutes.
thomas – i really like this. good job.
doug – this is not something we need to vote on, i’d just like a vote of approval.
matt – i just have one problem. i just want the academic senate to see it because i won’t vote for them. can we send out an email?
doug – we’ll take it to the meeting on monday.
passed, matt took extension.