McChesney spends summer rubbing elbows with other student leaders

    Newly-elected ASUSU President Peter McChesney’s summer wasn’t spent sitting around his new office.

    USU’s first Aussie student body president was chosen as chair of the Utah Student Association this summer, an organization that represents all students of public higher education in Utah. It is comprised of student body presidents from public universities and colleges around the state.

    This position gives McChesney another level of influence on a statewide plane. Some initiatives he has been working on with the USA include making textbooks tax-free and removing Utah’s spending cap on higher education.

    “(The spending cap’s) a bit more of a challenging one, though,” McChesney said, “because the state of Utah, as far as the Legislature goes, may not be willing to remove the cap. Right now the issue is more that the prevention is better than the cure. If we remove the cap now it will prevent higher education from being harmed in the future. We’ll need to decide our stance on that, whether the cap needs to be removed or if it’s OK for this year.”

    McChesney is also responsible for selecting a new executive director of the USA, a position responsible for the daily operations of the organization. Until he finishes interviewing applicants and selects a new director, that duty will fill much of the time he devotes to the USA.

    Not only has McChesney continued his rise in student government; he traveled to Israel this summer with Project Interchange, a highly selective program for student body presidents.

    As a participant in the program, McChesney heard presentations from both Israeli and Palestinian sources and learned first-hand about the conflict in that part of the world. McChesney was one of 11 student body presidents to attend. Both of the last two ASUSU presidents, Noah Riley and Quinn Millet, were participants in the program.

-elizabeth.lawyer@aggiemail.usu.edu