Meet the Candidates: Student Advocate Vice President
Shai Spangler
My name is Shai Spangler, and I’m running for the position of Student Advocate Vice President. I’m from West Point, Utah, right next to Syracuse. My major is law and constitutional studies, and I have certificates in leadership and diplomacy and global peacebuilding, and I am a sophomore.
In your words, what is the role of the Student Advocate?
The Student Advocate is entirely a student-centered position. It’s very much a service leadership position and one where students should always be at the center of it. It’s all about advocating, but not the advocacy that’s like, “Tell me, and I’ll go tell somebody else.” It’s, “Here’s the microphone. What resources can I get to support you and get you where you want to be?”
How will you advocate for USU’s 30,000 different students?
I think it’s really important to have open and collaborative methods of communication with all of the different vice presidents across Utah, making sure that their students are heard, making sure that they are being adequately represented at the federal level when we are going and lobbying for changes there, as well as at the university level, making sure that the changes that we are making here also impact them in a fair and equitable way.
If you were President Mortensen for a day, what would you spend the day doing and why?
I would, for sure, have to sign an email off lowercase “brad’.” That’s the only thing I can think of. I would also probably go through the course catalog and see which one has the most interesting class, and then I would go and sit in there and then write up an email and sign it “best regards, lowercase b.r.a.d.”
Colin Hastings
In your words, what is the role of the Student Advocate?
The Student Advocate position is kind of a background one. We work a lot with legislation. We work a lot with MyVoices, the student complaint system. We work a lot with our judicial system and elections here. It doesn’t have quite the glitz or glamor of events or the title of president, but it’s one that’s purely about the students and doing the hard work so that they don’t have to
How will you advocate for USU’s 30,000 different students?
I want to advocate for 30,000 students of USU through a three-pronged approach. First, we need to remember statewide. About half of our students are statewide or online, and we need to make sure that they’re in any conversation we’re having about students, whether they be non-traditional or up here in Logan. Second, we need to continue expanding the MyVoice program. We’re up 30% in MyVoices this year over last year, which I’m very proud of, and something we need to continue. Third, we need to change our forms of communication and our channels that we’re reaching out to students with. Any student can ignore an email, but if we’re going to classes and telling them things that they need to know, that’s a completely different thing and way more likely to be effective.
If you were President Mortensen for a day, what would you spend the day doing?
If I were President Mortensen for a day, the very first thing I would do is use the bidet. That is a major bucket list item for me. The second thing I’d do, whether we need to burn it down or find different funding — we need to get a new TSC. This one is not student-focused. It has way too many offices in it compared to other universities’ student centers. We need somewhere that students can go and relax and not worry about the stresses of being a student for a day.