New officers to face similar issues

By Kristen Parrish

When the new Associated Students officers take office after the April 27 election, it's likely that they'll face similar difficulties from this year, including a lack of student participation and the challenge to maintain visibility on campus.

AS President Annie Selak said that the student government should be prepared to grow and remain proactive in university life by keeping students updated on issues, like the new library and other construction projects.

"While AS has achieved our goals this year, these are ongoing issues that AS next year will have to face," she said.

The officers focused on goals like updating the student government's infastructure and becoming increasingly connected to students.

AS advisor Timothy Haskell said the constitutional election held this week was proposed in reaction to a lack of student participation in student government elections.

The new constitution still allows students to elect the student body president, vice president and senate chair, as well as five senators per class.

But rather than electing the executive cabinet, chief justice and programming representatives, these positions will instead be appointed.

"Our hope is that this will increase the level of students' desire to be involved with student government," Selak said.

Last year, a number of the positions were appointed because not enough students ran for office. Officials hope the constitution changes will eliminate the problem by appointing more officers.

"The reorganization of the system will allow AS to be more effective," Haskell said. "It will offer students a more direct way to contact officers."

About 74 students out of the school's nearly 5,000 undergraduates, however, voted in Tuesday's postponed election. [See related story, page 1.]

While Selak and Haskell believe the constitution will be a benefit, others are skeptical.

Freshman class president Brad Speers feels that the changes enacted Tuesday's election will "essentially remove the class officer's role."

Even before the constitutional amendment was suggested, Speers felt his position was limited bylaws, which are amendments that set rules about certain aspects of student government, like budgets.

At one point this year, Speers says he was reprimanded because he went over-budget on class t-shirts. In addition to internal reorganization, AS enacted new initiatives, like SafeCar Services, hope bracelets for tsunami relief and a state of the student surveys.

The surveys were said to get a significant amount of participation from students, receiving around 1,300 responses. The results will be revealed at the state of the student address, at a later time.

These surveys are sent out to the student body via e-mail and ask questions regarding student opinion regarding various issues. Those who participated in the survey were entered into a raffle to win prizes.

"Student participation is always a huge struggle," said Selak, "especially when trying to get students to attend senate meetings."

As an on-campus resident, junior Kate Trevelyan-Hall says that AS is very visible. "There are always fliers and notices around that reach out to students," she said. "While I am not really a participant, I think there would be a noticeable difference if AS didn't exist."

While on-campus students may have easy access to notices, some off-campus students feel that AS in not nearly visible enough.

"I don't really feel that AS is visible. Aside from e-mails, there aren't many notices about how to have your voice heard," said junior Courtney Branich.

Branich also said that while the surveys were a good idea, "only small samples of students are represented. For me, a lot of times I have so much e-mail that I just delete those types of messages."

But Speers doesn't buy it.

"I want to say AS is doing a good job but I can't. While there are e-mails, flyers, posters and vocal students who spread the word, it's just not engaging enough. They're an excuse for AS to say they tried."

While trying to get students to participate, this year's AS encountered some internal conflict amongst representatives. While Selak maintains that the group worked well overall, she said that there were a few flare-ups.

"Mostly I saw conflicts as a result of people being passionate about reaching the goals that we were striving for," Selak said.

She also mentioned that this year's group stood apart from past years in that each branch, as well as individual officers, had a better idea of what they were aiming to accomplish.

With AS elections approaching, Selak offered advice to future student government representatives. "In a high-profile leadership position, you realize you have to make changes but you face resistance," she said.

* Contact Kristen Parrish at (408) 554-4546 or kparrish@scu.edu.