A new UA Facebook page looks to help involve the general student body in student government.
The UA Listens page was created by Associated Students of the University of Arizona Sen. Logan Bilby to give students an easy way to voice their opinions and ideas for the campus.
“This is an idea I’ve actually been thinking about for quite some time now, but until the whole format of the UA Compliments, UA Confessions came about I didn’t really know how to make it so students would see it all the time,” said Bilby, a marketing and business management junior.
After the success of pages like U of A Confessions and UA Compliments, Bilby and Grant Suman, a pre-business sophomore and ASUA senatorial candidate, decided to create a page in the same vein to poll students on topics and allow ASUA to get a better understanding of what is important to the student body.
The page is set up so that anyone can fill out a Survey Monkey survey and anonymously submit it. Bilby then reads through the submitted petitions and posts them on the page for the public to read.
“I think it’s a pretty good idea because everyone’s always connected to Facebook and … not many people want to go out and vote,” said Andres Thimgan, a film and television junior. “It’s just a more convenient way for people to spread the word, especially for kids, since they’re always busy and they don’t want to really get out and do stuff.”
Currently, the ASUA Senate has pledged that if a petition receives more than 100 likes on the page, senators will look into the idea and try to make it happen. The goal is to look for ideas that are somewhat realistic, according to Bilby.
One of the petitions posted on the page has already reached the goal of 100 likes. The petition advocates for UA undergraduate students’ tuition rates to be “locked” their freshman year, so that students pay the same amount each year of school, regardless of tuition increases.
This petition currently has 115 likes, and Bilby has posted on the page, telling students that the senate will look into the issue and work to make it a reality in the near future.
“We might not be able to accomplish exactly that in our term here but maybe inspire someone else, a future senator or future exec[utive] member to pursue that,” Bilby said. “At the very least, we are talking about that; we are talking about what students want, what students need.”
UA Listens was created on Feb. 22 and already has 241 likes and 42 petitions posted.
“I liked a lot of the petitions because those are things that I would love to see happen on this campus and things that other students are clearly passionate about,” said Elena Gold, a philosophy freshman and current senatorial candidate. “I think that’s really important, to be able to hear the student voice and to be able to take that to the administration.”
The ASUA Senate said it hopes that this page will spread through the UA community and grow in popularity.
“It’s definitely going to be one of my main priorities, but as a senate I think it should be our entire senate page,” Suman said, “to try and make it a unified senate platform.”
