The ASUA Senate joined with GPSC and Faculty Senate to continue the merger of the University Activities Board with its own programming board during their meeting on Wednesday.
Campus-wide elections to ramp up student voting
The election dates for the Associated Students of the University of Arizona were moved from earlier in the year to join with the Graduate and Professional Student Council and the Faculty Senate to increase student voting and make marketing easier.
“”That would create this kind of elections atmosphere for that week,”” said Michael Colletti, ASUA elections commissioner.
The ASUA Senate brought about a friendly amendment to change the elections date from the original “”February 30″” in Colletti’s memo, to February 28.
“”Just to give you guys a little background on this, this started as a conversation two years ago … Under President Fritze, it’s starting to become a reality,”” Colletti said.
The senate is also extending the length of its elections from two days to three to join with the weeklong elections that the other two groups will hold.
ASUA President Emily Fritze also said those chosen in March’s elections should market early for those to serve in their cabinets.
Fritze added: “”If (ASUA) wants a more diverse group, since we have all those available, we need to have more time to market those positions.””
Programming board to take shape of ZonaZoo
The new events committee is a combination of the University Activities Board and the programming board, Fritze said. She also said the merger took care to “”preserve some of the traditions of the board,”” while also helping the board “”transition into ASUA and some of the way that we do things.””
The name and structure could still change, but Fritze said it would take a structural shape of the highly successful ZonaZoo, which will have an executive director and several other directors under them to handle specific events.
The University Activities Board is pushing for hiring for the group to begin in the next couple of weeks in order to be able to start planning events for next year.
The hiring process will mirror Family Weekend hiring, according to Fritze.
“”Because they are such a comprehensive programming board and they do so many small events, I didn’t think that that should be the reason why this didn’t happen honestly,”” Fritze said.
‘Diamonds in the Sky,’ new gun forum, ‘ASUA Reserves’
The ASUA Senate decided not to hold this year’s Diamonds in the Sky Fashion Show for the Diamond Children’s Medical Center, “”with (Sen.) Taylor (Bilby)’s big project going on,”” referring to Bilby’s Tanzbödeli project, an April 1 arts and culture festival, according to Sen. Courtney Campbell.
Sen. Scott Rising also said that ASUA would try and hold another gun forum to address pending gun legislation. Fritze encouraged the senate to take a stance on it.
“”We (should) hold another forum to get student input on the issue (and) … to make sure we are staying relevant in the conversation among the state,”” Rising said.
Sen. Dominick San Angelo also mentioned the creation of an “”ASUA reserves”” to act as a body of volunteers of those who want to be involved, but not in an elected position.
