Despite allegations of misspent funds and the resignation of five ASU board members from ASA, some UA student leaders have announced their support of ASA and said they are focused on moving forward.
Following the recent controversy with Arizona Student Association, student leaders have prioritized registering students to vote, as well as maintaining communication with students about the organization.
“At the end of the day, it’s all of the students that this affects,” said Associated Students of the University of Arizona President Katy Murray. “I want to make sure our students have accurate information, and it’s up to them to make their decision because I am just supposed to be our voice and tell people what our students want.”
Murray said she plans to email the UA student body, detailing what ASA is, the issues student money has gone to, what has been done for students since the creation of the organization, as well as an explanation of recent controversy.
Along with communicating with students, Murray has spoken with ASUA elected officials, the president of the Graduate and Professional Student Council and administrators about the ASA controversy.
Other student leaders have put their support behind ASA and are encouraging students to stand together.
“What binds us as a group of students is more than what divides us,” said GPSC President Zachary Brooks. “We’re going to have disagreements, but we can probably do a lot more together as a group of students, as a family, as a group of elected representatives, than we can separately.”
Murray said she has maintained communication with the Arizona State University Tempe undergraduate student government president and has also kept in contact with Northern Arizona University’s student leaders regarding ASA issues. However, she said there have been some issues trying to work with ASU student leaders to restructure the organization.
“My whole deal was that at the first sight of conflict. you don’t even want to talk about trying to fix an organization,” Murray said. “I have really tried to say, ‘Let’s make this work,’ but it’s really hard when you have a side that doesn’t seem like they want to try to get through the conflict and talk about it.”
Some ASA directors have put conflict aside as they focus their attention on registering students to vote before voter registration ends Tuesday.
“My big focus this week has been pushing this vote campaign, and my secondary focus has been the conflict,” said Jordan King, ASA vice chairman of the board of directors and chairman of internal affairs, “because if I spend all this time focusing on the conflict I’m not helping the students of Arizona.”
Moving forward, some student leaders stress their support for the organization and what it stands for.
“I really do support ASA because this is the only organization in the state of Arizona that gives every single Arizona student a voice,” said Murray. “I will stand by that to the end.”
