ASUA plans to stay as engaged as possible with the UA student body for spring 2015.
“I’m very proud of our organization this year — across the board,” said Issac Ortega, president of the Associated Students of the University of Arizona. This semester, ASUA launched two major campaigns: “Our Voice, Our Vote,” and “It’s On US”.
The “Our Voice, Our Vote” campaign was an effort to encourage the student body to participate in the midterm elections.
The “It’s On Us” campaign was also launched to promote the awareness of sexual assault at the UA and is a nationwide campaign part of a collaborative effort introduced by President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and the White House in September.
While the UA campaign had a successful “day of action” in November, Ortega said that ASUA hopes to continue the campaign into the spring semester and work specifically with Residence Life to bring more awareness to on-campus living.
“A great portion of our student body lives in close [quarters] with each other [and] we want to make sure students are aware of what ‘It’s On Us’ has to offer,” Ortega said.
Part of the spring semester for ASUA includes elections for the upcoming year.
“We want to make elections more accessible so we can get all different kinds of students through our doors to be an elected leader,” Ortega said. “I really want to encourage every single student who has ever thought about taking a leadership role on campus to pick up a packet.”
ASUA elected over 300 student leaders this year, Ortega said, which is the most that the UA has ever seen.
“I want to make sure our student government stays engaged,” Ortega said. “A lot of times, people are excited to see who the next team to lead our student government will be and a consequence of that can sometimes be disengagement.”
The required amount of student signatures when running for an ASUA position has changed this year from 250 to 150, Ortega said, to hopefully make it more accessible for students.
“We’re very proud of that,” Ortega said. “We just have to make sure everyone stays [in] high gear.”
Jordan Allison, executive vice president of ASUA, said that this semester was amazing for ASUA.
“Our student body senate has accomplished some awesome stuff and will continue working through winter break to get all their platforms accomplished,” Allison said.
Allison is also in charge of all clubs and organizations on campus and says she plans to make sure that club engagement continues through the spring.
Club registration, both for recognition and renewal, will occur twice during the spring, Allison said. She added that there will be a club fair during the first few weeks of the spring semester.
The Reverse Career Fair, a collaborative effort between ASUA and Career Services, will also take place on campus in the spring with 20 student organizations that were chosen for their professional preparation, leadership and community service. The fair will host different employers and recruiters, and instead of each employer having a table to visit, each organization or club will have a table and the recruiters will have a chance to visit them.
“New things were started, old things continued and there were a lot of great learning experiences,” Allison said. “It was an all-around great semester.”
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