Three weeks ago, Editor-in-Chief of The Criterion Alec Williams wrote an opinion piece on Associated Student Government’s progress thus far in the year. Overall, the opinion piece gave ASG a C-, pointing out the lack of social media and online presence and an uninvolved ASG staff.
While ASG President Ben Linzey agreed with the grade, he would prefer it be a little nicer.
“The part that I didn’t agree with is the negative aspect of it, but I mean that’s the way you give criticism, so I honestly thought it was pretty accurate as to what we can improve on. I would give ourselves a C. I think it’s a good place to be for where we’re at right now in terms of coming off of last year. But I think it’s a fair analysis of how we’re doing as a group,” Linzey said.
ASG has had 10 meetings in the 10 weeks since school started, and has passed a total of 17 bills as of Wednesday, Nov. 1, most of which are budgetary bills. In that time frame, they have spent approximately $28,000.
According to Linzey, at this point last year ASG had only passed approximately 8 bills.
ASG filled their last position Wednesday, Nov. 1 for a full floor of 26 senators. Executive positions have also been filled at this time. Currently, the only position that needs to be filled is a justice position.
“It’s by far the most engaged I’ve seen our senate in the three years that I’ve been a part of the group. The best way to see it is that no one leaves meetings early. Everyone stays for the full meeting. They actually engage in the discussions,” Linzey said. “We’ve had split votes this year, which is something I’ve never seen in the past. So I do think they are working really hard to be engaged and again that’s all credit to the senators for having that desire to be involved.”
In terms of social media presence, Linzey wants to improve on the content ASG puts on social media. His goal is to inform students on how local, national and state politics can affect them through ASG’s social media platforms.
“We haven’t shown anything similar to that yet on social media and I think that’s definitely the direction we want to go with it,” Linzey said.
As of right now, the ASG website only allows contact information to President Ben Linzey and Vice President Gabby Gile. According to Linzey, one of their goals is to update website information in order for students to have access to executive and senator information.
The updated website will allegedly include the names of each executive and senator, with a list of emails to contact them and a bio for each. Hired to help with the website is Chrystina Meador, who has access to the cascade system, the school website.
“I think the largest aspect that I hope to get out of the year is just more engagement from the students. But I think the biggest thing I want to see is just individuals on campus caring a lot more about what we do because that’s going to improve the drive our leaders have in our group to be successful,” Linzey said. “More campus engagement and more interest from the students, I think is my biggest goal now, that we’ve started this year.”
