With the arrival of newly elected representatives, Undergraduate Student Government Downtown is turning on its head.
USGD President Corina Tapscott, Vice President of Services Katherine Hofland and Vice President of Policy Ryan Boyd will be sworn in on May 1, bringing with them new initiatives to transform the organization as well as its relationship with students on the campus.
The group split its platform into three major points: increasing student engagement, fighting for equitable resources and empowering student organizations.
Through those points, Tapscott said they hope to work on a closer basis with students and organizations and lay a ground work for which they can build in the future.
At its core, the plan consists of what Tapscott is focusing on — student outreach.
Looking back on the development of USGD and the still relatively new Downtown campus, they said they found a sort of detachment between students and the government.
“We want all of our decisions backed by student opinion," Tapscott said. "We are students. We are able to say that from our perspective, ‘Students might want this,’ but we want to be engaging students constantly in our decision."
This past year they implemented a plan called “Slice for Advice” in which USGD members stood out in the heart of the campus and “traded” students a piece of pizza for a piece of advice or a concern they have.
Tapscott said they hope to take steps like that and implement them on a larger scale to ensure that they focus on issues and initiatives that students care about.
They also intend to make members more accessible to students, Boyd explaining that their way of thinking always revolved around students coming to them, but now they’re focusing on going to the students.
Their plan then branches off into two directions, still directly tied to the idea of student outreach.
Hofland, current President of the downtown-based club, I Always Get Consent!, said she decided it was important to focus in on student organizations.
“I understand that there are many barriers that come through USGD, through administration, that I want to help break down so they can get their message out and they can actually do things,” Holland said. “I think a lot of those conversations go on within organizations in their meetings.”
She said she intends to engrain herself more within clubs on the campus to assess their actual needs and ensure they have necessary resources.
While Tapscott and Holland focus on interacting with students, Boyd said he plans to embody the more systematic part of their plan, essentially taking those issues they discussed with students in their outreach and creating solutions.
His platform focuses on inter-government work and making the USGD more organized as well as “diplomatic.” He essentially represents the campus’ voice in meetings regarding issues being discussed by organizations such as Arizona Board of Regents.
Boyd believes that the awakening that something had to be done in regards to USGD’s relationship with students came after their planned march to the Arizona Capitol to protest Gov. Doug Ducey’s budget cuts universities.
“When we did the march all the way from downtown to the Capitol. … We had around 60 people who showed up, but the thing is there were 1,200 people that the website reported (would go), about 20,000 are actually enrolled here. The fact that such small number became such a big thing that we said that was a huge problem,” said Boyd.
Tapscott, Hofland and Boyd, however, intend to execute those changes in strategy in an attempt to make the organization's relationship with students a more of a push-and-pull effort.
“We want them to see us as students, but as students that are hired to be their advocates, that are hired to be their voice in all areas of the University and downtown,” Tapscott said.
Reach the reporter at megan.janetsky@asu.edu or follow @meganjanetsky on Twitter.
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