Students met Friday for the first time this semester to discuss how to conduct the approval process for the first constitution at ASU East, which is also the next step toward a new student government.
Four students - professional golf management junior Jeremy Art, graduate student Missy Debnar, human health studies student Will James II and flight school student Corey Morrison - attended, along with two faculty advisers: Mike Mader, director of student activities/campus union, and Gary McGrath, dean of student affairs, both of who have supervised the process from the beginning.
The goals of the meeting were to propose timelines and options for when and how to carry out the voting for the new constitution to ensure maximum student participation at the east campus.
The students agreed to hold an open meeting every Friday at 9 a.m. in the Campus Union building to brainstorm and make decisions on how the voting should be done, where it will be done, when it will be done and who will do it.
"Any and all students are strongly encouraged to attend and participate in this process; this is not a closed meeting," Art said.
The students are considering holding an approval vote at the end of October and setting up tables at various locations. They are also contemplating an electronic voting process but have not done any in-depth research yet.
According to Mader, there is no minimum number of students required to participate in the voting, but all present at the meeting agreed to try to get as many students involved as possible.
Art and Debnar, along with at least 10 others, were dedicated to organizing and creating a constitution since October. ASU President Michael Crow and East Provost Chuck Backus later approved it.
"The administration has been very supportive and attended all the meetings last year," Art said.
"We left it up to the students to do their thing," Mader said, "and we are here to supervise and be of assistance once [student government] is up and running.
"[Creating a student government] has to be done. The sooner the better, because the university is growing 30 percent a year, and this is a very critical year for us," Art said.
Engineering junior Jonathan Sower said, "Maybe they [the student government] will keep this campus organized and in line." He said he was also considering being active in the future government.
The proposed goal was to have a student government elected by the end of the spring semester, but the first step was getting approved as soon as possible, Art said.
Reach the reporter at camardella@asu.edu.
