Almost a month into the semester, ASU’s five student governments still have unfilled positions for senators and other student representatives.
At the beginning of the semester, the graduate student government needed to fill 19 senate seats. West campus needed six, Downtown campus needed four and Tempe campus needed five.
The Undergraduate Student Government on the Tempe campus still needs four senators, the graduate student government needs two seats filled, and both West and Downtown need one.
The Polytechnic campus government started the year with a full senate. However, it is still looking to fill other positions, including seats in the supreme court, said Dominick Hernandez, president of the Polytechnic government.
Each government is working to make itself more visible and to encourage students to get involved and run for senate positions, according to student government leaders.
West campus student government President Daniel Hatch said students sometimes don’t realize the power they can have as members of student government.
“It’s hard to imagine that a 20-year-old student can affect change across the state,” he said.
Tempe
There are currently four open senate seats on the Tempe campus No students ran for the two University College seats, and that makes them hard to fill, said James Seidman, president of the Tempe campus senate.
Some of the other seats on the Tempe campus opened up after several students resigned from their senate seats for reasons that vary, said James Baumer, the student government chief of staff for the Tempe campus.
It’s not uncommon for senate seats to open for applications in the fall, Seidman said.
He said he hoped to appoint senators by the end of October.
In the event a seat is left open in the fall, the college councils on the Tempe campus have four weeks to appoint someone to fill those senate seats. If the seats are not filled, then the senate president appoints applicants that the senate must ratify, Baumer said
Polytechnic
The Polytechnic campus student government used to designate two senate seats for each college on campus.
After the colleges were reorganized due to budget cuts last year, the student government dropped the senate seat designations. The seats are now open to anyone who takes a class at the Polytechnic campus, Hernandez said.
Even if there are many senators from the same college, Hernandez said he assigns them a certain school or segment of the population to represent when necessary.
The Polytechnic campus student government is still looking for three supreme court members, an executive board assistant and six student fee allocation board members responsible for distributing funds to student clubs, Hernandez said.
Student government is also looking for two University technology board representatives to work with the University Technology Office, he said.
Hernandez said he is creating new student liaison positions in the student government to make sure every part of the student population is represented and to help get students engaged.
There are currently an undetermined number of student liaison positions because Hernandez said he would like to involve as many people as possible.
“I’m trying to cultivate leadership,” Hernandez said.
Graduate
The graduate student government was reorganized last year to include students from every campus, said Kelley Stewart, president of the graduate student government.
The number of seats increased to include colleges at the Polytechnic, West and Downtown campuses, Stewart said.
New members were appointed to the seats through an application process and there are only two graduate seats left, one for the nursing college and one for the journalism school, she said.
This year Stewart said she is working to spread awareness about the socials planned at every campus throughout the semester and the $300,000 available to individual graduate student research projects.
“We want to take what we do right now and roll it out to the other campuses,” Stewart said.
There are currently two senate seats still open.
West
The West campus started the year with six empty seats, and five have been filled so far, Hatch said.
Hatch said he hoped to have the senate seat filled by Friday.
Downtown
The Downtown campus has filled all of the senate seats left open after the last semester. Only a freshman senate seat remains to be filled, said Sabrina Banegas, a senator from the Downtown campus.
Reach the reporter at mary.shinn@asu.edu
