Change was a big focus of last Thursday’s Associated Students Organization as the group continued talks to change its mission statement and also as senators discuss trying to be a more coherent group.
“It is important that senators are as collective, cohesive, fresh and original as possible,” Jameel Younis, senator of business, said.
Younis called for a change to the way the senators operate. He said that senators need to take the position more seriously.
“It has been a problem with the senate forever, until recently Senate was seen as a relatively easy ASO position,” Younis said. “I tailored my entire schedule to devote to student government.”
He said that senators need to go to their prospective division classes and introduce themselves to the students.
He called for senators to try and be more outgoing so they can arrive at ASO meetings with information that students want to be informed about.
“We want students to understand we work for them, the students just need to get to know us,” Younis said.
By acting as a more cohesive group Younis said that it would set a standard for future students who want to be part of ASO.
“I wanted to be a part of student government with the hope that I make some changes so that the next kid doesn’t get turned off to ASO,” Younis said.
As senators discussed ways to try and create more cohesiveness, ASO members continued talks about changing the ASO mission statement.
“When we met during the summer I brought up that the mission statement is eight to nine years old , that stimulated them to want to change it,” Harold Tyler, director of student development, said.
Among some of the concerns was that the mission statement seemed broad in scope as to what student representatives do; so a committee was formed this past summer spear headed by Senator of fine arts, Lesa Brown.
“We felt the older statement was very vague about what our objectives are and seemed very general and obsolete, we wanted a new statement that was modern and that specified our jobs more so students know what our objectives are,” Brown said.
Brown stated there were some challenges besides what she cheekily described as grammatical errors on the new mission statement, the challenge lies in trying to get all of the members input on what the new mission statement should say.
“All of us have different ideas and we are trying to get everything we believe in, in the (mission statement),” Brown said.
After some discussion and debate ASO decided to table the mission statement till the next meeting. As well as ASO is continuing to build on their goal of making themselves more well known around campus.
“We have lots of activities to talk about in Senate, but it seems like we don’t have enough meetings,”Brown said.