Spring Break
ASCSU elections are here; get informed, vote
Sean Reed
Issue date: 3/30/09 Section: Opinion
The multicolored T-shirts, giant billboards and bad music have returned to the Lory Student Center Plaza, which can only mean one thing: It's student government election season.
Starting at 8 a.m. last Monday (and slightly earlier for one campaign), four pairs of hopefuls (and later a pair of write-ins) began campaigning for the top two spots in the Associated Students of CSU -- the democratically elected body whose primary function is to approve the use of its logo on posters.
But did you know that ASCSU actually has real power to affect, either positively or negatively, your life as a member of the student body (provided you are taking six credit hours or paying full time student fees), and this power relates most directly to your bank account?
ASCSU oversees the use of the millions of dollars that come into the university in the form of student fees.
The Student Fee Review Board, an entity within ASCSU, yearly hears all calls for student fee increases/decreases and has the power to approve or disapprove of the use of those funds.
Happy about last year's increase to help the Association for Student Activities Programming fund the Homecoming concert? Furious over the $15 fee hike to fund the Athletics Program? You can thank ASCSU.
But funding is not where the power of our dear student government ends. The less direct, albeit probably more important, function of your elected student body representatives often takes place beyond campus borders.
ASCSU folks have become increasingly more active in the last few years down at the state capitol.
Last spring, in conjunction with the Associated Students of Colorado, a student organization representing multiple Colorado campuses, ASCSU lobbied hard and successfully for the passage of a textbook transparency law authored by for ASC President Blake Gibson that requires publishers to disclose the cost of textbooks to professors in the original sales conversations, offer unbundled versions of their books and be transparent about the changes in revised versions of textbooks.
Starting at 8 a.m. last Monday (and slightly earlier for one campaign), four pairs of hopefuls (and later a pair of write-ins) began campaigning for the top two spots in the Associated Students of CSU -- the democratically elected body whose primary function is to approve the use of its logo on posters.
But did you know that ASCSU actually has real power to affect, either positively or negatively, your life as a member of the student body (provided you are taking six credit hours or paying full time student fees), and this power relates most directly to your bank account?
ASCSU oversees the use of the millions of dollars that come into the university in the form of student fees.
The Student Fee Review Board, an entity within ASCSU, yearly hears all calls for student fee increases/decreases and has the power to approve or disapprove of the use of those funds.
Happy about last year's increase to help the Association for Student Activities Programming fund the Homecoming concert? Furious over the $15 fee hike to fund the Athletics Program? You can thank ASCSU.
But funding is not where the power of our dear student government ends. The less direct, albeit probably more important, function of your elected student body representatives often takes place beyond campus borders.
ASCSU folks have become increasingly more active in the last few years down at the state capitol.
Last spring, in conjunction with the Associated Students of Colorado, a student organization representing multiple Colorado campuses, ASCSU lobbied hard and successfully for the passage of a textbook transparency law authored by for ASC President Blake Gibson that requires publishers to disclose the cost of textbooks to professors in the original sales conversations, offer unbundled versions of their books and be transparent about the changes in revised versions of textbooks.
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