ASMSU president Lorenzo Santavicca has three main goals for this year — outreach, resources and advocacy.
“With outreach, we want to answer the question of, ‘What does student government actually do?’” Santavicca said.
Individual goals of the outreach sector range from getting 5,000-8,000 students registered to vote in the election this year to getting students involved and knowledgeable about ASMSU’s decision processes.
“A big goal of ours is boosting voter registration because it’s such a critical year for that,” Alex Noffsinger, ASMSU vice president of governmental affairs said.
ASMSU had a voter turnout of 5.2 percent last year.
“Part of it is taking advantage of the timing of this year,” Noffsinger said.
Continuing outreach, Santavicca said he wants to livestream all ASMSU meetings to make them accessible to every student. He said ASMSU is pushing a four-year leadership initiative for all student organizations through the Office of Student Affairs and Services, called ASMSYOU, in hopes to bring more student leaders into groups like ASMSU.
“The tagline this year for ASMSU is ‘students first,’” Santavicca said. “And that’s our big goal this year — being there for individual students.”
As far as resources go, ASMSU has a $1.6 million budget for the year and is rolling out a new initiative — graphing calculator rentals.
ASMSU allocated $10,000 to support the new program, vice president for finance and operations Jason Barnett said, and it will start with 100 calculators in the fall.
Depending on the popularity of the program, this number will grow in the spring 2017 semester and beyond, he said.
“We understand that some students only have to take one math class for their major, but still need to buy a graphing calculator for that class,” Santavicca said. “We want to make it easier for them.”
ASMSU will also be increasing its bike share program, which began last year and allowed students without bikes to rent one for free through the organization.
Because of the program’s popularity last year, bikes available through the bike share program will be increased from eight bikes to 40 bikes for on-campus students. This was promised in 2014.
Originally, the program faced problems, which had the start date pushed for nearly a year and a half.
“Every neighborhood on campus will have a bike share rack by early October,” Santavicca said.
ASMSU will continue their iClicker rentals, free blue book resources and will be covering the $5 monthly bank fee for registered student organizations, or RSOs, for the year.
“We made that decision because we want to make it easier for students to run their student organizations,” Barnett said.
ASMSU is also prepared to give out more than $200,000 to different RSOs over the year, which will be available for RSOs to apply for funding through the Student Allocations Board.
The It’s On Us campus campaign will also continue, with the greek life pledge drive from previous years. A new sexual assault campaign will be introduced this year, through a partnership with MSU police. It’s entitled Start by Believing and will focus on helping report sexual assault to police.
“Where It’s On Us tackles the awareness aspect of sexual assault, Start by Believing will help students understand how to help when they are approached by someone who’s experienced sexual assault,” Santavicca said.
ASMSU will also be focused this year on advocating for college affordability, mental and physical health awareness on campus and educating students on resources related to such topics, Santavicca said.
