After spending funds on advertising and exhausting other efforts to fill Academic Governance committees, ASMSU has filled 32 of 34 student representative seats.
Vinay Prasad, academic assembly external vice chairperson, said his assembly's efforts to fill committees came through in the last stretch.
Academic Assembly spent almost $700 on newspaper advertisements to get at-large students on these committees.
The nine Academic Governance committees open to student representatives within Academic Council were opened to students outside Academic Assembly last year due to a bylaw change introduced by assembly.
Prior to this year, these seats were reserved for Academic Assembly members and typically yielded a small turnout.
"It turned out that change in the bylaws was an important change," Prasad said. "It really did open up these seats to the university at-large, and is allowing for students to express their thoughts where they've never been heard before."
At the beginning of the semester applications came in slowly, but near the deadline there was a spike in applications received.
"We hoped that we would get them filled, but we didn't anticipate it," he said. "The ad campaign came through at the end."
According to Academic Governance bylaws, after the first full Academic Council meeting on Sept. 28 no more changes can be made to representative seats, said Dan Weber, Academic Assembly chairperson. But, he added, Academic Assembly will conduct another membership drive next spring to fill seats again.
"I thought (filling all the seats) was within the realm of possibility," Weber said. "As long as students who sign up continue to go, we'll have better turnout than previous years."
Prasad said Academic Assembly received 28 applications for committee seats from general students. Other student government members filled the remaining seats.
Brian Forest, a representative for the College of Arts & Letters, said the decision to open committee seats to general students, and the subsequent filling of the seats is a positive act for the assembly.
"We were talking about it over the summer and realized it's a really good idea, especially since they're almost filled," he said.
