Coordinating a new tailgating program, adding academic minors and revoking an honorary MSU law degree from a foreign president are a few of the things on the student government's to-do list for the school year.
ASMSU, MSU's undergraduate student government, met last week to discuss their goals and get ready for the new semester.
"I'm looking forward to an active, ambitious and exciting year, which will make our constituents aware of what progress we are able to achieve when we all work together to resolve students' issues," said Roger Ludy, Student Assembly's vice chairperson for internal affairs. "We are working on being a lot more visibly involved in student activities and making sure we're doing a great job representing our constituents."
The government is made up of student representatives from the university's colleges, who serve on the Student Assembly and Academic Assembly.
Student Assembly provides services to students and works with registered student organizations, while Academic Assembly works with the university on representing undergraduate concerns with in-class issues.
Funded by a $13.75 tax per student, the group uses its budget of about $970,000 to fund student organizations and events, as well as provide free legal counsel, yearbooks and blue books, interest-free loans and reduced-cost copy and fax services.
"We also lobby to state and federal government for higher education," said Jessica Kunnath, director of constituent activism.
Student Assembly is focused on their new tailgating program and continuing to work with East Lansing officials concerning the April 2-3 disturbances.
The council wants to figure out the details of what happened and work on preventing another incident, Ludy said.
The Academic Assembly wants to add gender identity to MSU's anti-discrimination policy, revise university requirements in math and writing and revoke an honorary MSU law degree from Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe.
Members said they feel it reflects poorly on the university because of Mugabe's violations of human rights as Zimbabwe's president.
Academic Assembly members are also working on adding the option for academic minors, chairperson Robert Murphy said.
"No employer knows what a specialization is," Murphy said. "(Minors) will provide learning opportunities to students as well as help them to be more competitive in the job market."
Not all the colleges have representatives in ASMSU, so the group has been recruiting freshmen at orientation programs.
"We have great representatives for most of our seats, but we're also going to be actively increasing our members to fill all the vacancies on the assembly," Ludy said.
Kunnath said this is the first year they have recruited freshmen, because the council has stayed full of returning members in the past.
"There are about 700 people interested in the freshman class, so that's really cool," Kunnath said. "It's a really good turnout."
Visit www.asmsu.msu.edu for more information on ASMSU's recruitment process.
