Zhao said he doesn’t have any specific goals for his time as chair of the policy committee, but he is looking forward to dealing with important issues on campus.

“My plan is, so far, ASMSU’s standard and looking at sexual assault, mental health and stuff like that,” Zhao said. “Moving forward with that within this committee and reacting to things as they come up.”

As vice chair of the policy committee, Stomps is interested in more specific projects, though he’s also “receptive to what the committee comes up with."

“Personally, I want to be able to help Joshua as much as I can as vice chair, I mean that’s the position,” Stomps said. “But I would like to see for the committee — these would be more of my pet projects — is to see looking at the code of operations for ASMSU, making sure that those are up to date and that there are no holes in the system."

Stomps originally joined the finance committee, but later decided policy was more his style.

“I’ve been involved with student government for 10 years, actually,” Stomps said. “I’ve been doing some sort of student organization for the majority of my life. Last year I was a freshman. I joined my freshman class council. I figured that was the best place to start with ASMSU, and it kind of just snowballed out of there.”

Zhao also worked in student government in high school and was interested in pursuing that in college as well.

“I just wanted to be able to interact with the student body and just basically be able to represent the students in an effective manner and advocate for policies that students wanted to pass,” Zhao said.

Jason Porter, the vice president for internal administration at ASMSU, explained how the committees work during Thursday’s meeting.

“Representatives are allowed to write bills regardless of what committee they belong to,” Porter said. “So if you’re sitting in policy but you want to write a bill that involves money, you can do that. But the bill is going to be placed not in this committee. The bill will be placed in the finance committee.”

The three different committees are responsible for different types of bills. The finance committee takes any bills with a dollar amount on it. The policy committee handles community, state and federal issues. The academic committees handle academic and on-campus issues.

If the committee approves the bill, it moves on to the next step.

“Then if it passes through that committee, it will go to our general assembly, and then our whole collective body of representatives will vote on it,” Porter said. “And if it passes there, it becomes enacted within ASMSU.”

So far this year, bills have gone straight to the general assembly because the committees hadn’t been formed yet. Now that they are, bills will go through the normal process of entering committees first.