Hey Vandals! My name is Martha Smith and I am your ASUI President. Every month this year, I am going to be writing in the Argonaut to help make ASUI more transparent and accessible and give students the opportunity to know what their student fees are being spent on. For those of you unfamiliar, student fees are paid in addition to tuition and fund a variety of things that the University of Idaho facilitates outside of the classroom, like ASUI. If you’d like to know a breakdown of ASUI’s budget and how much is allocated, I gave a comprehensive breakdown in my last article in the September 5th edition of the Argonaut.
In the month of September, ASUI was busy! We passed a bill allowing our Director of Public Relations, Rebekah Boyd, to have $500 for the semester to create giveaways to promote our Instagram and various athletic events. If you haven’t visited our Instagram yet, @ASUIdaho, I highly recommend you do so. We’ve also passed a bill allocating $100 for coffee and donuts to table with to ensure students know how to get involved in ASUI, headed by Senator Aqeel, and $150 worth of Vandal swag to hand out for Homecoming, headed by VP Johnston and Pro Tempore Zuercher. In addition to this, we helped support both Africa Night and Bangladesh Night by purchasing $200 worth of tickets each, thanks to our Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Josie Gaturutura. I highly recommend attending Diwali Night, hosted by the Indian Student Association, on November 12th in the Vandal Ballroom!
On the cabinet side, thanks to our Director of Sustainability, Taylor McKinnon, we approved $150 to buy coats for our Vandal Coat drive; more information is on our Instagram on that project. We also spent $20 to buy mini mics for ASUI to use to create content and interact with students. Finally, our Director of
Traditions and Alumni Engagement bought 305 ASUI koozies to handout at the tailgate this weekend! This totalled up to $246.25. Finally, I transferred $200 out of my budget to support the Soil Stewards Club in providing pumpkins to students at their event on Saturday, October 12th at 425 Farm Road here in Moscow.
For the Homecoming game this weekend, Director of Athletics Hatten and I had been told that students were going to have to pay for overflow tickets if the student section was oversold. Thanks to some generous donors, ASUI will be covering an additional 150 student tickets at a $750 value, which should ensure that no student has to pay to get into the Homecoming game. Come early and be loud this weekend, Vandals!
I’m happy to announce that both the Senate and Cabinet have full teams! I’d like to welcome Arielle Hebison, Lance Butikofer, Bryan Juarez Ruiz, Harrison Brown, Alexa Benitez, and Saul Lorenza to the ASUI Senate. Emma Bolling will be serving as our Adjutant to produce our meeting minutes and agendas. Which, by the way, are both available on the ASUI Website and our Linktree on our Instagram. On the cabinet side, I’d like to welcome Gavin Aus and Upal Kundu. Gavin will serve as the Director of Academics and will be launching our ASUI Academic Board. Applications are out on Engage NOW and will close on October 11th. This will serve as an opportunity for students to represent their colleges to ASUI and the Dean of Students office and provide valuable insight into areas of the University of Idaho that are not always represented. Upal will be serving as our Director of Resources and has already hit the ground running with Career Services! The application processes were incredibly competitive and I have already been impressed with their work ethic and contributions.
Our Director of Safety, Health, and Wellness, Emily Roberts, has hit the ground running this semester! She is currently working on getting Blue Lights on campus, which are resources available at both WSU and BSU. In addition, she spearheaded ASUI’s efforts at Lauren’s Lap, which was an event held in Pullman aimed to promote safety-related resources, and met with the Interim Director of the Counseling and Mental Health Services to start a project for ASUI to help cover fees associated with accessing mental health services for students in need. More on this soon! Our Director of Student Spaces, Udit Sipani, is hosting the first ISUB Board Meeting this week. If you have input on what should and shouldn’t be in the ISUB, please feel free to reach out to him. Finally, our Director of Traditions and Alumni Engagement, Justin Carpenter, has ensured that ASUI is ready to rock and roll with Homecoming! He and I are also presenting to the Alumni Board this week.
As I said last month, this is just the tip of the iceberg of what ASUI is working on. If you’d like to provide feedback or hear more about a project, always feel free to reach out or stop by ASUI’s Office.
Until next time, Go Vandals!