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Show StatesmanCampus News Page 2 Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2011 ASUSU student advocate restructures committee BY CHRIS LEE senior news writer The ASUSU Student Voice Committee is being restructured by this year's Student Advocate Jason Russell, who said his goal is to fully utilize the committee and bring it to its full potential. Russel said the new committee will help him learn what students want from USU. "This restructuring of the student voice committee is going to be so great," said ASUSU President Erik Mikkelsen. "He's creating himself an avenue to get that voice — to hear that voice. Mikkelsen said the student advocate is the voice of the students as a whole for the ASUSU Executive Council. "All the people on the executive board, they know their groups of students," Mikkelsen said. "But they have nowhere near the access to student opinion as the student advocate does." Russell said the committee currently has one member, but applications for the rest of the committee have been given out. The director of the Student Voice Committee is Keenan Neuhring. Neuhring said he is "the person that is coordinating everything, making sure people are staying on task, and just overall facilitating meetings." The committee and the student advocate will help students voice their concerns to the university administration and the ASUSU Executive Council, Neuhring said, as well as help students with any concerns they have. Russell said he spent the summer interning with many of the services on campus such as Student Housing and the USU Bookstore. He said the internship helped him learn who he should talk to about any concern a student may have. "Students have rights at this university that they don't understand they have," Neuhring said. "They have a voice first of all, and they have outlets. The administration is willing to listen." The rest of the committee will be made up of, potentially, six or more officers and eight students, elected by each of the USU Senators, Russell said. The officers appointed by the senators will represent and work with their specific college. They will be required to do at least one survey in those colleges every year. Russell said there will be officers in charge of each of the student advocate programs, as well as officers over the committee's use of social media, like Facebook. Two programs Russel said he plans to offer are Brutally Honest and Start, Stop, Continue, which were run in previous years, and he said he hopes to bring them back. "What I envision (Brutally Honest) to be is a panel of ASUSU officers getting together and having an open-mic night with the students," Russell said. "This will See PANEL, Page 3 THE ROCKET SUMMER performs on stage for USU students and the general public at USU. Some attendees drove as far as 600 miles to see the performance. The Rocket Summer has not performed in the United States for over a year, and was selected by ASUSU Programming to play their first stateside show. AMANDA DUNN photos From Page 1 Event planners, police must prepare for medical incidents due to crowd size middle school students. She said the smaller kids get swallowed by the crowd, and they get crushed against the gate. There weren't as many middle school kids in attendance, Elder said. She said overall the crowd was better behaved than those at the two concerts held last year. "Our job was pretty easy," Milne said. lot of it had to do with the age of the crowd. There seems to be more college students compared to what we had before." The Student Traditions and Activities Board (STAB) Activities Director Kellen Hansen said ASUSU Programming tries to prepare for incidents like these at concerts. "We make sure that the police are definitely on hand. We have to make sure medical is there," Hansen said. "And we usually try to have an area where they can take them." Hansen said police and medical teams were allowed to take people to the tent behind the stage, as well as an additional temporary command center for the event. "We have a command center," Hansen said. "This one was in HPER 102, where the police can take anybody that's acting up and get them away from the crowd. Or if there's any severe medical situations, and they don't go straight to the ambulance, they can use what we call the 'command center' as a place to treat them." Along with police and medical teams, Hansen said they had people certified in CPR, as well as security teams on hand. "It was the fewest number of incidents we've had, but we had probably more help this time than we have at any of the other concerts," she said. Milne said he deploys officers based on the types of events. He said events with large, rowdy crowds require more officers than the more mellow events. "We knew from a year ago when they had the Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, we didn't anticipate a very big crowd," Milne said. "We didn't have very many officers there, and there was more people there than we anticipated. We ended up having to pull Logan City (Police) off of their regular patrol duties to help us out." Milne said they brought in more staff for the last two concerts. He said the Rocket Summer concert had two medical incidents and one incident of a minor in possession of alcohol. — chris.w.lee@aggiemail.usu.edu From Page 1 Volk: Smith-Benanti knew how to stop a fight LOVE IS FOR EVERYONE (LIFE), USU's gay-straight alliance, holds their weekly meeting. While not directly under the LGBTQA umbrella, LIFE sometimes works with the LGBTQA coordinator to promote gay-straight relations. Last year LIFE chose Maure Smith-Benanti as its faculty adviser. ANI MIRZAKHANYAN photo Commute without the fuss de. take the bus. Finding someone who is understanding, a good counselor and an advocate is important, they said. "One thing Maure can do that I thought was really good was she could stop a fight," said Matt Volk, a junior in speech communications. Kennedy Tripp, a junior in business, said Maure knew the ins and outs of legal issues a lot of LGBTQA students might face, and it's a good idea for whoever is hired to know them as well. While the new coordinator could be straight, it would be a lot more difficult as a job, Volk said. "They [the program coordinator] have to do outreach and counseling," Volk said. "I would really like to see a new program coordinator come in and really teach the students to have a voice," Bryce Sprosty, a senior in marketing, said. The coordinator also needs to be good at understanding people from all walks of life, Tripp said. Since Smith-Benanti left, the students of the LGBTQA office have been without an official director, but Bogdan has been serving as their interim director, and said the students are doing fine. "What's really cool is we've had people step up and stay pretty strong," said Bryce Sprosty, a senior in mar- keting. "I think if we don't find someone soon it'll get burnt out and be a step back for our community." At the meeting students requested a temporary structure to help LGBTQA matters be set up. During the first month of school many students are dealing with the transition of 'coming out' and need a place to come to for advice and counseling. "I feel confident in our Access and Diversity staff, that we can help any student who walks in that door," Bogdan said. "We all have to be willing to pull together and collaborate, including with LIFE, and we need to be willing to collaborate." Love Is For Everyone, or LIFE, is a student club that works to educate and bring others together in regards to sexual orientation and other LGBTQA matters. The job posting for a new coordinator will close at the end of September, Sprosty said, and a student and faculty panel will then be set up to help screen candidates. Vice president for Student Services Eric Olsen, who was also at the July meeting, said it was important to him that they take the time to find the right person. "Let's do it right and get the right person," Olsen said. — la.stewart@aggiemail.usu.edu |