Austen Hunzeker
News Editor
The Association of Students at Idaho State University (ASISU) has been busy this semester, spearheading various projects and events. ASISU Student Body President Sky Halter, a sophomore marketing major, and ASISU Vice President Charlie Medema, a junior majoring in biology, recently gave The Bengal Newspaper an update on the organization’s movements and future plans.
“One of our biggest focuses, and probably our biggest this semester, was on tailgates and tailgate structure,” Halter said. “We want to make the football tailgates a big and common part of every single year, [and] that will also allow us to launch to have more hype at our other sports events as well, because football is awesome, but the tailgates are kind of just a spark to show the cool stuff that ASISU and the jungle and students can do to support our athletics and watch them go do great things.”
Tailgates have occurred at all but one of the football games this semester. While the initial launch was challenging, Halter explained that a system is now rolling with over 400 attendees within the course of three hours at the homecoming tailgate.
“We’re hoping to set a precedent for [the] coming years so that there’s always a student tailgate,” Halter said.
Another focus has been a publicity campaign for ASISU to make students more aware of student government happenings and encourage them to get involved. To do this, they’ve attempted to be more involved with university clubs.
“We were able to help finance several student organization events, including the African Night and First Gen Night,” said ASISU Vice President Charlie Medema, a junior majoring in biology. “We have improved our current legislation to allow for more efficiency in our duties. Bill 623, 625, and 626 brought up new ways in which ASISU can be more streamlined, transparent in our activities, and help the student body more effectively.”
Halter stated that ASISU collaborated with around a dozen clubs this semester and shared that funding from ASISU can be made available to any club on campus.
One project that will launch closer to January is a spin-off of Shark Tank: Tiger Cage.
“Students will have the opportunity to present ideas to ASISU and have the chance to work with us,” Halter said. “So I think that’s a great way for people — maybe they didn’t have enough time or didn’t want to get completely involved with ASISU — to still have an impact.”
As the university experiences budget cuts, Halter explained that one goal for ASISU is to be effective with its current budget.
“We’re definitely being efficient to work with [President Wagner’s] office and the university in general to see how we can help and be a team as we go through some holdbacks,” Halter said.
Halter explained that there isn’t one single approach to addressing student needs at ISU.
“Some people come to our actual meetings and present challenges, others email us and…we listen to them and take what they’ve said and discuss it with key ASISU representatives as well as partners like Matt Daily and Craig Chatriand, and then we just come up with a solution for it, or we ask for more information,” Halter said. “A lot of times it leads us to write a resolution to the university, whether that’s President Wagner, or to a certain department, saying that we believe this action should be taken and achieved. And a lot of times that leads us to some awesome places.”
As an ASISU senator last year, Halter recalled passing a resolution that requested meditation space on campus for students to practice their faith or simply sit in peace. This year, it’s being implemented and will likely be presented with a ribbon-cutting in the spring.
“A lot of people think that they will make a complaint and it’ll just go unheard,” Halter said. “But I’ve seen so many different challenges and problems solved by working together as a team, and I know that that’s one thing we’re going to do this spring, [which] is work with as many students as possible.”
Medema echoed Halter’s sentiment.
“As we move into the next part of the school year, ASISU is committed to being more transparent with our progress and senatorial actions,” Medema said. “We want as many students involved as possible because it allows us to provide more resources in the right direction, and help make student voices heard…Being a Bengal is about being a part of a greater community, and we really want to make sure we are supporting that in any way possible.”
For additional information on ASISU, visit www.isu.edu/asisu/.
