Less than two weeks into January, many students have already broken their new year’s resolutions for 2011, but ASUO President Amelie Rousseau will not start setting her goals for the remainder of winter term until this Saturday.
That’s when Rousseau will meet with the other members of the Oregon Student Association board at its next meeting to discuss University restructuring and other issues important to students.
“We’ll be taking more specific stances on the deregulation of OUS,” Rousseau said of the Jan. 15 meeting.
Rousseau said that after the meeting, she will work to inform students of her stances and about the issue in general.
Though it will be a focal point of Rousseau’s action this term, responding to University restructuring is not the only part of her general goals. She said she wants to advance the work of the Sustainability Center and include students in the ASUO’s budget process.
While much of the work for the Sustainability Coalition was accomplished last term, the Center is still yet to be opened. Last December, the ASUO hired Louisa de Heer as its first sustainability coordinator. The Sustainability Center will be where the Service Learning Program is currently located in the EMU, which will in turn move to the Holden Leadership Center.
“I think people are getting really excited about the coordination that she can provide between environmental groups,” Rousseau said. “We are in the works for the Sustainability Center as well, and that’s in conjunction with a lot of departments … We are looking to have the Sustainability Center up and running in a couple months.”
Most of winter term typically goes to allocating the over $12 million of incidental fees assessed from students to student programs and contracts, and Rousseau said she wants to make this year’s budget season engaging to students.
“Like I said, Jan.. 15 we’ll be having our board meeting with students statewide,” Rousseau said. “But we’re putting on some really exciting legislative campaigns that will definitely make budget season more exciting.”
Some examples of legislative campaigns she brought up from last term are the push for the tobacco campus ban included in the Healthy Campus Initiative and the attempt to save the EMU post office.
“Even the fact that we were granted the appeal and the closure was postponed, I think, is really encouraging,” Rousseau said.
ASUO Senate Chair Zachary Stark-MacMillan said he’s been impressed with the work Rousseau has done to work with Senate. Additionally, he’s in support of the work she is continuing to do for the sustainability coordinator.
“That’s another thing we’ve been working hard on this year and last year,” Stark-MacMillan said. “Hopefully … we’ll be making the center a new institution on campus that will help students for a while.”
One of her next legislative campaigns started last Wednesday when ASUO Vice President Maneesh Arora brought the ASUO Senate’s attention to a number of state rules changes that may affect students.
The main one Arora mentioned was one that makes University President Richard Lariviere delegate authority over University program recognition first to the vice president of student affairs and then to the ASUO president. The current rule in place has Lariviere delegating authority to Rousseau and her staff.
“This may be a big threat to student autonomy,” Arora said.
However, the process of hearing this resolution has been postponed indefinitely. Rousseau said she sees this as being indicative of the intentions of the rule change.
“If it was going to be something that was benefiting students, they would have gone forward with it, redone the process that included the students and explained why this was necessary,” she said. “But the fact that the first time we start asking questions, they immediately decide to postpone … obviously leaves a lot of room for doubt about why this policy was even being created in the first place.”
campus & federal politics
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