Open forum for Olympia
ASEWU convened to discuss lobbying in Olympia, Wash., collaboration with the Associated Students of Washington State University-Spokane to benefit Riverpoint students and supplemental requests made by groups around campus. The meeting took place on Nov. 7 in the fireside lounge.
During standing President Becca Harrell’s report she announced that Nov. 15 at 3:30 p.m. in the fireside lounge an open forum will be held to allow students to voice their thoughts on what the legislative agenda will be for the Washington Student Association.
“During winter quarter, Ethan Vodde, our legislative liaison, he’ll be in Olympia rallying for you guys and for them not to raise higher education and other things that you guys want to see happen,” said Harrell.
Harrell and standing Executive Vice President Justin Filla also met with auxiliary services earlier in the day and learned that the first basketball game of the year on Nov. 30 will feature a new video board.
Filla reported that he has been attending university safety and health committee meetings to discuss how incident reports are handled through the year and how different training for faculty and staff can be improved.
“For example, slipping and all those general accidents that happen on campus, … we can better address those with faculty because there’s been lots of accidents where they could do better to get those things out there,” said Filla.
Filla also reported that ASEWU members met with Associated Students of Washington State University representatives for the Riverpoint campus to work on better cooperation and coordination with events to benefit all of Riverpoint students.
“It was a really great meeting. We have a lot of ideas where we can collaborate with them and bring there, and they have ideas that they use there that we could use on this campus,” said Filla.
Markus Hammond, ASEWU finance vice president, reported that the finance committee met on Nov. 2.
“We were finally able to sit down and orient ourselves with our goals for the year, what we’ll be doing,” said Hammond. “Today marks the beginning of the clubs being able to submit budget applications and requests to ASEWU for the next fiscal year. The actual process should be online Monday, so I assume that there will be a lot of requests coming forward within the next two and three weeks.”
A supplemental request was also approved for the amount of $2,500 to help Eagle Entertainment pay for an upcoming concert by “Love and Theft.” EWU was still in the process of negotiations with the band and the date of the concert had to be changed. The band had not yet signed a contract with Eastern and raised their price by $5,000, which Eagle Entertainment would not be able to cover.
“ASEWU as a whole will be giving the $5,000, but $2,500 will be coming out of the executive budget and then $2,500 from the council, which we have to approve here,” said Filla.
