A look into ASI President Kelly Griggs’ year so far.
In a balancing act between school and duties as ASI president, Kelly Griggs has made a lot of progress in addressing the five major points on her platform last spring quarter: affordability, statewide representation, sustainability, diversity and student access to services.
As Associated Students, Inc. (ASI) president, Griggs is the student liaison to the administration.
“I believe that I have a very realistic outlook and approach to the position, a good understanding of the campus, a lot of prior leadership experience and a passion for ASI and Cal Poly,” Griggs said.
When Griggs was elected last spring quarter, it felt surreal and took a few moments to sink in, but student government wasted no time in getting her involved, she said.
Griggs began by figuring out what issues are students’ biggest concerns; she found the main issues were mostly consistent with those in her platform.
The affordability of attending Cal Poly has become a great concern to many students, including graduate student Sarah Butler.
“Affordability is the issue that is every student’s concern right now. With the economy being as bad as it is, it’s a very hard time to try to make improvements,”Butler said.
In an effort to hear students’ concerns, Griggs helped organize the “Dollar Dilemmas on Dexter” event.
“This helped facilitate conversation, answer questions and act as general information conduits to interested and concerned students,”Griggs said.
Griggs said the student feedback she has received will be used on a statewide level through the California State Student Association (CSSA).
This year has been the first in nearly 20 years that the Cal Poly student government has actively participated in representation statewide. A CSSA Ad Hoc Committee was approved by the ASI Board of Directors to help document and track Cal Poly’s participation in CSSA. Griggs and two other board members attend monthly CSSA meetings as representatives from Cal Poly.
“These meetings have helped educate us on issues affecting our campus from a larger scale, improved our networking and idea-sharing between other CSU campuses and have worked to help unify Cal Poly with the other campuses on statewide efforts,” Griggs said.
The student government is also working on creating a lobby corps by the end of the year, which maintains a student presence in the State Legislature and at Board of Trustees meetings.
While statewide representation is something that might fall below some students’ radars, the relationship between students and the community is an issue that has received a lot of student attention this past quarter. New ordinance proposals from the San Luis Obispo Police Department (SLOPD) are to be discussed in January in an effort to reduce the number of party and noise violations and related crimes.
“There has been much student concern over the perceived ‘harshness’ of the proposals, and is something that we’ve determined is worth addressing from a student perspective,”Griggs said.
Griggs has put together a focus group of students to figure out what students are most concerned about with the new proposed ordinances. A list of questions and comments will be compiled and answered by SLOPD, the city manager and possibly members of the city council.
In upcoming city council meetings regarding these issues, it will be made sure that students’ voices are being heard, Griggs said.
There are a couple of other issues that Griggs has made headway on and plans to continue working on in the two upcoming quarters, one of those being sustainability.
Griggs is currently working on a program called ASI Zero Waste that aims to reduce ASI’s carbon footprint and become an example to other facilities on campus.
“I think that Cal Poly is a good example of sustainability compared to other campuses. I’d like to see what else can be done to make our campus more sustainable,” Butler said.
Alayna Renner, an agricultural science freshman, said that in addition to making the campus more sustainable, she would like to see improvements in the food offered by Campus Dining.
“I would like to see the campus plus dollars be able to roll over into the next quarter. Also the nutrition of the food should be made better,”Renner said.
Another issue that will be further worked on in the following quarters is diversity. An interest in using a “dialogues” program, in which various issues regarding diversity will be discussed in front of an audience, has been expressed, Griggs said.
While campus-wide issues are more apparent to students, Griggs has also been working on making the internal student government more productive by developing three key points, advocacy, outreach and accountability, as a guide for the year.
“These are the three things that we have tied into anything we have done thus far,” Griggs said.
Griggs has put these three points to use by creating a documentation system to help track student officers’ efforts and to organize their ideas. This would aid in organizing student requests and ensuring that they are fulfilled, Griggs said.
Though Griggs has made good strides this quarter, the issues of affordability and diversity will pose a yearlong struggle. Some issues can be acted upon immediately, whereas others take a lot more time, she said.
“There can always be work done to address the burden of the budget crisis and the rising costs of fees,” Griggs said. “I also believe the topic of diversity will be something that Cal Poly has, and will continue to struggle with and is something that needs to be addressed.”
Griggs still has two quarters to address issues, with her term ending the weekend after spring graduation, but some of the issues and projects might be passed on to the next ASI president.
“I hope that the next president will continue work on lobby corps that we are in the process of developing, ASI Zero Waste, statewide representation efforts, continual improvement of the internal efficiency and collaboration of student government and most likely a few other initiatives that have yet to be identified,” Griggs said.
So what does it take to be the next ASI president?
A candidate needs to be realistic, honest, open to criticism and critique, have the ability to handle stress well and most importantly the passion for the job and our campus, Griggs said.
“The first piece of advice that comes to mind that I would give to the next ASI president would be to take advantage of the time in the summer,” Griggs said. “The history that you learn about the campus and the organization itself will help you in your decision-making and planning for the year.”