Hello USM Students,
This is your first report from me, Ben Taylor, your new Student Body President. While I’ll be working on some things over the summer, I’ll save a lot of the important stuff for these letters when we come back in the fall.
Let me first congratulate outgoing Student Body President A.J. Chalifour on a job well done this year. Even working closely with him all year, I had underestimated the amount of work he put into the position, making valuable connections and working on a myriad of issues. In the past two weeks, I have gotten a glimpse of his work this year, and I can say it will be a hard standard to surpass, although I plan on giving it a go.
There’s a lot to be said about this year in general. The university found a new president, the current administration dealt with a budget crisis, and student involvement itself dealt with a lot of difficulties.
However, as someone who has been able to watch all these things develop, I will say I am lucky to come in and be able to work with a fairly clean slate. There are a few carryover items from this year, but for the most part, and due to the hard work of a lot of people this year, I have a long leash in deciding where I can be most useful for the students.
And indeed, I have a good idea of where I plan to put a lot of my efforts. You heard a few times from my predecessor about Change ’08, a conference in which involved students from a variety of backgrounds came together to talk about student involvement as a whole. That conference has led to a few successful spin-offs, whose work you will see over the next year and beyond.
More important to me, however, is getting the help and opinions of those who are currently not involved at all. There was a lot of talk last summer about approaching specific groups of students and getting them plugged into involvement activities based on their interests. For instance, a group of marketing and business students would be better trained to set up a series of events which would actually draw people and which could eventually fundraise enough money to bring a well-known musician or band to campus, and a specific plan is much more likely to draw the attention of these students than simply asking them to “get involved.”
There are plenty of opportunities for co-curricular activities, to use the education buzzword, in which students can get involved and help build the university, but also at the same time get to practice the skills they are learning in the classroom. There are also plenty of students interested in other things besides their major, who never see the opportunities to pursue these things because of poor publication of student groups and their events.
I’ll leave you with this revelation, which came to me after a meeting about USM’s brand image and how it markets itself in the future. Just like the university itself, USM student involvement is a struggling brand. It’s not that involved students don’t put in enough work, or that uninvolved students are just apathetic and don’t care about USM. It’s that some activities just aren’t competitive with the alternative, whether that is going out to the Old Port, or even sitting in a dorm room playing video games or watching movies. Those events that are competitive aren’t publicized enough.
Even with very limited resources, a little creative thinking can go a long way when thinking about what might be able to compete with a regular Friday night out.
Anyways, I hope all of you have good luck with finals, and have a good summer. I hope to see you all again when we return in the fall.
Sincerely,
Ben Taylor
Student Body President