UCSU Tri-Executives Sara Davine, Charles Gilford and Hadley Brown. (Photo courtesy of UCSU)

This year, the University of Colorado Student Union Tri-Executives want to create and strengthen relationships with people from all areas of campus. Most people aren't aware of UCSU student representatives' level of involvement and dedication, or that UCSU manages a $34 million student fee budget and attends to crucial campus issues. UCSU serves the campus community in a variety of ways and has the potential to be an even greater resource if people know that we can help.

We plan to help students contribute toUCSU, since their student representatives can better serve them if they participate in both the UCSU and the university decision-making process. We aim to be an honest, effective liaison between students and administrators, so that both groups can work together toward community improvement and a collaborative vision. We want to make our process more accessible for students, faculty, staff, and administrators. We’re making a big push for outreach to students from all areas of campus life. To set the tone, we’ve already organized several successful events in the past month, including a tabling project in the UMC, a new logo contest for students, and the Fall Welcome open house, which brought students, faculty and staff together. In addition, new executive staff positions such as the Liaison to Graduate & Professional Studies and the Liaison to Athletics are attempts to draw in vital communities that are underrepresented in UCSU. Here’s a list of some of the UCSU executive staff’s major plans:

• Develop a strong student presence at the state capitol: It’s not difficult to excite enthusiasm among students for higher education advocacy at the state level. The trick is to get students organized and working together, and to make the student voice effective in conjunction with university lobbying efforts.
  
  
• Large student-voter turn-out: One of UCSU’s biggest priorities is to help more students engage in their communities and participate in city and campus decision-making. We believe our experience as students in Boulder and at the university will be enriched if we get involved and interact more with both students and non-students. It all starts with student participation in the upcoming UCSU and City of Boulder elections.
  
  
• November Tuition Forum: Unfortunately, many students have little conception of how much deliberation happens around the complex budget-making process at the university. UCSU is organizing an event that will bring together state legislators, university administrators and students for discussion about how university and state budgets interact, and what conditions have motivated the recent tuition increases.  
  
  
• Promote and enrich all forms of diversity: Making our campus a more welcoming and accessible place for all students is a top priority, and efforts to make our student population more diverse should be accompanied by efforts to broaden the perspectives that are taught in the classroom. We plan to continue our work toward this end with the Student Outreach Retention Center for Equity, The Women’s’ Resource Center, The Environmental Center, the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Minority Affairs, the Center for Multicultural Affairs, the Office of Admissions, the Ethnic Studies and Women’s Studies departments, and others.
  
  
• Participate in and provide resources for the important work of students in all campus communities: We recognize that UCSU’s relationship with students is a relationship of interdependence as we strive to maintain healthy, productive relationships with students in student groups, UCSU cost centers, the multicultural and traditional Greek communities, and more.

These are some of the ways that UCSU plans to increase interaction with students and to help energize the student voice. We endeavor to better represent student perspectives at all levels of campus. Most importantly, UCSU wants to do its part to contribute to the work that the students, faculty, staff, and administrators are already doing to make the campus community as just, safe, and interactive as possible.