The Associated Students of the University of Wyoming (ASUW), is working to allow greater transparency on campus through polling and informational apps, such as WyoGuide and WyoVocal.
“WyoGuide is a cross-functional app on campus, so it’s not just ASUW that’s a part of it, it’s also Fraternity and Sorority life, admissions, and Dean of Students.” Director of Marketing at ASUW, Sara Ott, said. “We primarily use it for people to know about our committees and what time those meetings are. We also have a list of our senators on there as well. We also use it for our surveys, too.”
WyoVocal is another mechanism that could allow students to better communicate with the university student government.
“WyoVocal is a program for students to use and vote and interact with issues on campus, and make issues themselves,” Ott said.
Although these apps exist and are available for students, many students may not know about the them, despite being exposed to them as freshmen.
“I think I’ve seen WyoVocal somewhere or that I got an email about it once,” UW student Brianna Leonard said.
Others have never heard of the apps before.
“I have no idea what those could be,” UW student Mike Shields said. “I’ve just never heard about them before.
Students at UW may be unaware of the opportunity to have their voice heard because of a lack of effective advertising,
“We have had a problem with trying to get the word out,” Ott said. “I think a lot of times everything on campus is over-advertised. So it’s hard to get the word out about our resources, as director of marketing I can only do so much. Students have to care, if I am going to be able to do my job successfully.”
Ott said ASUW is taking steps to be as informative as they can be with their operations and committee meetings.
“Our institutional development committee is working on some legislation that will be coming into the senate which will seek to boost responses on the WyoVocal app to make it a more effective tool,” Ott said.
Greater Transparency is one of ASUW’s goals when using these apps.
“We try to be as transparent as possible, and especially this year I’ve been trying to push social media to try and get some of the word out there,” Ott said. “We’ve been trying to push some news articles and stuff that is coming out of the senate, and making sure “senate-in-a-minute” is more interactive so that people know exactly the legislation coming through.”
Transparency is an important issue for some students as well.
“It is pretty important for the student body to be informed about what the student government is doing and what decisions they are making on behalf of the student body,” Leonard said.
Leonard said that she believes that ASUW should be pushing legislation that the students care about and recommend, rather than having ASUW pass whatever legislation they feel appropriate, letting the entire student body know only after the fact.
