In an expeditious ASUW meeting Tuesday student senators heard details about an upcoming campus climate survey intended to assess students’ opinions about campus diversity.
In addition to listening to presentations about the survey, senators introduced legislation aimed at improving ASUW’s election policy and senatorial scholarship program.
Chief Diversity Officer Emily Monago and Evan Johnson, chair of the Campus Climate Survey Subcommittee and Assistant Professor of Kinesiology and Health, gave senators the run-down about the survey and asked senators to help get students in their colleges engaged with the survey to achieve a high participation rate.
“We are looking at issues of diversity and inclusion,” Monago said. “It’s not a satisfaction survey, it’s really to know how our students, staff and faculty experience not only the campus, but the campus community.”
Among a wide variety of questions, the survey will also ask students about situations of food and housing insecurity.
Johnson said the survey’s purpose is to establish a baseline to assess important areas to improve and gauge the success of future responses, likening it to the recent Great Colleges survey administered to campus employees.
“I don’t know if you guys heard the mumbles and grumbles about that from faculty and staff, but the results weren’t great,” Johnson said. “The good news is, it gave us a lot of initiatives where we can push to move things in a better direction.”
Once the data is collected, it will be presented to UW Administration, the Board of Trustees and other key figures in the community for further action.
“It’s going to be really important for shaping the future of the university and campus,” ASUW President Alex Mulhall said. “Similar to the sexual assault campus climate survey — I think that’s been instrumental in launching some key conversations about those issues and topics, and I think diversity, equity, inclusion is one of those topics that maybe hasn’t been explored as much as it should be at the university.”
The survey will open Feb. 25 and run until March 23, and is designed to take about 15 minutes to complete.
Legislation introduced at the meeting included Senate Bill 2646, which would revise ASUW’s elections policy for additional clarity, and SB-2647, which would revise and continue the Senatorial Scholarship Program with the allocation of new funds for senator scholarships from ASUW reserves.
Mulhall, the scholarship bill’s author, said the scholarships would be rewarded to senators based on their level of engagement each semester, up to $700.
“Recruitment and retention of senators is an extremely difficult thing for ASUW — the scholarship in the past has helped improve that, but the scholarship as it stands now also is not very substantial,” Mulhall said.
Rather than simply putting more money in senators’ pockets, the program is intended to not only incentivize and compensate hard-working senators but to make entry into student government more accessible for a wider range of individuals who may otherwise be unable to join.
“It helps ease the stress of the time commitment a little bit,” Mulhall said.
The Budget and Planning Committee would be tasked with finding future sources of funding beyond the initial allocation of reserves — funds from mandatory student fees will not be used for the Senatorial Scholarship Program.
No RSO funding requests were made during the meeting and no old business was discussed. ASUW Vice President Jason Wilkins noted that shorter meetings are the norm for the first weeks of a semester, but anticipates that ASUW’s workload will ramp up as students settle in for the long haul.
The Student Government of the Associated Students of the University of Wyoming convenes each Tuesday at 7 p.m. in the Union Senate Chambers. Listening sessions are held at the same place and time each Thursday for more in-depth presentations of bills introduced during senate meetings and to hear questions and feedback from the UW community before voting on them the following week.
