BY CALLIE CONERTON
For the UAS Whalesong
Welcome back students.
Student Government has a busy semester ahead of us this spring and we are excited to take it on and give you all we got! We have a full senate this semester with Senators Hannah Wolfe-MacPike, Tim Wilson, Naomi Edenshaw, Karey Allen and Griffin Plush with Austin Tagaban as your Vice President and myself, Callie Conerton, as your President.
We want to welcome you to our office every Wednesday for a morning coffee and treats! Stop by for a cup o’ Joe, tea, hot chocolate and a yummy treat. This is a great time to talk to a senate member about anything that you think that the school would benefit from, something you would like changed, or something you would like our support on. We would love to work with you on issues that you are passionate about!
The United Students of the University of Alaska Southeast have our Annual Legislative Affairs Conference that we host with the Coalition of Student Leaders coming up in February. This conference brings together student government leaders from all around the state to advocate on behalf of the University of Alaska at the Alaska legislature. The legislature always loves meeting with students and if you would like to meet with your legislator, we would be more than happy to help you set up an appointment at some point during the legislative session, which started last week and lasts at least until mid April.
There are a couple things to touch on about President Johnson’s new guidelines in terms of hiring and travel. This is mainly in regards to staff and faculty. Students that are traveling with travel grants from student government will not be affected. In most cases student employees will not be affected in terms of the hiring freeze, this freeze is only to main staff and faculty positions. There was a holding period set in place before this but the freeze has been set to follow Governor Walker’s freeze. If you have any more questions about President Johnson’s new guidelines for travel and hiring, please feel free to contact us and we can point you in the right direction if we do not know the answer ourselves.
I would like to urge you to like our Facebook page, stop by our office, and join us for any campus event. It is the best way to know what is going on with Student Government and an easy way to be involved on campus! We do have a couple travel grants that are available for the spring semester. If you need help traveling to a conference or an opportunity that is relevant to your education, again for more info, stop by! If you want to see some more of the action, we have weekly meetings, normally in the Glacier View Room in Egan from 8:30-9:30 on Tuesday mornings. We are just getting into the swing of things here and we are excited for a hopefully sunny spring semester!
We are located in Lower Mourant, in room 214, across the hall from Student Activities Board, by the elevator. If we are not in the office, please feel free to go into the SAB office and talk to our admin, Kayla, or leave a message on the President’s desk. You can reach us by email at: jypes@uas.alaska.edu or by phone at 907-796-6517.