In February, a new Western Washington University Associated Students Charter was signed for the first time since 2010.
The charter was signed by Western President Sabah Randhawa, Associated Students President Keara Ryan and Senate President Gabe Wong, and enabled a change in the AS Constitution, which was approved last spring and entered into effect at the beginning of the school year.
Programs such as the campus radio station KUGS, the Outdoor Center, Club Activities, Wavelength and Arts and Music Productions, formerly Associated Students Productions, are now under Student Engagement purview.
Student Engagement began as a department for staff about a year ago, according to Casey Hayden, associate director of student activities. Before, the Viking Union staff as a whole supported the AS programs and governance.
“The Viking Union structure kind of broke into three parts, or restructured into Student Engagement, the Associated Students governance and the Viking Union,” Hayden said.
He added that the changes in staff organization happened before the new AS Charter and Constitution.
Some of the student programs, such as the Arts and Music Productions, rebranded over the summer to accommodate the change in oversight.
Francesca Flamini, a third-year Western student and the AMP’s assistant director for marketing and assessment, said she hasn’t noticed a significant difference in her office's functioning.
“The biggest change has been that we don’t have the Communications Office anymore because that was the AS comms office,” Flamini said. “So my way to promote things has [become] different because there’s not this big AS-wide, Viking Union Office community.”
The AS has taken different forms throughout its history. In the 1930s, members of the student government secretly registered the AS as a nonprofit corporation without faculty approval, according to Melynda Huskey, vice president for enrollment and student services.
In the 2010s, the student government let the nonprofit status lapse. Since then, remnants of that system, such as the AS Board of Directors, have phased out over time.
“The change really is more catching up with what was happening than a major shift in the work or how it’s done,” said Huskey. “I think of it as a kind of tidying up.”
A notice that appears above program websites that are now overseen by Student Engagement instead of Associated Students.The links lead to the AS government webpage and the university’s news release about the changes, respectively. // Photo courtesy of WWU website
The University of Washington’s Associated Students, which was established in 1906 and is one of the oldest in the county, is still run as a nonprofit, according to UW Student Activities Advisor Brendan Chang.
Huskey, Hayden, and AS advisor Adam Lorio each said that Western students in the AS have been considering restructuring since at least 2015.
The new AS Constitution established a new permanent body called the Conference Committee, which works as a go-between for the executive board and the senate. Both AS presidents and their vice chairs sit on the committee, said AS Senate President Moose Abou-Harb.
“[It’s] sort of like a working group to resolve issues and discrepancies between work that the executive board and the senate does, and also is a good starting point for a lot of those cross-body decisions that government makes,” said Abou-Harb.
The senate deals with academic student concerns and affairs, whereas the exec board covers university operations concerning students more broadly.
Abou-Harb and Lorio hope the changes will facilitate more effective student governance.
“You go back to the previous AS operational models where your elected leaders were also responsible for supervising program offices with the same amount of allocated time, so how do you focus on both of those deeply and to the best service of every student?” Lorio said.
Programs that were receiving funding from student fees through the AS will continue to be funded by those student fees.
Abou-Harb said that if students are interested in the changes to their representation, they should get involved with the AS. He recommends attending weekly meetings, sending in questions to the representative for your college or serving on either body.
There are two senator positions open for the Woodring College of Education and graduate students. There are also openings for the role of Vice President of Student Services and Vice President of Operations.
“Being on the inside and seeing the passion that these students have and their desire for the administration to really have a conduit to listen to student voices has been super impactful,” said Lorio.
Seddie LeBlanc (they/she) is a senior reporter on the City News beat this quarter. They have previously reported and edited Campus News and edited Opinions. Seddie is in her fourth year at Western studying Journalism and minoring in Law, Diversity and Justice. In her free time, Seddie enjoys being outside, being with buddies and reading Substack. You can reach them at seddieleblanc.thefront@gmail.com.
