Although the Associated Students of Whitman College (ASWC) feels confident that it is addressing many of students’ short-term goals for the College, they have begun plans to create a student committee to discuss some long-term goals for Whitman and ASWC.
In order for a student to be considered to become a part of the committee, he or she must apply for a position and be interviewed. The main criterion to join the committee is that the student should be interested in the future of Whitman and ASWC.
The committee will be composed of a diverse group of students with varied interests.
“We’re trying to get a group of students from a wide variety of campus backgrounds, from clubs, athletes, Greek, non-Greek. Sort of all across the board of grade levels, and we want to bring all these students together in order to create long-term goals for the college and ASWC from the students’ perspective,” said ASWC first-year senator Jack Percival.
“We are speaking with two professors and the Student Engagement Center to ask for help on understanding the goal-setting process and the importance of it, getting some basic skills on how to start and background information. We want the committee to have the full resources to start making the goals,” said ASWC Vice President and Student Affairs Chairman senior Marcial DÃaz MejÃa.
They hope that the committee will have met, finished basic training and begun discussing some specific goals by spring break.
“[The committee] was a long-term goal for this particular administration from the beginning of the year, and it was a second-semester project,” Percival said.
By the end of this semester, DÃaz MejÃa and Percival hope that some of the goals discussed by the committee will be presented to the Senate for consideration. Although the committee is separate from the Senate and ASWC, the goals that the committee comes up with must pass through the regular channels to be approved.
“It will be different from the ASWC Senate. At the same time, the committee is going to present these goals and the Senate is going to have time to review them before the last Senate, and we are going to present them at the last Senate,” DÃaz MejÃa said.
DÃaz MejÃa is confident that the addition of such a committee will be beneficial for the student body as a whole.
“We understand that each [year] ASWC might have different goals, and we don’t want to shut that down. But we just want to give people a more comprehensive vision and the knowledge that goals can be expanded into longer-term goals,” said DÃaz MejÃa.
