The Addendum: Motion to Amend (feat. Kyle Saavedra)
Hosted by Raven Yamamoto
For the inaugural episode of The Addendum’s third season, ASLMU’s Speaker of the Senate Kyle Saavedra talks about the proposal that he and his colleagues just passed to change the framework of ASLMU — and the future of student government on the Bluff.
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:
This is the Addendum, Agency's news podcast, where we go beyond the page and to the people and dive deep into the issues that really matter to our lions. And if there's anyone who knows what really matters to our lions it's today's guest, Kyle Saavedra, the speaker of the ASLMU Senate.
If you're wondering what that even means, he's kind of like the Nancy Pelosi of our student government, you know, the one that leads the meetings sets the agenda, manages the other senators and serves as the liaison between the Senate and our student body president Jack Palen and vice-president Elsie Mares.
Kyle joined ASLMU’s programming committee in his first year at LMU, eager to get involved on campus and make an impact.
He went on to become a Senator for the College of Fine Arts his sophomore year before working his way up to the speaker's chair, where he sits today as a junior. Now, as an ASMU veteran, Kyle has seen the incredible things that student government is capable of, but he's also seen its flaws and its shortcomings on an organizational level.
Some of those flaws include having too many positions, unclear job descriptions, little to no interest from students and a lack of compensation for the hours put in by members of ASLMU. On Sunday, January 31st, Kyle and his colleagues passed a bombshell of a proposal that will completely overhaul ASLMU’s, three main branches, the Senate, the Leadership Team and the President's Cabinet. As it stands, the three branches generally work independently to get things done.
Sound familiar? Well, not for long. This new proposal before, primarily by vice-president Elsie Mares calls to consolidate the branches, pay all of its members and make ASLMU, a more collaborative space to affect change on campus among other things. So we get it, changes are being made to ASLMU’s structure, but how does ASMU even work to begin with?
How will it affect us as ASLMU’s constituents? And what do we have to gain from a makeover of our student government? Let's find out.
I'm Raven Yamamoto and I'm Kyle Saavedra. And this is the addendum.
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Hi Kyle. Thank you so much for being here.
Hi, thanks so much for having me.
What are the different branches of ASLMU?
The way that ASLMU is currently broken down now is that we have our Senate branch, which serves as the main legislative body. We have our president's cabinet, which are all appointed positions by whichever president and vice president are elected at that time.
And then we also have our leadership team, and this is composed of our CPO, CCO, CFO, Attorney General, the speaker of the Senate, me, sits on that as well. And then our president and vice president too. And our elections chair and our secretary. Cannot forget Nicole, fabulous person. And then we also have our judicial board as well, which handles any sort of internal conflict that goes on with ASLMU, which has our chief justice and then five associate justices.
So that's four branches if I counted correctly.
Yes. The judicial branch kind of sits separate because that sort of serves as an internal check on conduct that happens with Senate, Cabinet, all that good stuff.
Has this ever been done before? Has anybody ever tried to change the structure of ASLMU?
So it actually has happened before the current structure of ASLMU is actually very new to LMU’s campus.
It was introduced a couple of years ago, but the idea of a president's cabinet on our student government is a very new thing. And so because of that, we have kind of seen some of the flaws and inconsistencies in that structure, which has led us to this reorg proposal.
What are some of those problems?
So some of the biggest problems that we've found when we were kind of looking at the structure of ASLMU, and I do have to get credit here to our vice president, Elsie Mares, because she is the one who really brought up this idea and was like, there's a lot of problems that are stifling our progress, and we want to do what's best for future administrations.
And so some of the limitations that we kind of notice with the current structure of ASLMU is that there's a lack of interaction between our cabinet and our Senate branches. It's not that they never have the chance to cross paths. It's just that a lot of the time, Senate is focused on passing resolutions and doing their own projects in their own constituencies, and cabinet is focused mostly on doing their own projects in their constituencies.
So the only times that we really ever overlap is if there's a resolution that is calling upon work that cabinet has done, or senators are jumping onto a committee with cabinet, but we want to make sure that there's a little bit more of access in between those.
We also noticed that the size of ASLMU is so big for our population size. There's just too many cooks in the kitchen and we really need to kind of figure out a way to make it more efficient and keep people engaged throughout the entire administration year.
So you're talking about the size of ASLMU. How many people are in ASLMU actually, as it stands?
So in total, on our Senate branch, we have 21 senators and this includes the speaker of the Senate. On our cabinet we have, I believe, nine directors. I mean, those were directors for different areas of interest. And then on our leadership team, we have our secretary and our AG. Then we have three chief positions, as well as having the speaker sit on the election's chair.
And then we also have, you know, our advisor, but he doesn’t technically count as a part of ASLMU, but he advises and oversees a lot of students. So not only is that a lot of people to manage for the speaker positions and the president on our advisor position as well. It's a lot of students to kind of rally and give their full support to all at once.
If I did the mental math correctly, that's near 40 people.
Yeah, that would be correct.
Then let's talk about the proposal. The big thing I noticed was that the cabinet, there is a big change in terms of how they were appointed, or members of the cabinet are appointed. Instead of it being appointed by President, VP, it's calling for it to be an elected body. I assume that means by the students?
Yes. So the biggest change with this reorg proposal is that we want to move. ASLMU from this cabinet model to more of a commissioner model or vice-president model.
And so the way that that kind of works is that rather than having nine appointed positions, you would have four elected vice-president positions.
And so each of these four VPs. Would be responsible for different aspects of the student experience.
So you would have a vice president of academic affairs and below them, they would have reps from each of our colleges on campus.
You would also have the vice president of cultural affairs injustice with reps underneath them, such as international students, rep immigration justice advocate, and then two cultural justice
staff that are actually hired by that Vice-president.
You also have two more such as the vice-president of sustainability and operations. They would have three sustainability staff underneath them. And then we also have our vice president of student wellness, which would have a wellness Wednesday manager, which includes our wellness Wednesday market, as well as three other wellness staff.
We condensed a lot of the positions in cabinet into four primary vice-president positions with their own respective staffs.
Obviously, it's very much downsizing the Senate. So it's going from, from what I believe is 21 senators to nine. Is that correct?
That is correct. Yeah.
The reasoning for that is that right now, Senate is a bloated body on ASLMU.
I can also speak from my own experience being on Senate last year. Yeah, 21 senators is too much.
And transitioning from being the Senator of CFA from last year to becoming a Senator at large and speaker of the Senate, I can say that managing 20 other senators can also be quite a hassle.
The reason why we reduce it from 21 to nine also has a lot to do with accountability, but also wanting all these positions to be paid.
That was the main reason for downsizing Senate, um, was to be able to make it more efficient, get people more motivated to pass more legislation, and also get things done and have to avoid the sort of headaches of last-minute resignations or not being able to fill spots and then spend our first three weeks of the fall semester just going over applications.
Which I'll be fully honest has happened in the past.
My question though, is that, so it's going from 21 to nine, what positions are being kept? So, what are those nine senator slots, and what's going to happen to the rest of them.
So, the way that we are thinking we're kind of rethinking ASL on you is that all of the senators will just be general senators at large.
So, no constituency attached to that, but the catch is that all of those constituencies that we have had represented in Senate, are now being moved under the commissioner vice-president model. So everyone will still have representation we're just moving them into the VP’s. So that way they can do a lot more project-based advocacy for their respective constituencies.
The reason for this is that we want Senate to become more of simply a legislative body. So responsible for drafting resolutions, approving our budgets each semester. You know, if there's things that come up serving as an accountability board, if any sort of impeachment were to happen in the future.
Is everyone going to have to run again for those nine spots if they want to stay on the student government?
This will be for next year. Everyone is going to finish out their terms, the structure of ASLMU will stay the same under the Palen and Mares administration. So, this proposal, if passed, would then set up elections later. This semester, Bryce Catalano, who is our elections chair, would be going through drafting new roles and responsibilities for positions with the help of everyone. that was a part of the proposal.
And so moving forward and said that there being 21 positions to run for Senate, it'll just be nine general Senate positions.
Jack Palen mentioned that he wanted all of student leadership to be paid. So, I know that some positions in student government or ASLMU are paid and some are not. Which ones are in which ones aren't, and why?
Okay. At the moment, the positions that are paid on ASLMU are the leadership team roles. So this includes obviously the president and the vice president, all of those that sit on leadership team, a couple of other positions that are paid are each of the sort of chief positions, such as our CCO, CPO and CFO have their own staff.
Those members are also paid too. That's kind of the thing that we were thinking about going into this proposal is that no cabinet members and no Senate members are paid except for the speaker of the Senate. And so that's kind of where we saw the discrepancy of, “all right, we need to work on how we can get everyone paid because no one's work is more important than someone else's.”
And also too, most students are working two, three jobs, like I'm working three different jobs and I would love to be involved in student government as much as I can. But if there's no financial compensation, it can really put a strain on how much you can get involved on campus.
Where would the money come from to get people paid?
The way that the proposal was set up is that we had the allocation of a new budget or how much of a proposed budget in the future would actually go towards salaries. And so we put that in our proposal so that when the next administration is figuring out their budget and they receive the amount from LMU of how much ASLMU is getting that year, they'll already know going in “okay, They wanted people paid. This is a must, first. And then the rest of the budget will go to everything that people know and love about ASLMU.”
Do you think that this would maybe increase interest in participating in ASLMU? And is that important to you?
Absolutely. I think that by us being able to compensate most and all, almost all positions on ASLMU, that'll be another incentive for people to want to run and be a part of it because they could look at it as another one of their jobs on campus or even their main job.
So there's a lot of motivation behind that financial compensation, as well as an attached accountability. Now that things are unpaid, people could just be like, “all right, I'm out, this isn’t interesting anymore.” But if you're being paid for the work that you're doing, there's, there's that added layer of reward.
When you feel a little bit more motivated to get initiatives done and kind of do a lot more advocacy-based stuff, which is the main goal. You know, as much as we love all of our programming and traditional ASLMU events, we really want to steer ASMU into being an advocacy-based student organization.
Can you tell me a little bit more about what you mean by advocacy?
Based I've noticed in this past year is that we have a lot of students come in wanting to do big ambitious projects, which is kind of the purpose, why we run for ASLMU. So, what I mean when I say that advocacy is kind of the big thing that we're turning ASLMU into, is that we want to have students at every table on campus, whether that's faculty meetings, administrative meetings, we want to make sure that student voices are heard across campus.
And we have a say in decisions that are being made for us because we're paying tuition. We are students of this university and we do a lot for this university too. And we want to make sure that LMU understands that. So by turning ASLMU more into an advocacy based thing, we give, um, people that are elected in these positions, more agency to sign up for those meetings and bring their own ideas to the table.
We've had a lot of things on campus we wanted to do such as the menstrual hygiene project. That was actually pushed into under the last administration. We want more of those types of projects on campus. Divest LMU is another example. We want to give students more agency to bring our social justice emphasis that LMU always talks about into action on our own campus.
Why do you think this is so important? I'm wondering what makes you so passionate about this change and why you think it should happen?
We're all thinking of the future of ASLMU. And we're thinking of the future of LMU, too. What I've noticed in my own experience on ASMU is it's great that we have a lot of people and you know, I love Fallapalooza, love After Sunset, but I don't want the student body to only think of ASLMU as, “Oh, they throw two concerts a year and that's it.”
So by reorganizing the structure of ASLMU, We'll be more efficient at doing a lot more advocacy-based projects. And we'll also be able to have more of a voice on campus than we already do with our Senate branch. You know, we pass resolutions and those are big ways of kind of showing where students stand on issues, both on and off the bluff.
But we want to make sure that our voices are heard every single day that we can. And it is a pressing issue because, you know, In two years, I'm not going to, or even one year I'm not going to be on the bluff anymore. So I want to make sure that incoming students are excited about student government and I want to see change happen across our campus.
So I'm very passionate about that.
Well, thank you so much for being here, Kyle.
Thank you so much for having me.
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Well, there, you have it lions a new year, seemingly promises new changes for our student government. Now that the proposal has officially been passed by the Senate. As of this past Sunday, our ASM viewers are going to have their hands full, making their vision a reality. It sure. To make for an interesting campaign season in the coming months to when a student body decides who will be tasked with managing this new and improved ASL AMU you on Instagram will be reporting on new developments as they come.
And you won't want to miss it. I'm Raven Yamamoto. This has been the Addendum.
AGENCY turns one
By Raven Yamamoto
On Jan. 22, the editors of AGENCY met for the first time. Some of us didn’t know each other previously, others did. We all met over coffee at the Den, which feels so strange to say now, and introduced ourselves over caffeinated drinks. I remember ordering a warm mint mocha with oat milk and sitting at a table across from four other people who were all curious to know what “the plan” was.
I didn’t have one.
All I had was an idea. As we each added a piece of ourselves to the project, it became something greater than we could have ever imagined, a journey that would prove to be difficult, but worth every moment.
I don’t usually center my own voice when it comes to any outward communication from AGENCY. I try to quietly write articles and make podcasts and let others shine because I’ve always seen AGENCY as a collective voice rather than mine or anyone else’s alone. But today I feel the need to speak to our readers directly in a way that I hope feels sincere.
Today, AGENCY is celebrating its one-year anniversary. Our first birthday, if you will. Without any kind of institutional funding or backing, we somehow managed to survive for an entire trip around the sun, and cultivate a small but fierce team of reporters, writers, videographers, photographers, editors, and podcasters. It’s been a labor of love, but a fruitful one to say the least.
I’m confident that each of us can say that we’ve poured countless hours into AGENCY, many of which have gone uncompensated, and put our all into making the platform you see today. But I want to tell you all a little more about the people behind the scenes while I share my thanks for each and every one of them that has been with us up until today.
I started AGENCY with the help of some of the best people I know.
I met Megan when I was in my first year of college, when I didn’t know who I was. But she accepted me anyway. She was everything I wanted to be and still is. Yem was the cool kid in class I didn’t think I’d ever have a shot at being friends with. But when she told me she wanted to help out with that “little publication” I had in the works, everything changed. Kellie became my little when she joined our service organization and we’ve been inseparable since. It’s been an honor to see her grow and want to be a part of something I created. Robyn, my work spouse, has been by my side from the moment we met, when we used to work at another newspaper that won’t be named. He was my section editor and I was his trusty assistant that made plenty—and I mean plenty—of mistakes. Robyn forgave me every time. And Lauree Anne was my first friend at LMU. Her roommate recognized me from orientation and introduced us to each other because we’re both from Hawai’i. It was friendship at first sight. We have the Bluff sunset photos to prove it.
I asked each of them to help take the lead on this project because they each had one thing in common: heart. I knew that when each of them put their minds to something, they went after it with everything they had. They were also all very different from one another both in lived experiences and interests. But whatever they decided to do in life, they did it well. Whether it was writing, organizational skill, artistry, management, or just being a team player—they were the best of the best. Even if I only got one of them to join me, the project would have a shot at success. With all of them on board, I knew we’d make it.
The incredible team that you all see in our bylines today came after weeks of begging people to take a chance on us when all we had was an Instagram story flyer we made on Canva. They believed in our mission, and for that, I’m truly thankful.
Clara, our amazing video department director. Nick and Simone, the hosts of our newest podcast that they started all on their own. Christina, a fiction-writer-turned-reporter. Jenica, Daisy, and Autumn, who make our articles look good (literally). Danica, the only person I know who’s as crazy as I am for news. Isa, who writes in a way that commands attention without fail every time. Jolie, an unstoppable force of nature that can seemingly do anything and everything. Erica, a fearless advocate for accessibility. Harrison, our deputy copy editor and occasional op-ed writer (if the stars align). And Ray, who does math for those of us who can’t.
Somewhere along the line, we also snagged the two coolest advisors in the world: Tara and Lalo, who believed in us when no one else did. They’re the coolest parents you could ever ask for. So cool, in fact, that they hang out with us in our Discord server.
Without any of these people, AGENCY wouldn’t be what it is today.
But without any of you, we wouldn’t exist. Our following means a lot to us, especially our Patreon subscribers that have invested in us monetarily. Both forms of support have allowed us to continue the work we do for as long as we have, and it’s still beyond me that people are so supportive of our work when we started with next to nothing.
I googled some anniversary quotes to see if I could find anything to use as the crux of this letter that wasn’t nauseating to read. I came across this one, which is pretty cheesy, but I don’t mind, since I am being sentimental:
“The best thing to hold onto in life is each other.”
Our community has faced adversity like never before this past year. Students were displaced in a rushed evacuation from campus in March. Seniors had their dream of walking across a graduation stage ripped away from them in May. Our undocumented students were excluded from the federal stimulus in June. Our Black students experienced trauma that prompted the uprisings in June. Our international students faced deportation in July. Our first-years had their dreams of a true college experience crushed in August. Our Armenian students watched with horror as war took over their homeland in October. All of us struggled to navigate the stress of the most recent election and the anxiety that came with it in November.
But we held on to each other and made it to the finish line in December. Between raising $50,000 for Black Lives Matter-related causes, sending aid money to Armenia, making wellness support groups for marginalized students, organizing for institutional change, and creating a virtual support system for each other in a time of need, you all have found a way to be there for each other. It’s been an honor to witness that and to document it in our reporting. It is a privilege to be your voice.
Admittedly, that quote is usually used in the context of a wedding anniversary, so maybe it doesn’t necessarily apply to the occasion. But I don’t know that AGENCY’s founding and a wedding are all that different. Jan. 22 was the day we committed to the values we were founded on. It was the day we committed ourselves to serving our community. It was the day that we committed to lifting up others’ voices and inviting others in.
Today we are renewing that commitment.
Thank you for your support. It means more than you’ll ever know. If we’ve made even one person feel heard that didn’t feel heard before, I feel that we’ve done our job and fulfilled our purpose.
I sincerely hope that we have.
Raven
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| Photo: Nick Canchola |
By Nick Canchola
So, we finally did it. Recreational marijuana is now legal in Arizona and a couple of other states. But what does this really mean?
First, let’s take a look at the history of weed-related ballots in AZ. Way back in 2010, Arizonans passed Proposition 203, the Arizona Medical Marijuana Initiative. This bill narrowly passed, with a 50.1 to 49.9% split, and faced a slew of legal issues in the following years. Sen. Jan Brewer filed a lawsuit against Proposition 207 that was later dropped, looking to clarify the legality of marijuana. Former Arizona State Representative Amanda Reeve also proposed her own house bill, seeking to make it illegal “to lawfully possess or use marijuana on the campus of any public university, college, community college, or post-secondary educationa institution.” However, this was struck down as unconstitutional by the Arizona Supreme Court.
In 2016, the Arizona Marijuana Legalization Initiative, an initiative statute seeking legalization of recreational marijuana, was narrowly defeated by 3 points. The Smart and Safe Act, a similar but much more robust proposition, was finally approved in Arizona’s most recent 2020 elections. The passing of Proposition 207 resulted in the legalization of recreational marijuana for those 21 years and older. Additionally, the proposition assigned all marijuana regulation to the Arizona Department of Health Services (DHS) and created a 16% tax on all marijuana sales divided between the following: community college districts, municipal police, sheriff and fire departments, fire districts, the state's Highway User Revenue Fund, and a new Justice Reinvestment Fund.
Four years ago, Proposition 205 mistakenly had no mention of criminal justice reform. Regarding those impacted by the justice system, today’s Proposition 207 now allows anyone convicted of certain marijuana-related crimes—possession, consumption, cultivation, and transportation—to petition the expungement of their criminal record starting on July 12, 2021.
While this is all great, there are a couple of areas where Proposition 207 falls short.
The economic aspects of Proposition 207 still enable the monopolization of largely white-owned marijuana distributors. In an attempt to combat this, Proposition 207 also requires the state to issue 26 licenses under a social equity ownership program. This social equity ownership program’s purpose is to aid owners from “communities disproportionately impacted by the enforcement of previous marijuana laws.” While most other states have similar programs to address the racial inequities around marijuana, do these programs really promote real change? Marijuana Business Daily explains the flaws in these programs, “And even cities that have awarded social equity licenses are still lacking the capital support those businesses need to succeed in a hypercompetitive market.” The root of inequality in the Marijuana industry isn’t due to a lack of licenses, but rather, a lack of business and legal resources for minority-owners to compete for long-term, against more established marijuana dispensaries.
The aspects of Proposition 207 that address criminal reform could also be stronger. In 2019, the percentage of marijuana-related prosecutions in Arizona was at 22%, which ranked second in all drug-related prosecutions in the state. Additionally, Arizona had the 4th largest incarceration rate at 585 per 100,000 people. With this in mind, Proposition 207 only distributes 10% of the revenue generated from tax to the Justice Reinvestment Fund. In a state where incarceration is a massive issue, is 10% enough? Upon further inspection, expunging marijuana records might be more difficult than perceived. 12 News writes that expungement only applies to convictions with less than an ounce. But in many cases, “court records don’t show how much marijuana someone actually had.” Sadly, this tiny detail could prevent many Arizonans from clearing their records if they don’t have sufficient legal resources or enough evidence proving they were arrested with an ounce or less of marijuana.
When will Arizona citizens be able to purchase recreational weed products?
Steve White, the CEO of Tempe-based cannabis company Harvest Health and Recreation, told The Arizona Republic that business licenses will most likely be issued by late March or early April 2021.
While the Smart and Safe Act is a step in the right direction towards ending the war on drugs, there is still a lot of progress to be made. Chandler Smith from the Arizona State Law Journal points out that “[AZ] DHS has not announced the details and requirements of the social equity ownership program,” so there's still time to pressure the state to make policy adjustments. Smith suggests a “mentorship program with local attorneys who want to assist social equity ownership license holders with regulatory compliance.” This mentorship program would provide tax incentives for real estate businesses, give access to financial services and human resource training, and establish rules that prevent fraud as similar laws are passed around the country.
The fight for cannabis rights is far from over. And even when left-leaning laws and propositions are passed that seem progressive, continue investigating and questioning all policies.
‘We are in a new normal’: Students struggle to make it to the finish line with heavy workloads and high expectations
Tuesday, December 15, 2020
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| Photo: Lizzie Bromley |
'We are in a new normal’: Students struggle to make it to the finish line with heavy workloads and high expectations
By Raven Yamamoto
When sophomore Andrea Villegas-Ospina got an email notifying her that she was on academic probation, her mind immediately went to her legal status.
An international student from Bogota, Colombia, Villegas-Ospina is one of many Lions that have fallen behind in their schoolwork under a myriad of stressors during the pandemic. Between living entirely in her bedroom and an increased workload from professors, Villegas-Ospina struggles to find the motivation to open her laptop everyday and login to Brightspace.
With finals week now in full-force, she worries about her ability to catch up on her ever-increasing number of assignments.
“I think I am allowed to be lazy if that's what they want to call it, and everyone should be regardless of their situation right now,” she said. “It's not the time to have students be defined by their grades.”
Villegas-Ospina says that even if she were to take a leave of absence or transfer to a different school, she could face deportation because her student visa directly depends on her academic performance at LMU. With international travel restrictions constantly changing due to COVID-19, she could also become unable to go home or later return to the U.S.
“If I take a leave of absence, I can't be in the country,” she said. “There are so many more things at risk; it's not just me taking a leave of absence and leaving my dorm.”
Villegas-Ospina is not the only student struggling to make it to the finish line this fall. Experts report that prolonged virtual learning has had an increasingly negative impact on college students who have faced overwhelming workloads from professors, mental health challenges due to isolation from usual support systems, and difficulty focusing on school amidst home life. After LMU confirmed that Spring 2021 will be mostly online, many students questioned whether or not they can survive another semester of remote learning—let alone get through finals week.
Junior Ti’Lar Jackson has a lot on her plate in the coming days with four final exams, two final projects, and a 6-10 page final essay due by the end of the week. Jackson says her workload from this semester has felt more stressful than it would have if classes were in-person. Combined with how students were given very few days off from school this semester, Jackson says she’s been too busy trying to keep up with deadlines to retain much information from her assignments—many of which weren’t graded until later in the term.
“That’s how I knew there was too much work being assigned—when professors couldn’t even keep up with grading themselves,” Jackson said.
While Jackson says that things could have been worse homework-wise, she wishes more professors took into consideration how students were being affected by external pressures such as the pandemic, the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, and the presidential election.
“We are in a new normal,” Jackson said. "The semester shouldn’t have been approached as if it were business as usual.”
Sophomore Gabby Kaatz says that the virtual learning landscape has weighed heavily on her mental health, to such an extent that she’s had to drop a class. Kaatz, a film production major, lived alone on-campus for most of the semester. For Kaatz, feelings of loneliness and isolation have made even the smallest assignments feel “enormous.”
While her professors have been mostly accommodating deadline-wise, Kaatz wishes they were more willing to consider the unique circumstances that affect each student's performance. She believes this would immensely benefit students like herself whose living situations hinder their learning.
“We're not on an equal playing field,” she said. “To assume that we're all in the same situation would not be fair.”
ASLMU Speaker of the Senate Kyle Saavedra saw an increase in his personal workload before students like Villegas-Ospina and Jackson began approaching him with similar experiences. Saavedra says ASLMU was approached by multiple students asking them to take action.
Saavedra notes that when he brought the issue to his professors that most didn’t realize how widespread the sentiment was among students. For Saavedra, professors were very receptive to the feedback. The Speaker says he has also discussed possible solutions with Dr. David Sapp, the Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, and that ASLMU hopes to communicate with faculty over the break to improve student academic experiences come spring.
“I think if we bring more awareness for next semester, maybe things will change with their syllabi,” Saavedra said.
In reflecting on her experiences this semester, Jackson says she was often asked how she was doing by her professors at the beginning of class. When she was honest with them about her academic challenges, she was told that it was all “part of life as an adult.” But Jackson doesn’t see it that way.
“In March, the world stopped for a reason,” she said. “This is our opportunity to communicate, build, and create a better environment for ourselves. If students say the online curriculum is too demanding, now is the time to change it and make it effective for online learning.”
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