Correction Appended
The Student Government’s Department of IDEAS is helping four students work to install printers in dorm lobbies, push for conflict-free minerals in the University’s electronics and bring awareness to the Trevor Project.
The Trevor Project is a national hotline for available to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender youth. The Department of IDEAS, or the Initiative for the Discovery, Empowerment, and Advocacy for Students, is connecting these four students to the right people to have their ideas accomplished. The projects are still in their beginning stages.
IDEAS connected Carla Faustino, a freshman in the School of Public Affairs, with the Residence Hall Association to help her advocate for the installation of printers in the lobbies of AU dorms.
Junior in the School of International Service Carly Oboth and junior in SPA Aaron Alberico want to urge the University to avoid buying electronics made with materials imported from conflict zones. Oboth and Alberico have been working with the SG Chief of Staff Phil Carderella and Undergraduate Senators for the Class of 2013, Brett Atanasio and Tim McBride, to pass an SG resolution calling for this initiative.
Atanasio and McBride are still in the process of drafting the resolution.
Lizzie Butler, a sophomore in the School of Communication is working with IDEAS to raise awareness and money for the Trevor Project.
Butler is talking with a representative of the Trevor Project to come up with ideas to implement on campus. IDEAS Director Kristen Cleveland and Butler are working to plan an outreach campaign for next semester.
Cleveland is the sole staffer of IDEAS at the moment. She said the program helps give students authority over their initiatives and credit for their ideas.
Cleveland and Bronstein hope to expand the department by hiring a deputy director and about five staff members by next semester.
Bronstein and Cleveland both believe IDEAS may only serve a temporary place on campus until students have a better understanding of how to work with Student Government and the AU administration.
“Ideally, in two or three years, we won’t even need the IDEAS department because students will know how to get everything accomplished on campus,” said Cleveland.
Former SG President Andy MacCracken and Bronstein, first as director of Outreach in SG and later as president-elect, worked together to create IDEAS.
Before the creation of this department, Bronstein and others in SG knew that there had been a problem when it came to giving credit to students who brought ideas to the organization.
“Someone would come to Student Government with an idea, and they would either hear nothing of it again and nothing would happen with it, or, they would hear about it months later, but only after an executive or someone had spent their entire year championing it,” Bronstein said.
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Correction: Originally this article stated that the Department of IDEAS connected Lizzie Butler to representatives in the Trevor Project to have her ideas accomplished. It now says that Butler, who previously knew a representative in the Trevor Project, is working with IDEAS to implement her projects on campus.
