ASO President Sayaka Ridley has a lot on her plate. She is a Southwestern College student, the ASO president and the governing board student trustee, all at 19 years of age. Sun staff sat down with her for a one-on-one interview during which she skillfully addressed topics such as student apathy, Proposition R, voter I.D. and her priorities while in office.
Q: What are the day-to-day responsibilities of being the ASO President?
A: I meet with different constituents on campus, I meet with ASO advisors, I go to the executive meeting – I chair it – and I go to the senate meetings sometimes and I oversee everybody in the ASO.
Q: You replaced the former student trustee, Laura Castillo. How does your platform differ from hers?
A: I wasn’t here when she ran because I’m still pretty new to Southwestern. But I guess the thing that differs is she had many projects lined up, but I think it was kind of overwhelming for their team because they were only able to accomplish one of those projects, which was the calculator rental program. Students now are able to rent calculators. But they had a bunch of other projects, for example: textbook rental, laptop rental programs… stuff like that. Us, we have a few specific ideas we hope to accomplish.
Q: What are those ideas?
A: One of them is broadcasting, of course. We are also trying to finish the projects from last year. For example, the textbook program. You can now rent textbooks in the campus bookstore cheaper – about 40 percent of the retail price. And that was done by the ASO. We purchased a bunch of textbooks and finalized that during the summer with my administration.
Q: Southwestern College just opened up its renovated stadium. It has been two years since we’ve had a football game here. Do you think this is going to help combat student apathy and increase school spirit around campus?
A: Oh, yeah! I think it’s a great idea. Actually, the ASO is going to have its mascot out there, our jaguar. Yeah, I definitely hope it’s going to raise school spirit. We are so glad it came out to be really awesome. I’ve heard a lot of good feedback from the students. They think it’s beautiful, they love it and we are all excited about it.
Q: What are some of the other things that the ASO do to help keep students from becoming apathetic, help them have some jaguar spirit?
A: Yeah, definitely with our activities, for example Welcome Week. We had a really big turnout this year compared to last year because this year we had dance performances, we actually got to have our clubs on campus get involved with the ASO and have them perform there. If you saw there was a huge crowd, everybody was cheering. It was just great. So I think that it helps when we host activities like that it really helps Southwestern College students come together as a community.
Q: Going back to student apathy. I know voter turnout was not very high last year. What are some of the things you guys are looking to do to make sure voter turnout is larger this year?
A: Well actually the reason why the voter turnout was a little bit low this year is because last year they had like six people running against each other. This year there were only two people, so what this means is there were only two parties that were able to publicize about the election. And also our parties were very small, neither of us had a full ticket. That’s why our current ASO team is half Blue (Party) and half Gold (Party).
Q: Here at our school it is required to have a student I.D. to vote and people have criticized that. In (national and statewide) elections judges have struck down voter I.D. laws. What is your opinion on that?
A: Yes, that is something we have been talking about. We’ve actually been wanting to move the elections to online. That way it’s more accessible, it’s more convenient, it’ll be faster, more efficient. That’s a little bit complicated to do, but that’s been something we have been thinking about, it’s been on our mind, and we definitely want to change that.
Q: And would that only require a voter I.D. number?
A: I think so, just a student I.D. number.
Q: What is keeping the paper ballot elections from just verifying based on (a student I.D. number)?
A: I’m not sure. They really don’t want people to double vote. They want it to be as accurate as possible.
Q: You mentioned that you are also the student trustee. Can you talk about what that means?
A: A lot of people don’t know what the student trustee is. It’s really cool. You get to sit on the governing board. The governing board meets once a month and they make final decisions about campus. It’s a really big position. But the student trustee only has an advisory vote. When I vote, it’s just an advisory vote, so I don’t really have a direct impact. But, they (governing board members) do listen to the student trustee because I represent the students at Southwestern College.
Q: Is there any issue that you would take a hardline against the governing board on, if it was brought up, and they disagreed with you? Something you are really passionate about?
A: Well there was a little issue this month about the pools. Because we are going to redo the pools and they wanted to just have two pools, but I thought we should have three pools because it is in our budget and it would generate revenue because we can offer membership for the pools. And so, it was kind of a split vote – I think it was three to two – so I did stand up against that. I’m not afraid to stand up to them if I have a different opinion than them.
Q: Could you talk about the executive positions on the ASO?
A: So the ASO is comprised of the president, six vice presidents and then 22 senators. So we have the executive vice president who is Jacob Alvarado. He is in charge of the senate. We have our social vice president who is Renalyn (Serrano). She is in charge of the activities, for example Welcome Week. Then we have the VP of club affairs, Krista Garrigus. We have Mari Salazar. She’s the executive secretary. We have Matthew Schwimmer, who is the VP of Finance. He just deals with the ASO budget. And we have Leo Pascual, he’s our vice president of public relations, and that’s it.