Being ASSU Exec is a job and we will treat it like one. We are both taking minimum course loads and turned down summer internship offers to stay on campus and start working.
We care about social impact. At Stanford, impact means something different to everyone, which needs to be shared and celebrated. But first, we need to fix what's broken and connect what already exists so that we can live our impact fully.
FIX
Health
We need a culture where asking for help is respected, easy and happens often.
SolutionsFunding
Getting funding should be appropriately rigorous but not confusing.
SolutionsAdvising
Your advisors should readily put you on the right track.
SolutionsCONNECT
Students to Events
You can’t go if you don’t know.
SolutionsStudents to Students
How can we maintain the strong freshman bond for all 4 years?
SolutionsCommunities to Communities
We want to integrate the different communities within Stanford.
SolutionsBUILD
Pipeline to Impact Careers
Make it easy to use our skills and passions to tackle great challenges.
Dining/Grounds/Custodial Staff
Work to advocate for the needs of those who make our Stanford lives possible.
Impact Exploration Days
Spread awareness and build passion by facilitating quarterly forums for Haas and student public service leaders.
Academic Impact Units
Optional units in classes throughout disciplines for students to work on real world projects in social impact.
HOW?
Listen
Students know what they need. We just need to listen.
Not Reinventing the Wheel
So much work has been done - we must support it. Redundancy is our greatest nightmare and we will focus on the research which is critical to responsible change-making.
Test Test Test!
All of these ideas won't work. Proof of concept comes from frequent, low-budget testing.
SolutionsWhat we've heard.
"People only get help when they're on the brink of suicide. Or have already tried. Isn't that too late?"
"Asking for help is a sign of weakness here."
Our solutions
What we've heard.
"The obsession of being busy breeds apathy."
"We should have a mandatory light quarter - no one does that for themselves."
Our solutions
What we've heard.
“We’re facing a sexual assault crisis here, but you literally cannot tell.”
Our solutions
What we've heard.
“Where does all our money go? Seeing that breakdown shouldn’t be so hard.”
“How do I start? Is there like a 5 step process?”
Our solutions
What we've heard.
“SAFE means we spend less per quarter, can ask for money more often, and don’t let so much just sit!”
“SAFE makes me nervous because we won’t know at the beginning of the year if we’ll get the money we need.”
Our solutions
What we've heard.
“We should learn from the systems within Stanford, like the Club Sports model.”
Our solutions
What we've heard.
“My PMA is nice, but when I asked them about the classes I need to take for my major, and maybe a random one for fun, they just didn’t know. I feel like I’m missing out.”
Our solutions
What we've heard.
“Even after my PMA, I still felt lost. I had declared but had a lot more questions.”
Our solutions
What we've heard.
“I just want to know what’s going on!!! I hear about things the day after.”
“I hate getting email blasts about events, so I’ve just started deleting them all.”
Our solutions
What we've heard.
“Please, not another app!”
Our solutions
What we've heard.
“What happens after freshman year? That I-want-to-meet-everyone-I-see mentality vanishes and you stop meeting new people.”
“Campus is so big, keeping track of friends living from Suites to Mireles is tough.”
Our solutions
What we've heard.
“It’s rare to find a campus that has a Columbae across from a Sigma Chi. I love how close my house is, but we rarely talk to other houses or dorms.”
What we've heard.
“Being a D1 athlete means total focus. But the few team-wide events, like date auction, are fun. It’d be cool to see more of that.”
Our solutions
What we've heard.
“I’ve led SENECA for a year now and am frustrated that there is no connection between our club and SWIB, for example. We care about the same issue, but from a different lense. It’d be awesome to collaborate, if we know how to connect.”
Our solutions
What we've heard.
“We know how to connect, but in 2008 we moved to the 80/20 funding system and haven’t gone back. That’s a problem.”
Our solutions
It is not just what we want to do but also how we want to do it that matters.
Redundancy is our greatest nightmare! Some ASSU initiatives that we are excited to continue:
- Logo redesign (work of cabinet member ‘13-’14 Kaia Simmons)
- Techie/Fuzzie divide (work of cabinet member ‘13-’14 Henock Dory)
- Health initiative focused on art (ASSU health committee)
- Pre-major advising redesign (ASSU Academic Committee)
- Funding reform
We are learning about new initiatives every day and are excited to continue to add to this list. Let us know if you see any redundancies!
Getting to effective and long-lasting solutions is not accomplished through lots of meetings. We believe in gathering as many ideas from as many sources as possible and trying them all out. This means being willing to risk and to fail, but that’s learning and leads to progress.
An update! We are excited to partner with PhD David Lee and team to implement Synapp.
"Synapp is a community-centered platform for large-scale ideation and decision-making in which brainstorming takes place through simple, distributed actions. These actions can range from just simply rating existing ideas, to inputting new ideas, iterating on others' ideas, or even prompting small groups of individuals to meet up in person.
The distributed nature of the event allows brainstorming to scale up to thousands or millions of users, while the simplicity enables anyone to contribute at anytime. Actions are assigned by algorithms developed to maximize the quality of the global brainstorming output as measured by different metrics."
Elizabeth Woodson
Elizabeth is a junior majoring in STS. She lives at French House and is a member of the dance group, Chocolate Heads!
Logan Richard
Logan is a junior majoring in International Relations. He will be a freshman RA in JRO next year!
Q. When is voting?
Vote at ballot.stanford.edu. VOTING IS OPEN NOW!
Q. Where should I check for campaign updates?
We post important updates on our Facebook page
Q. This is awesome! I want to help! How can I get involved with your campaign?
YOU’RE AWESOME-ER (yeah, we just made up a word, but you deserve it). Contact our campaign manager, Elizabeth Carls at ecarls@stanford.edu.
Q. How do I get in touch?
Elizabeth Woodson: ewoodson@stanford.edu 203-246-3587
Logan Richard: ltr1065@stanford.edu 650-704-0625
Endorsed by: FLIP The Happiness Collective Fossil Free Stanford