Just because...

It's pretty common for new student leaders to want change. They come into their positions and have lots of ideas about how to improve their organizations.

Unfortunately, a lot of time the "change" is just for the heck of it. They just want to make their mark without doing any research to prove the change is wanted or needed.

An example: I just saw that the SGA at St. Cloud State University is not only changing its constitution (I'm guessing that at least half of SGs across America change their constitutions each year), but they're actually changing their name.

If their name were "student parliament" or "Student Council" (which brings up memories of high school), I could understand. But they're changing from the very-clear name "Student Government Association" to "Student Association."

My experience is that now they'll have to explain that Student Association is the student government for SCSU. Changing from SGA, which is clear to everyone who sees Student Government Association, to Student Association will muddy the waters for this organization. They'll have to spend time explaining to students, administrators, faculty, and staff that they are the student government.

In the newspaper article I read about this upcoming change, I saw no evidence whatsoever that the SGA there made any effort to determine if fellow students were having trouble understanding their name or their role. I saw no proof that they surveyed anyone, had a marketing class conduct research or focus groups, or anything beyond "let's change because..."

They're making a major, major change (your name is about as major a change as you can make) without any research to prove that it is either needed or warranted.

Making a change "just because" is just not good leadership.

The evolution of ASGA

ASGA will be six years old this March 2010.

Until now, most of my focus as executive director has been in creating the organization, developing services, and creating policy. It has been more than a full-time job, to say the least.

But my work with ASGA is evolving. Now, I spend much less time on "creating" and "marketing" the organization. ASGA has become the recognized "standard," the only national organization serving and supporting collegiate student governments. We have earned credibility and respect from much of the higher education community.

This respect is reflected in our constantly growing membership. We now have 900 member institutions, which is four-times larger than USSA or ASACC, which are primarily lobbying organizations. We produce 10 conferences, which is more than all of the other student government conferences combined.

Our credibility is also reflected in our very high renewal rates for member institutions. Just a handful of institutions don't renew their ASGA memberships, and this is usually because they're experiencing severe budget limitations. They usually want to be ASGA members, but just can't financially.

Now, my role is more about serving those members through consulting, research, answering questions, and helping them solve problems. This is what I always envisioned it would be like as ASGA evolved.

Within another year, I predict that 80 percent of my time will be spent on answering member questions and helping them with research instead of coming up with recruiting and marketing strategies to spread the word about ASGA. This is exciting! This is why I do what I do!

The needs of the one...

Just got back from ASGA's National Student Government Summit in DC. It was the largest training conference we've ever produced, with 555 registrants from 101 institutions in 35 states. The entire ASGA staff and nearly all of our speakers participated. We think it was the best conference we've ever produced.

With this said, we did encounter a new situation there. One student told me that she was very uncomfortable being photographed. We always have a professional photographer and videographer capturing "moments" that we can then post at the conference web site. Potential future attendees then can learn what it's really like to come to the conference.

I personally don't think it's a "big deal" to be photographed, and initially thought this student was overreacting. "Just deal with it," I was thinking to myself.

But then I reconsidered. Maybe she had something happen in her past that caused her to feel this way about photos. ASGA and I certainly need to be considerate of all of our attendees' concerns and opinions. We need to be listening and trying to serve them better.

When an SGA registers for one of our conferences, they agree on the form that all photos and video taken are ASGA's property and may be used for promotional purposes. But individual students rarely see this form, as an advisor or one officer signs up for the entire group.

I don't want to make the registration process take longer and be more complex. But I'm thinking that in the future, we may allow students who don't want to have their photo taken to put a red "sticker" on their conference name tags. This would alert our photographers that these students are "off limits" for photos.

ASGA's conferences serve thousands of students and advisors each year. We've now produced nearly 60 conferences in the past five years. While we've never had a complaint before about photos, we are taking this one student's concerns seriously. And we may change and improve policy because of it.

ASGA does serve the "masses," but we're also conscious about the needs of the one.