SBO president’s retention & recruitment plans
Mr. Vegas, aka Aaron Hales, took the wheel as president of the Associated Students of the College of Eastern Utah October 5. Hales is from Henderson, Nev.
Previously the executive vice president, and head council person over the student life council, Hales seems to have direction and focus for this year’s student government.
His focus for the remainder of the year at CEU is to aim for the recognition, recruitment and retention problem that hit most of the colleges in the Utah this year.
This archived article was written by: Benjamin Waldon
Mr. Vegas, aka Aaron Hales, took the wheel as president of the Associated Students of the College of Eastern Utah October 5. Hales is from Henderson, Nev.
Previously the executive vice president, and head council person over the student life council, Hales seems to have direction and focus for this year’s student government.
His focus for the remainder of the year at CEU is to aim for the recognition, recruitment and retention problem that hit most of the colleges in the Utah this year.
“Personally I want to work with the students and with our student government in looking for ways to have CEU gain more recognition,” states Hales. “CEU does not have enough recognition.”
Hales added, “I want to work on increasing our enrollment.” To do this he wants to, “Find ways that we can attract students to CEU.”
With this recognition and recruitment, Hales did not forget about the current students.
His last focus point is keeping CEU students intent and excited about attending. He wants to “Work on the retention so that the students will stay here and not leave in the middle of the year or after the year.”
Being a sophomore and a returning student from last year, he hasn’t forgotten last year’s student government push for the improvement of CEU and states, “I want to be able to work with the students in just making sure that their voice is heard, their concerns are met; whether it’s with where they live, where they eat, if it’s with their faculty, I just want to be able to represent the students … ”
Hales finds there is another aspect to taking care of the campus society, and says he wants to, “Work on recognition for the good things that students do and the good things that the faculty does.”
Even though there are factors that he cannot control that are decreasing enrollment, Hales says, “I think that there are things that we can do to increase enrollment in our school,”
Motivating himself and ASCEU, Hales said, “Student government needs to work on having good activities to keep students here, we need to make sure that they have a good education, that they feel comfortable being here, and so I think that there are things we can do with the school to make sure that we can increase enrollment.”
Leaving behind the executive vice president position in which he served for five months, he says, “It was very hard for me to leave the position that I had because I enjoyed what I did so much. And certain things that we were working on, I couldn’t work with anymore, so I had to hand it over to someone else.”
When Hales first heard that Colby Majors was resigning, “It was something that was … abrupt … Colby had just said in one of our meetings that he was resigning.”
Even though Hales was confident enough to run for an elected position he says, “I was actually very nervous at first … an overwhelming feeling of ‘what am I suppose to do,'”
Hales explained, “just in the past couple of weeks that I’ve been in this position, I’ve gained so much more confidence and I’m actually really excited … I feel like there’s things that I have to offer to not only our student government but to all the students in making sure that their voice is heard [and also] in making sure that our initiative [is] brought to the administration.”
Even though Hales does miss working with his council and dealing with each individual chair, he feels that by gaining this new position he has “gained an even better relationship with the executive board.”
Hales feels that he has learned that “even though some people feel passionate about one thing, there’s always another side to a story,” and that it has “helped me to think more outside of the box, because I don’t just deal with [just] student life now, I deal with everything.”
Taking his place, the new executive vice president is Acacia Davis, who was also sworn in on Oct. 5. She has the recommendation of Hales.
“With Acacia I have no worries, I had full confidence in her. She has a get it done attitude … I know that she is a very likable person and that she can get along with people.”
