Challenging semester for CEUSA
From flops and successes to activity costs, the College of Eastern Utah Student Association [CEUSA] has hit a brick wall.
This year, Mr. and Miss CEU were canceled. “Miss CEU generally loses money,” said Todd Olsen, director admissions and scholarships and CEUSA advisor. Because “It serves a very limited amount of people and costs the college.” Miss CEU was paid from so many accounts last year, student leaders at CEUSA are still trying to figure if they made or lost money from the activity last year.
This archived article was written by: Ryan Ware
From flops and successes to activity costs, the College of Eastern Utah Student Association [CEUSA] has hit a brick wall.
This year, Mr. and Miss CEU were canceled. “Miss CEU generally loses money,” said Todd Olsen, director admissions and scholarships and CEUSA advisor. Because “It serves a very limited amount of people and costs the college.” Miss CEU was paid from so many accounts last year, student leaders at CEUSA are still trying to figure if they made or lost money from the activity last year.
Mr. CEU was canceled this year because they [CEUSA] could not justify hosting a Mr. CEU if the Miss CEU was canceled, according to David Cox, vp of activities at CEUSA.
The Un-Talented Show was canceled due to “no interest from students,” said Olsen.
“Only four people signed up for this activity,” said Lance Deeters, an event director at CEU. “Out of those four, no one showed up to the first meeting.”
“We did an Un-Talented Show because of a poll from last year,” said Cox. The poll conducted was to see what activities students wanted to see this year. The poll was conducted and composed of at least 10 percent of the student body.
Olsen attributes the lack of interest in many of the activities to the cold weather.
“Dorm Storm only gets a third of the student body,” said Olsen. That leaves the majority of the school uninformed when activities are happening.
Dorm Storm is the practice of getting students on campus aware of activities as the events happen. Normally volunteers shout and knock on doors throughout campus to get students to attend events.
“CEUSA doesn’t even participate in their own activities,” said John Sawyer, a freshman at CEU. “Only 40 people showed to the Stop Light Dance … and most everyone left early.”
“Multi-Cultural Week could have been so much better, but it wasn’t advertised properly,” said Meagan Roach, a freshman at CEU. “A lot of food was left over … The [Official CEU] Facebook page is largely unused.” “They [CEUSA] need to utilize the tools they have more effectively … A college experience is made or broken from student involvement, or the absence of.”
It is “more than putting it on the white board that no one looks at anyway,” said CEU student Tomi Lasley.
CEU student Adriana Loaiza, attributed the low turnout rates to activities to the recession. “A lot of students now have to have jobs to pay for school … Then work schedules interfere with the ability to attend activities on campus … [if] the Little Theater can be filled on Improv nights, I think student government should be able to run something as successful.” She stated that more time is needed to be put into activities.”
“It costs between $100-$150 to advertise an activity,” according to Cox. Last semester “about $15,000 was spent on campus activities.”
Last year CEUSA only retained four of the student leaders throughout the year. This year CEUSA’s retention is improved. CEUSA has only had a handful resign this year.
With other campuses, like UVU using web pages like Facebook to update students about activities on campus, CEU hasn’t spent as much energy keeping everyone updated in the social network arena. Going to www.ceu.edu is the best way to see what activities are approaching, according to Olsen.
Olsen advises CEUSA leaders to put CEUSA next to the events listed on the calendar, so students can better identify what student government is sponsoring.
