Chime for change
September 28, 2007
Last semester, the campus was beset by a plague, commonly known as spray chalk. So if the byline of this column looks a bit familiar it’s probably because you saw the innocuous spray chalked letters C-H-I-M-E in fading orange and blue as you walked through the quad. Well that’s me – Chime Asonye – and following the barrage of slogans, chalking, fliers, and other edifices of election campaigns, I have emerged your 2007-2008 Student Trustee on the University of Illinois Board of Trustees. More recently, I’m proud to announce I was given an executive appointment by Governor Blagojevich to have the official vote among the three student trustees for this term. Spray chalk, on the other hand, didn’t fare as well. It is now banned – one of the many casualties of politics.
As this was a campus-wide election, I want to take this opportunity to again thank the many people and numerous organizations who contributed directly or indirectly to my campaign.
So what do I do, anyway? The Board of Trustees consists of thirteen members, three of which are students elected from each campus – Champaign-Urbana, Chicago and Springfield – and one of which is the Governor, who serves as an ex-officio member. It exercises final jurisdiction and highest authority over all matters except those it has delegated. The Board controls the $3.9 billion operating budget, and serves as the principal policy making body for the entire University system. As such, it is ultimately responsible for the University’s proper administration and governance.
Now I’m two meetings into my tenure and I’ve already lobbied the General Assembly for our school’s budget in Springfield with members of Student Senate. I also felt it was important to institutionalize a culture in which the student body knows about the position of the student trustee. I’ve arranged, with the help of the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, that future student trustees are introduced at New Student Convocation. This will inform a new era of students that they have a representative on the Board, help them put a face to the position, and ultimately ensure accountability.
I’ve also led a charge to ensure that students are aware of one of the most important issues concerning them: health care. One of the biggest changes to happen at McKinley Health Center is its adoption of a $5 Universal Co-Payment plan at the beginning of this semester. This was in a response to an elimination of government incentive programs to provide low cost medications to college students, which resulted in pharmaceutical companies dramatically raising the prices of the medications they sell to McKinley. Many on campus were unaware of this new increased financial dimension to prescription drugs at McKinley, which fundamentally alters how many students might be able to interact with health care on this campus. After discussions with administrators, a more extensive communication plan was devised that stressed proactive and intense engagement with students and organizations to inform them of the new co-payment plan.
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A number of important issues have also recently occurred on the Board of Trustees.
This summer we launched the largest, most comprehensive fiscal campaign in the history of the University of Illinois, Brilliant Futures. Additionally, the Board decided to divest over two million dollars from companies that helped sponsor genocide in Sudan. Let me put that decision in perspective, so the gravity is appreciated: the resolution concerning Sudan was the second of its kind passed by the Board, only parallel to when the University divested funds from the apartheid regime of South Africa in 1987 exactly two decades ago. The Board credited student activism for creating the impetus in that matter. The Board is also considering a draft Energy Policy document that would serve as a framework for the University’s energy conservation goals. This document will be presented for approval at our next meeting on November 14th, so anyone with thoughts on this or any other issue, please contact me at [email protected]. You can find the Energy document on the “announcement” section of the newly created, Urbana student trustee Web site, www.studenttrustee.uiuc.edu.
I look forward to continuing to represent you.