Adam Schmidt, a third-year studying civil engineering and the current Student Senate president, has been elected as the new president of Association of Student Governments (ASG) President for the UNC System.
ASG brings together delegates from the 17 schools in the UNC System, voicing their concerns or suggestions to the UNC Board of Governors. ASG currently meets once a month, excluding August, December and summer, at the different UNC System campuses to discuss legislation and issues that are important at the different campuses.
The ASG President is a non-voting student member of the UNC Board of Governors, the administrative body that is ultimately responsible for policy at the 17 universities. The president does have speaking privileges during meetings and remains during sessions closed to the public. Schmidt said that part of the role is bringing student concerns to the board level and working to solve them through the UNC System.
The previous ASG President was Bettylenah Njaramba, a fourth-year studying elementary education at North Carolina Central University.
Schmidt discussed his plans for being an advocate for the approximately 230,000 students in the UNC System, saying that he thinks that it is critical to understand how things discussed at the Board of Governors level could impact students on the various campuses. Schmidt said that he hopes as ASG President, he can yield time to students that want to talk about issues on their campuses.
“I’m really planning on working heavily with the student body presidents and the ASG campus liaisons so I can build relationships with them, and then as issues come up I can ask them to put me in contact with students on their campus so I can understand how system level policy changes, or things coming through the pipeline at the governor level could potentially impact students,” Schmidt said.
Schmidt hopes that as ASG president, he and ASG Vice President Raekwon Davis, a third-year studying political science at North Carolina Central University, can work with campus leaders to collaborate and share ideas about how to solve issues of varying scope.
“I think when we talk about issues we are facing at each of our campuses, we definitely hear some common trends and things from campus to campus,” Schmidt said. “I feel like in the past ASG hasn’t always done the best job that it could have at differentiating what problems that we’re seeing on different campuses that are best solved at the institutional level and what problems that we’re seeing on multiple campuses that are a result of some system level policy or some North Carolina level issue.”
Schmidt also said that he wants to improve communication between campus liaisons so that progress in the UNC System can be continuous.
The major concerns that Schmidt said he would be advocating for in the coming year are gender-inclusive housing, fossil fuel divestment and building transparency on how Student Blue health insurance operates.
Schmidt and Davis will take the ASG oath at the upcoming ASG meeting at North Carolina Central University on April 13 and begin their Board of Governors service at their meeting in May.
