During their meeting on Monday Jan. 4, ASNMU announced they have appointed Amber Lopota as their new vice president.
Including winter break, ASNMU has been without a vice president for three months. Lopota, a non-traditional student, wanted to be part of an organization that was long-term and aimed their contributions toward the student body.
“I was interested in making my involvement and contribution long term, but I wanted something that wasn’t a social group,” Lopota said. “A faculty member recommended that I apply to ASNMU.”
Lopota has high hopes for ASNMU and has some ideas in the works, hoping to benefit the student body of NMU.
“Right now, I have a project I’m working on where the community can donate formal clothing for students who need outfits for things such as a job interview,” Lopota said. “I know that students are financially tight right now, and they could really use that type of clothing.”
This project is modeled after one that Ferris State University currently runs called “First Lady’s Attic,” and would be structured in a way where students would be eligible to come in one to two times per academic year to obtain career-orientated clothing, Lopota said.
Lopota plans on making the project a thrift store type setting, and the clothing would be free of charge.
For student spirit, another idea that was proposed during the meeting is selling “thunder sticks” to students, which are noisemakers used at sporting events.
“Profits from selling the thunder sticks would go towards a student event on campus,” said Julie Goldberg, General Studies Representative. “If it gets approved, it would most likely happen next year during football season.”
In addition to appointing Lopota to vice president, ASNMU sworn in five new representatives during their meeting, one of them being a member of a fraternity on campus. This is the first time ever a member of the Greek population has been involved in ASNMU, Lopota said.
Spots are currently open for new representatives, and applications for new members are always being accepted. An application is available on their website at www.nmu.edu/asnmu that students can fill out and submit. Interested parties will be pre-screened by the Dean of Students office to ensure they meet qualification requirements, according to Lopota.
“We encourage everyone interested to apply, as our group is constantly changing due to outside obligations taking members,” Lopota said.
ASNMU is now also accepting non-ASNMU students to become part of the election committee for their election coming up in April. Anyone that is interested in joining the committee must be appointed by a current member of ASNMU, according to Lopota.
To gather new ideas and information from other public universities across Michigan, ASNMU will be attending the Student Association of Michigan (SAM) conference at Wayne State University on Feb. 18 to 20. <<I just read over my article and I feel like this is just doesn’t fit in the article. It’s very random. Maybe this topic could be the angle for my story next week.
“I think it is important that the students understand how having the (vice president) spot filled is going to accelerate what ASNMU is doing, enable committee formation and fuel the fires all the enthusiastic new representatives have,” Lopota said. “Anytime they want they can reach out to us, and we will act as a megaphone for them to the administration.”
