As a student who is highly involved in the Student Activities Board (SAB), I have experienced the pressure of planning events with little to no professional assistance. After over two years of brainstorming and planning, Director of Student Engagement Heather Tyner is breaking the cycle of exhaustion and repetition by restructuring Asbury Student Congress (ASC). I believe that Tyner’s new structure will allow this new SAB to cultivate meaningful experiences and community on this campus.
Currently, SAB acts as one of four branches within ASC. The branch is run by one Vice President who oversees five committees: Concerts and Coffeehouses, Special Events, Rec Committee, Screaming Eagles and Movies. These committees are responsible for most of the biggest events on campus, many clubs at Asbury and the class activities directors.
In my last two years of involvement with SAB, I have seen student leaders’ desires to change and revive some of these events, but they have often fallen short due to lack of support and structure.
One of my duties on SAB is serving as a co-chair of the Special Events committee.
Last fall we planned Homecoming, and though the dance worked out well, it felt like we had just been thrown into it without much preparation. Once Kaity Scanlan began helping more as the advisor on SAB, the process of planning the Sadie Hawkins dance dramatically changed. She provided us with more accountability, ultimately giving us a timeline and procedure for the event.
Tyner recently introduced the new plan for SAB at the Feb. 18 ASC meeting and the Feb. 25 Town Hall. From what I have observed, many members of ASC saw this plan as a good idea, but there were still a lot of reservations about the idea.
The biggest concern is that Tyner announced she would bypass voting on the issue and go ahead with her decision. Though I do not necessarily agree with her decision to bypass voting, I do understand that she sees the decline in student engagement as connected to a deeper issue: A decline in belonging at Asbury.
Tyner collected data through student exit surveys which further revealed this issue that many Asburians felt like they did not belong. I think that it is harder for students now to see this as an issue because it is all we have known at Asbury. We have become so used to these sub-par events and feeling disconnected that we do not see how legitimate of a problem this is.
Most of the events on this campus are left over from a previous generation of Asburians and are not effective with students today but are written off as “tradition” and, as a result, we are too scared or unwilling to try something new. I do not say this to scare you into thinking, “Oh no, they are going to change and get rid of all the fun events on this campus”; you will still have fun events, but this group will analyze the effectiveness of each current event and introduce new ways to engage the campus community.
Tyner has worked at Asbury long enough to see the dramatic decline in attendance at events and a sense of belonging. I know that this change does seem like a lot, but we can choose to see it as a burden, or we can choose to see it as an opportunity for growth and revival on this campus.
