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Graff plans to bring a closer connection with the students

Aguilar reflects on year as ASUA prez, looks ahead to law

New ASUA President Ben Graff has only been in office two days but has already dived into his position. Meanwhile, his predecessor, Cisco Aguilar, left without much controversy during his term.

Aguilar, the outgoing Associated Students president, said he was glad his term went so smoothly.

"Some part of me wanted to have a big controversy, but then, the other part of me thought it was pretty cool that I didn't," said Aguilar, whose term officially expired Monday.

Aguilar, who will graduate this week, has been accepted to UA's law school.

Aguilar said he'll be glad to return to being a normal student but hopes Graff will continue pushing the issues he worked on during his presidency, like childcare.

He said he also hopes Graff will keep in touch with the state Legislature and keep up the good relations that have been established.

Graff said the ASUA president has dual roles, and he plans to fulfill both of them.

"There's the need to mold this office for things you want to accomplish, but you also have the responsibility to upkeep the momentum of the past and things past presidents have done," he said.

Graff said there aren't any flaws in the position, just room for improvement.

"The student body president needs to be more accessible," Graff said. "The student body president can be bogged down in meetings all day long and can find it difficult even to meet with a single student, so we need to set aside time for that."

Graff said he wants to get senators and other people in ASUA involved in some of the meetings so he will have more time for the students.

"I need to have time to go out to clubs and organizations and talk to them about ASUA," Graff said.

Graff's chief-of-staff, Bron D'Angelo, has already scheduled time for him to meet with different clubs three times a week, he added.

"You can't get caught up with other responsibilities and lose that one-on-one basis," Graff said. "I literally want people to say, 'I have a problem, I'm going to go talk to Ben.'"

Graff has also created a new position in the ASUA cabinet to help reach out to the students.

The UA PULSE team of eight students will gather student input and opinions on student issues, Graff said.

The position was based on a program used at Pennsylvania State University.

The PULSE team will have UA statistics faculty help them with the surveys, and they will have advisers looking over the data with them, Graff said.

"The student body president by him or herself is not powerful," Graff said. "We have no structured way to change the student voice into an actual impetus for change. You have to find a way to structure that information."

Graff said the PULSE project is the way to do it.

Along with the creation of this new position, Graff said his entire cabinet will remain in Tucson during the summer to work on issues such as advising.

Advising has only been taken to the university level, and it needs to be taken to the state level, Graff said.

"I'm going to start talking to the regents one on one, trying to get some meetings with some of the legislators and make this a statewide issue," Graff said.

Graff also wants to meet with the new Arizona State University delegation and Northern Arizona University delegation to see if they want to be a part of this action, as well.

"By September, I hope to have a complete action plan of exactly how we're going to start educating our students," he said.

Audrey DeAnda can be reached at Audrey.DeAnda@wildcat.arizona.edu.