As their terms are ending this week to make way for a new pair, I sat down with President Ben Wetzel and Vice President Jaynie Welsh and asked them a couple questions about the past year.
Q: How does it feel to be nearly done?
Ben Wetzel: “I don’t know, that’s a hard question to answer. I go back and forth about every five minutes.”
Jaynie Welsh: “Me too. I keep forgetting that we are almost done and then I will remember that it is almost over. It is like, this is so weird.”
BW: “Exciting at times. You know when its stressful and things are happening, you are like I can’t wait to be done with this, but then there are definitely a lot of good moments. Where I won’t be ready to walk away. We’ve had a great team this year, it’s been a lot of fun.
Q: One of your campaign promises was to strengthen ties with the Laramie community, do you feel like you have done so?
BW: “Its one of the things that actually, this weekend, I was sitting there thinking what are we going to talk about in this interview, and one of the things that crossed my mind was that I feel like we have been one of the few administrations in the past couple years that can really say that we did come through on all three of our platform goals. Not only do I feel like we have built a better community relationship, you know we have worked really closely with Mayor Summerville on quite a few projects this year. With the A-Team Coalition, which is a group of community partners. With the Laramie Mainstreet Alliance. This Tuesday night we have a piece of legislation up for final passage for the five percent local spending act, and if that goes through, that is really kind of the icing on the cake of a good year of working with community partners.”
Q: Your second platform was to increase campus involvement; do you feel like you have met that goal and in what ways?
JW: “I think a big part of that for us this year was reworking our funding board policies, and RSO funding board, quite a few times. I think we finally have those in a place that is a little bit better for students and I think that that is really going to help in the future. It makes ASUW more accessible to those RSOs, and hopefully, it makes it easier and clearer for them.”
BW: “We also restructured our committee assignments for our senators. I think that is big because we use to focus all of our work internally on efforts right here in-house, and now we are doing a much better job of splitting their time on working on internal matters and working in-house, which is important, but also putting an emphasis and effort on working outside of our office.”
Q: Your last platform from you campaign was the addition of a student wellness position to the ASUW executives staff; how has that gone?
BW: “We have had a heavy hand in a lot of projects on the wellness front, that without having Connor [Bergman] in that position, and without having that position around, I don’t [think] we would have had anywhere near the success and culmination in bringing those goals to fruition that we did.”
JW: “I think in just a year or two it is hard to bring those initiatives full-circle and to complete them. I think the previous administrations did lay a lot of groundwork for those, so we definitely have to give credit there, but I think we had an awesome team this year, and they are the reason we got so much accomplished on this wellness front.”
Q: What do you think your biggest accomplishment was this year
JW: “I am going to say [Ben’s], I think [Ben’s] was getting back $600,000 worth of student fees. Something we didn’t even anticipate at all. We just kind of ran into that issue and I thought it was awesome for [Ben].”
BW: “I would say that Jaynie’s biggest one was our committee restructure. Looking back at where we were, almost a year ago and now, with nine standing committees that we struggled to keep filled all the time. The committee assignments in the past were, I am going to mind my words here, a problem to say the least, and where we are at today, as far as our committees, our standing committees, are more efficient, more streamlined, and operating better and I think it has made everyone’s lives a lot easier.”
Q: What is your biggest regret?
BW: “Mine is the Child Care Assistance Scholarship. Started that one pretty early on into office and that was a piece of legislation that I was an author on. That or the union renovations, both of which were projects which I was an original author on and I have been working on for quite some time and came in pretty optimistic that we would get them done and they are both set up to be done probably within a month after I’m out of office.”
JW: “Maybe my biggest regret would have been, not being a better bridge between the senate and the executive branch. I think that every year we are like ‘we need to really work on strengthening those relationships.’ I haven’t seen that relationship in a few years, and I don’t think this year was any different.”
Q: What is your favorite memory/biggest take away?
BW: “I will tell you this, my biggest take away is that you can’t get through anything without your friends around you. We have been absolutely blessed with the staff that we have this year. They have been dedicated, hardworking, just an incredible group of people to work with. I can tell you right now that I would not have made it through this year if we did not have the office staff that we have this year.”
JW: “I think, probably, my biggest takeaway from this would be never write anybody off, never underestimate anybody. Because the people who, at the beginning of the year in my mind, I was like, [oh,] they will be decent senators, but they won’t go above and beyond, are some of the ones that really did pull through in the end and got a lot accomplished. That was really impressive. So, always give people the benefit of the doubt.”
