“E Roarius Unum,” the official ASB president’s seal, leads in the ASB president’s announcements for the week with a club mix of “Hail to the Chief,” in the background.
“Hey Point Loma, welcome back. In case we haven’t met, my name is mcKensey Wise, and I’m your ASB President,” said Wise.
This begins the pilot video of a new series of weekly presidential addresses that will feature Wise and occasional guests.
Nate Guajardo, ASB’s director of student relations and mind behind the videos, explained that the primary goals for ASB’s new series of weekly addresses are to increase communication with students, and provide a quick, accessible medium with which to brief the student body on upcoming events and campus activities.
“The eight of us are ASB and the Board of Directors,” Guajardo explained. “We have a higher purview, but we’re still only eight people; the students are the ones experiencing campus life.”
Guajardo, who would like to work for the U.S. Department of State, said that the inspiration for the videos came from similar weekly addresses.
“We have a pretty top-down perspective and viewpoint, so we really want to ensure that communication travels not only from the top down but from the bottom up as well,” said Guajardo. “It’s another way for citizens and students, I suppose, to stay in the loop.”
Guajardo would like to see active participation from from students in response to the videos.
“Ideally what I want to see happen is students commenting on the videos and asking questions on the Facebook page. That way, either McKensey or I can say, ‘Here’s your student senator, talk to them,’ or ‘This is a really important issue that we’ve overlooked so far, so we’ll bring this up at the board meeting,” Guajardo said.
This first address, filmed by Point TV, serves mainly to inform students of ways to get stay in touch with ASB and stay involved in the campus community. These involve promotion of Wise’s movement to have students pray for PLNU at 3:20pm daily, an encouragement to text “asbactivities” to 84483 for info on sporting and other events, and information regarding ‘Pop in with the President,’ a time every other Tuesday Wise devotes to listening to students’ questions, comments and concerns.
According to Guajardo, Sunday’s address appears to be successful, receiving 400 views.
PLNU ASB Address September 21st, 2014 from Point Loma Nazarene University on Vimeo.