Recently we received an update on AUPP’s Student Government Activities on their trip to Washington DC. Seven students representing AUPP’s student body traveled to USA in early October for an American Student Government Association Summit to network with other American student governments and learn from them. The following is an update from them about their activities thus far.

Saturday October 8th, 2016
We started today off with a light breakfast of fruits and coffee. The workshops that we assigned ourselves to attend had the balance of personal development and student government improvement. A few of us went to workshops that empower not only the leadership of the student government but also the student body. Some workshops taught the participants to effectively resolve campus issues and internal student government issues. Most importantly, we also learned the right way to represent our students.

We concluded the day with a private consulting session with Butch Oxendine, ASGA’s executive director. We discussed five main points such as the election process, election cycle, structure of Student Government that allows best work efficiency and ideal form of representation, university credits for Student Government Officers, Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with universities, and some basic bylaws that we should consider having. It was surprisingly helpful to have this consulting session as we had an opportunity to discuss particular problems that our Student Government is facing in detail and get advice and feedback to solve those problems.

Sunday October 9th, 2016
Today was the last day of the conference. There were only 2 round-table blocks, and both had only 5 or 4 training/roundtable workshops respectively. We divided ourselves as we saw fit and attended all sessions. Each session followed the layout of all previous sessions, and were both interactive as well as informative. Most sessions today were about internal problems such as wasting time, team work, avoiding turnovers and how to overcome them. After that there was a raffle and a closing ceremony to tie off the conference.

In the end, we have learned so much from both the lecturers as well as the experiences of other student governments and hope to implement many of their techniques and ideas into our own student government.