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ASCSU campaign: Jasper Sloss and Mkay Armbrust

In their bid for the presidency and the vice presidency, respectively, of the Associated Students of Colorado State University, Jasper Sloss and Mkay Armbrust have put an emphasis on short-term policy goals over larger goals that might take longer than their potential time in office. 

“I think, a lot of the time, you start to hear very similar campaign platforms year after year,” Sloss said. “You hear about affordable housing; you hear about lowering parking (costs). We’re tired of telling students these great ideas and then having minimal follow-up.”

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Jasper Sloss, presidential candidate

Jasper Sloss, a third-year student majoring in finance, is a relative newcomer to ASCSU, having joined as a member of the Student Fee Review Board last spring.

In that short time, however, he’s held a number of positions, according to Sloss. These include senator for the College of Business, a council member within the College of Business and intern with the vice president of ASCSU. 

“I kind of watched what (Alex Farias) was doing and got a better feel for how the vice presidency works, what roles they take on,” Sloss said.

We could care less about the title. … What we really care about is what we can actually implement right now, today, this year, this semester for students.” -Mkay Armbrust, vice presidential candidate

Sloss said that he helped with a wide variety of projects in this position and that it eventually led to his serving on the social-norming task force for ASCSU over the summer.

Mkay Armbrust, vice presidential candidate

Mkay Armbrust, a senior majoring in political science, has been a part of ASCSU for just over a year. He’s served in multiple executive branch positions, including one in governmental affairs, where he worked with City Council to tackle issues such as student housing and transportation.

Armbrust is less concerned with holding the position of vice president than he is with helping implement policies, seeing the position as a means with which to do so.

“We’ve held titles; we’ve held positions before,” Armbrust said. “But to be completely honest with you, it’s really not about that for us. We could care less about the title. … What we really care about is what we can actually implement right now, today, this year, this semester for students.”

Their platforms

Sloss and Armbrust have settled on three short-term and timely platforms: ones they think will be uniquely relevant to students at this moment and ones they hope to implement within the time they would spend in office.

“(We’re) … focused on how the world is working right now with a pandemic going on, with hybrid classes, with social distancing,” Sloss said. “The things that we’ll want to talk about and the things that we want to push should be very specific to this year.”

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The first of these three core platforms is providing more ways in which ASCSU can directly enact the will of the student body.

Sloss said that he wants ASCSU, and the presidency and vice presidency specifically, to be more of a voice for students. He said that he wants ASCSU, more than it ever has been in the past, to be open to students and to prioritize their input.

“To us, that means opening up office hours and direct lines of communication to student leadership,” he said.

Their second platform focus is expanding students’ access to mental health resources.

“Obviously, … as a student, stress (and) anxiety … are all things that are all part of students,” Armbrust said. “You know, you add a pandemic on top of it with hybrid classes, and it’s just crazy. The world we live in is really crazy right now.”

While the Student Health Center provides access to five free counseling sessions, Armbrust believes this might not be enough.

“They’re not beneficial to some students, or some students don’t feel comfortable talking with those people,” Armbrust said.

Sloss and Armbrust’s third platform focus is what they call “unity for the community.”

“We believe that CSU not just should (offer) an education for every student, but a home for every student,” Sloss said.

Sloss thinks that one way to help make CSU more inclusive would be to incorporate an orientation module on diversity and inclusion, similar to those already in place surrounding alcohol and sexual assault.

“On top of that, we’d love to revise the community guidelines through ASCSU and really have ASCSU have a zero-tolerance (policy) on those kinds of situations and make sure that the things we say we stand for and believe in, that we back them up when they’re challenged,” Sloss said.

Joshua Kellogg can be reached at news@collegian.com or on Twitter @sc0o0rche.

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