With campaigns for the Associated Students of Colorado State University speaker of the senate for the 2025-26 academic year fully underway, The Collegian sat down with candidate Brooke Reese to discuss her platforms, backgrounds and goals for ASCSU.
Reese is the current speaker pro tempore in senate, having previously served as a senator for the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and as vice chair of the Internal Affairs Committee. She is running uncontested in this year’s race for speaker of the senate.
ASCSU election voting is open April 7-9.
Background, ASCSU experience, qualifications
Reese: I have a lot of leadership experience outside of ASCSU and CSU. I am a political science and neuroscience student, and I have facilitated youth trainings on leadership theory since I was 16. I was also a very involved Boy Scout. It’s silly a little bit, but when I joined ASCSU, it was something that I saw a lot of issues with, and I was confused on why certain things that I felt should be happening weren’t happening, and I wanted to be a part of facilitating solutions that will better serve students like me and students like the people on my team — the senate — which represents the overall student body.
I think my experience as speaker pro tempore has prepared me greatly for this position, first in terms of team development. Previous to this position, (Hayden Taylor) and I respectively served in the Internal Affairs Committee, Hayden (as chair) and the vice chair, me. But being in these positions, specifically knowing the senate as intimately as I’ve been able to and assisting Hayden, has really prepared me to take his initiatives a step forward but also further introduce those of my own.
I know the senate as well. Within the speaker pro tempore position, I’m meant to be a liaison between my branch and other branches, legislative cabinet and senators, being a friend for senators but additionally being the speaker’s right- and left-hand man. So I think in being everyone’s best friend this year, I am uniquely equipped to understand not just what the senate wants but what the senate needs and what we could do collectively.
Campaign platform, campus issues, priorities
Reese: It’s something that’s repeated every year, but I think it ultimately breaks down into outreach and transparency but, furthermore, accountability on both of those ends. Within my positionality this year, I’ve been able to produce tangible solutions to some of our problems. ASCSU has been known to be a hostile environment in the past, but with the introduction of things like onboarding, we’ve seen a distinct shift in culture. If senators are empowered to do their jobs — if senators are aware of their powers — senators and associate senators are the most powerful people within ASCSU.
Senate has the unique capacity to work bottom up, and I think within my experience this year, in the trust that I’ve established with the senate, and furthermore, my general leadership ability, I can utilize my team, and senate is my team. Addressing transparency (and) addressing outreach cannot be solved by one person. It would have to be solved by the senate within its entirety. And in that, I think I have the ability to facilitate the conversations and the strategic game-planning toward more outreach that will lead to more transparency.
Currently, it’s codified that hours (spent) in senate count toward office hours. That’s something that I’d look into amending, not to put more work on senators or associate senators’ plates; I think that they should be compensated, and that’s something that I talked to Jakye (Nunley) about today. But office hours have a distinct purpose. Office hours are meant to facilitate outreach. Office hours break down into three things: professional development — to help us as representatives — outreach to our constituencies and being a team player for ASCSU. That’s what office hours are for. So for senate hours to flood into that and not be their own respective things dismisses the purpose of office hours.
As soon as I found out I was running uncontested, I opened up a copy of the bylaws to start editing. Our documents are inaccessible in how they’re currently formatted. The job descriptions for each of the respective positions within the legislative branch, but as well as our due diligence to other branches as described in our constitution, don’t make sense. They’re convoluted, they’re contradicting and they’re nomadic. Definitively, the bylaws, I plan on making a lot of revisions to. But in that, I also plan on having the senate read out the bylaws in their entirety, so that everyone knows exactly what their powers are. At the beginning of the year, we start on that same page.
ASCSU/student relationship, ASCSU future goals
Reese: I want us to have things codified that we know now. I think ultimately, our documents function as a form of transition report from senate to senate, and I want to have more affirmative means of transition reports. I want, first and foremost, transition reports to be codified. I’m writing that legislation now, so it’ll hit the floor soon.
Caucuses have bylaws. It’s something that’s also going to be codified soon. I want to see things like authors’ rights be codified. I want there to be more affirmative means of outreach, like actual, tangible uniformity within the colleges. Not necessarily uniformity in the sense that they’re all the same, but our contact with them is equal to ensure the amount of equity in the space that is necessary for the different colleges. Once we establish that contact, we establish that accountability, and I think that’s what will propel us forward.
In every failure we have, in every issue we run into, it’s a unique opportunity for another solution. As long as we write those solutions down, as long as we have those opinion requests filed, (I’m) more than happy to take an opinion request if it means that the senate has a better answer to a question that previously was unanswered.
Reach Sam Hutton at news@collegian.com or on social media @CSUCollegian.
