Former Associated Student Government President Neal Sales-Griffin had one reaction to the end of this year’s election, during which he advised the Election Committee on dealing with contentious complaints between the campaigns of two rival Executive Board members.
“It’s done,” the SESP senior said. “I’m glad that I was of some use, but I’m glad that it’s done.”
The election ended up garnering the lion’s share of attention at the end of Sales-Griffin’s presidency, a tenure ASG insiders said had attempted broad efforts to reform the body.
Sales-Griffin began his description of his term’s effect on ASG as “transformative.”
“It definitely moved in a positive direction,” he said.
He described how the introduction of three Executive Board positions, along with efforts to expand ASG outreach to students, increased involvement over the past year.
“ASG matters to vastly more people now,” Sales-Griffin said. “We’ve quadrupled its productivity, we got projects out of committees that used to do nothing.”
Current ASG President Mike McGee said he agreed with the positive outlook on the previous year.
“I definitely think looking back on it, we were very successful,” the Communication junior said. “We brought a lot of people into ASG and got a lot of things done.”
McGee said then-presidential candidate Sales-Griffin encouraged him to run for academic director.
The outreach efforts led to the student body becoming more active, said former Student Life Director Nate Perkins.
“I feel that some people are being activists, inside and outside communities,” the McCormick junior said. “They made a big change for me and my committee – more people are sticking around, taking on projects.”
However, to some ASG members, the desire to restructure the organization and spread its influence may have detracted from its other aims.
While he said the year had produced “tangible accomplishments,” Jesse Garfinkel, an ASG senator, said the creation of many committees on the Executive Board limited the amount that could be done, noting that the community life director and operations director positions had already been eliminated Winter Quarter.
“Spreading the Exec Board so widely diluted the talent pool,” the Weinberg junior said.
Senator Jeff Cao said Sales-Griffin’s changes were significant but not necessarily positive. He said he disagreed with the expansion of the Executive Board and the focus of ASG’s “winter campaign” outreach program, which he said strayed from its supposed original purpose to improve communication with the student body.
“I think that it became less a way to gather ideas and more a marketing campaign,” the Weinberg junior said.
Helen Wood, director of the Center for Student Involvement and a longtime adviser to ASG, said she could not speak to the level of student involvement in the organization, calling that “subjective.”
Wood said the past year’s accomplishments did not particularly separate Sales-Griffin from the other presidents who preceded him.
“I think it’s been fine,” she said. “In comparison to other years, he’s done as good a job as anybody else has done.”
Looking to the future, Sales-Griffin said ASG’s most urgent reform is to make the Senate more representative of the student body. In particular, he noted how slightly more than 10 percent of the Senate currently represents off-campus students, which make up more than half the undergraduate population.
As for what he will do next, Sales-Griffin said he’s used the time since leaving office to focus on the courses and friendships he said he neglected while in office, along with beginning a six-month entrepreneurial “opportunity search” after graduation.
Despite the credit ascribed to him for the previous year’s events, Sales-Griffin said ASG’s successes came largely from the “awesomeness” of other students.
“The amount of time and dedication that people were feeling,” he said. “I’m at a loss for words.”
