Student Government Awareness Week, which ends today, reached out to students to inform them about their elected representatives on campus. Making student government representatives more accessible was the goal in 1987, when the then Undergraduate Student Body Government switched its name:
Since USBG is the student’s link to the administration, Student Government is a “more apt description” of USBG’s purpose, according to Dean Furman, speaker of the senate. He also noted that many students confuse the acronyms USBG and UBS (United Black Students).
“Ask an average student what is USBG and he won’t know,” Furman said.
Erica Spinner, a junior in the School of Communication, didn’t know that the acronym USBG signified. She spelled the letters on her left fingers and mumbled, “U.S., United States, uh…”
David Helfand, a transfer student from New York, didn’t know what USBG stood for either.
“It is not clear enough just by the initials,” he said.
USBG is also proposing to revise its constitution and statutes.
“We want to simplify the constitution to make it more understandable to the average person,” said Furman, a public relations and politics and public affairs major.
The name change and revising of the constitution are part of USBG’s scheme to get students interested and involved with their government.
-The Hurricane, Sept. 8, 1987