Funding the future — ASUI allocates funding for UI students to attend a women’s leadership conference

The Argonaut The ASUI Senate unanimously passed a bill Wednesday to allocate funding toward sending University of Idaho students to the NEW Leadership Idaho 2017 conference that will be held at Boise State University from May 21 to May 27.
The NEW Leadership is a national bi-partisan program developed by the Center for American Women and Politics, designed “to address the under-representation of women in American politics.” The program’s resolution is to represent a wide range of socioeconomic, ethnic, racial and educational backgrounds, and academic majors at the conference.

Director of Student Involvement Shawn O’Neal said the bill allocates an additional $1,000 from the ASUI Senate Allocations Budget to the Department of Student Involvement (DSI) to send two to four female students to represent UI at the conference at no cost to the student.
Sen. Nina Rydalch, who works for The Argonaut, said the ASUI Senate Allocations Budget is a secondary source of funding for student organizations and it has a total of $5,000 for the academic year.
Rydalch said it costs students $500 to attend the program and DSI already had enough money to send two students to Boise, but wanted additional funding to send at least two more, if enough interest was shown.
Sen. Haleigh Sims-Douglas said the conference has been going on for the past four years, but UI hasn’t been able to send a delegate until now.
“I think that us finally participating in such an amazing program and an amazing opportunity that is specifically for our state is really, really great,” Sims-Douglas said.
Sims-Douglas said the conference invites college women from across Idaho to develop leadership skills and to learn more about the political processes within the state.
ASUI Pro-Tempore Mattie Cupps said the students will learn more about how the state government functions and be given a real problem that legislators are trying to address.
Sims-Douglas said students are ...


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