An informative podcast from your elected UNLV Student Government Officials.
Unknown Speaker 0:02
Okay, so hi rebels. My name is Isaac Hernandez. I'm the current student body president, y'all.
Unknown Speaker 0:07
My name is Diana amonkar. I'm the current student body vice president. We are yours in Unity. Hey, rebels. Welcome back to Oh, not even Welcome back. Welcome to our first show. We're gonna be starting off a cute little show, Isaac and I, as we start giving updates about campus, answering some questions, and maybe even bringing on some guest speakers every once in a while. So quick intro. My name is Diana, I am here as a student body vice president.
Unknown Speaker 0:40
Yeah, and I am Isaac, I'm the current student body president and this podcast show is going to be titled yours in unity, I think it's a very interesting way to bring people in in terms of just having an understanding of what we're doing. But, you know, think welcoming everyone back, it's interesting, just thing to think about, because campus just looks a lot differently than it has in three, the number of years that I've been here, I'm a fifth year, senior, I've seen quite a lot on campus. And this this school year is insane. There is a lot of people on campus, a lot of in person stuff. But let's talk about premiere for a second, because I think that was very exciting for a lot of people, especially the incoming freshmen.
Unknown Speaker 1:32
Actually, let's talking about the incoming freshmen. You know, we talked about how this is very different. I think a lot of it, we're getting out of a very interesting couple of years. But I think that seeing like these incoming freshmen and seeing them so like excited to get involved, I think you're really like kicked off from your beautifully and that they're like, Okay, I don't know what to expect, but I'm gonna go figure out figure it out. And premiere is always a whole party like being able to see first of all, like the premiere picture. So with like, and bringing the fireworks back, like I think that that was, you know, I know, there was a lot that went into bringing the fireworks back for this year. But seeing all the students and also I think I personally saw a lot of seniors there, because I feel like we all we got robbed.
Unknown Speaker 2:24
We essentially we did get kind of stripped of the kind of engagement that we would have on campus. But I have the specifics here of Premiere. But for anyone that doesn't know what premiere is, it's a tradition that has started or was started at least back in 1996. Here at UNLV. This is a tradition that was carried every single year as just a way to walk them back students. It's a really big tradition. And I think a lot of people get to have that understanding of kind of what the campus is going to be what kind of community we're going to end up putting together, or at least creating and premiere this year was very interesting, because we actually took the time to really reassess the way that CSUN uses our funds. And we allocated about 70,000 to rebel events board who hosted Premier. And I believe there was 10,000 that was allocated to Premier, specifically for that event to be held. And the numbers that we got after that I do believe there was about 6000 people that was the headcount. In the past, when they have done Premier, and everything was, I guess, normal, we're starting to see that they would usually have like projected numbers of about 4000 to 5000. But the 5000 was usually like on a really, really special occasion. But seeing that 6000 Mark, I think it's insane. It's very exciting, because we haven't seen this in a while and,
Unknown Speaker 4:05
and I think that, you know, for those of those of you that weren't able to make those of you that were there, you guys really felt the heat on that day as well. There was a heat warning on the day of premiere this year and for us to have that turnout on with that amount of heat. I mean, I'm born and raised in Vegas, so even me I don't feel like going outside with that level of heat. I'm just to just to see those numbers and to see especially at the end of the night when we started with the DJ. Everybody just kind of released a lot of I guess like a lot of enjoyment and be able to connect with everybody. I think that that was it. It was really special to see you know, I definitely think that it was still extremely hot, but I think it made up for it. That party at the end made up for it.
Unknown Speaker 4:51
I just kind of think of it like other than premiere say if it was the summertime, and I'm asked to go out and I see See, this is going to be like an outdoor thing. And I see how hot it's going to be. And if there is a heat warning, I am not stepping out. Premier that's a that's a different story. That was that was something I put in my calendar. And I made sure I went to just because yeah, it's it's it's tradition. I think I have no v has had traditions Yeah, in the past, but COVID really shook things up to the point to where it made everyone reassess everything.
Unknown Speaker 5:27
And premiere is definitely a special like I've seen professors, you know, with tenure that are like, Yeah, well, there's no class the day like if they have late night classes, like there's no class on premiere day. They're like, go party, go live it up. And you know, they also see the kind of specialty that there is in a tradition like Premiere. I think it's the same in a way, it's the most special tradition that we have other than homecoming. But you see that type of turnout, like late night breakfast and stuff like that. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 5:55
Yeah. I mean, it's, it's all credit to rebel events, sports, this is special shout out to the entire executive board. At rebel events board. I think all of you do an amazing job. Brian Ryan, for those who don't know, Ryan, you, you probably know of him. He is the dude in the sparkly red jacket. If you see him wearing that, say hi. He's a very, very welcoming and friendly individual. So
Unknown Speaker 6:23
he's an honorary mascot. Y'all
Unknown Speaker 6:24
are the title. Yes. No, but I just I kind of think of like, Premiere. And you have some events on campus where you only get a certain kind of group of students that show up premiere, you get to see everyone you see, obviously people from a student government, but you also see students that aren't really involved in anything else. They just wanted to show up to one UNLV event. You also have your athletic teams that show up to the event, because they just know this is that tradition, and even their coaches, their friends on the team there. They're all encouraging people to go to these kinds of events, because it's just, it's hard to miss on. Yeah. It's like kind of, for instance, like those concerts where you're texting your friend, you're like, we have to go to this. That's how people have seen money from mir. That's all people have seen premiere. And I'm just so excited that we got to kind of contribute to helping it be put on the fireworks for something that Rob wanted to bring back. And I'm really glad we got to contribute in terms of the finances so it could happen. They also had to go through a number of things to not a lot of people do know, but with the fireworks.
Unknown Speaker 7:38
There was a lot of negotiation with McCarran Earl's Harry Reid and and ash. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 7:42
yeah, it was it was largely due to the fact that planes that would fly over that area, they had to get confirmation that there were no planes at that time. So they had to postpone or hold off certain flights that would be flying over that vicinity. Just so there was no instance where there was just some kind of issue regarding the airspace. So I mean, I think it's, I think it's interesting. The letters are fantastic. I this is no shade to you, and I love them, but I think you and our thing would have been fantastic. I love you and or in the sense that they are our friendly neighbors. But you know, diving into kind of athletics, I think athletics kind of know this, but the rivalries,
Unknown Speaker 8:27
those rivalries, honestly, you know, and I stand by this i and one of my, you know, my job outside of CSUN. I actually work with a you and our alum. And we got into a whole argument this weekend, and I was in the office about, you know, our football team. And the reality is that the cannon is blue for now. But Come Come November 26. And we're turning it back red, especially like our teams, our football team. I like I like to think that he's doing pretty good right now, to be completely honest, but also like huge shout out huge shout out to our women's basketball team for how good they've been doing as well. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 9:05
I mean, athletics. I grew up in an athlete, no longer athlete that may be hard to believe. But yes, I played sports at one time. So
Unknown Speaker 9:14
so for those of y'all that don't know, Isaac, I strongly encourage y'all to follow him on Instagram, but he is he played football. And he played football at Bishop Gorman. Y'all bad for him to say that he played athletics. It's
Unknown Speaker 9:32
a It's a humbling experience. But I just kind of look at the game in general. I don't even think of like where I came from where I played at or, you know what I was at one point in time, I just think like athletes, athletes are usually that one group of students on a college campus at least that tend to be
Unknown Speaker 9:50
they're the ones that work.
Unknown Speaker 9:51
They are they are going through some very, very long and tedious and hard working days and I give credit to them because not a lot of the times, they're, they're kind of excluded on some events, to where it's like you don't really see a lot of them showing up to any kind of social mixers. And it's in large part to it, it has to do with the fact that they are just extremely busy, they have workouts, they have practice, they have film to watch, they have to still study for their schoolwork and their classes. And I think I pay a lot of respect to them. I know a lot of students like to, you know, talk down on the athletics here at UNLV. Because they haven't been the best in the past. But I'm very optimistic with athletics here at UNLV. Because they are just, they are hardworking, a lot of them that are on the teams, they come from junior colleges, they are trying to make a name for themselves. They're trying to prove themselves. And it's just even more respectful. I think, this year, football team, basketball team, every single team that we have here on campus, at UNLV, including women's sports as well, yeah, they are bound to do really great things. And we're just looking to promote it.
Unknown Speaker 11:03
And a lot of it, a lot of it is going to be you know, they're going to continue to work hard. And they're going to work even harder, once we're all out there supporting them. And you know, this is this is a big call to everybody to go out and support all of our athletics teams at their games, especially, you know, football when it comes to going out. And so we're in the middle of football season right now, going out supporting them, we have our next one coming up this Saturday at 12pm at allegiance. So once those tickets, once those tickets are out, like make sure you use like your you secure one II go out and support all those football players and support our school and show your rebel pride. I think that that's a big thing that, you know, we're really going to try to focus on this year. It's that spirit and that rebel pride. And part of it is going to be you know, on top of the scarlet Fridays that you know, President Warfield has been promoting. We're also going to be doing spirit Thursdays, like CSUN Student Government, we're going to be promoting spirit Thursdays. So follow us on Instagram at UNLV CSUN. And just keep up to date with what spirit days we're having last Thursday, we had whiteout day, the Thursday before our first Thursday, it was I believe it was black. So you know, follow us on Instagram keep up to date. And you know, where were the colors? Were the rebel pride? Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 12:30
I mean, just kind of think about, like the the movies that you see usually the typical college ones where you step on Canvas, everyone's wearing the school colors. Yeah, cool merch. That's what we wanted to see. We want people to be more excited about going to UNLV Yes, the acceptance rate is high, but you're still here, you're still a rebel. embrace that. Embrace that, be proud of it. And that's what we want students to do. It's why we do the spirit days is why we want to promote them. So there's Scarlet Fridays. And again, like Dinah said, make sure to keep in touch with CSUN, because we're going to constantly keep promoting just spirit in general. But I want to backtrack a little bit on the tickets. If you're a student that doesn't show up to any athletic games, please don't be the one to use the excuse that you didn't have money to buy the ticket. Here's the really good thing about UNLV. for all students, all students receive a free ticket to sports games. If you wanted to bring a guest, you can also bring in guests. But if you have a friend, that also goes to UNLV, they can also acquire a free ticket. If you want to bring a guest, I believe it's a discounted price on top of the student ticket that you do receive, the only thing is the location of the event. So for basketball games, you're still gonna be able to park at any of the parking spaces that we have near Thomas and Mack for football games is a little bit different since the rebels will be playing at Allegiant stadium. And parking is very, very limited there. So carpool if you can. But we also have shuttle services here at UNLV. If you were to want to go to a game, and you just are trying to figure out your transportation, getting contact with season two, we can always arrange something for you or guide you into the right steps of what you should do, who you should contact, where you should be at a specific time. And we can kind of walk you through all that. We simply just want the sun to be as informative as possible to you as a student, but also as a person. We have a lot of unsolicited advice that we're just waiting to give out. You just try not to do it too often because we don't want to bombard people with too much but we can kind of dive into a lot of the questions that we get because yeah, go ahead before we dive
Unknown Speaker 14:53
into that, you know, and this is This isn't me saying it because I you know I last night I went to a football game, it was the first time I went to a football game at Allegiant. And I completely forgot that Allegiant has like a really strict rule when it comes to bags. So, y'all, if y'all have like a bag or something, don't even bring it in, they're super strict about that, like not even a clutch. Instead, like Gone Amazon, if you have that prime, if you don't have prime like that student prime. Honestly, go get yourself a clear bag. Because you know, what you want to do is you want to continue to come come to come out to these football games, you want to continue to support our school, our athletes. And at the same time, if y'all want to go to like another event at Allegiant, there's a lot of concerts going on, like, you know, support local businesses, whatever. Um, if y'all want to go out there, like that clear bag is a really good option to have just so that y'all can still carry, like, whatever it is that you need your workflow, your wallet, whatever it is, into Allegiant. So if you're coming up to Saturday, just, you know, PSA for that.
Unknown Speaker 15:56
Yeah, it's all about just supporting your community in general. COVID, isolated, a lot of people Yeah, made them just be very independent, and solely reliant on themselves. But there's people that are just waiting to get involved. That's why we love the incoming class that we have here at UNLV. And I think they're gonna kind of set the tone and kind of keep everyone in check in the sense, like, continue to get involved. But I mean, I guess that kind of leads into the questions that we receive. I will tell you, that, me and Diana, we receive a lot of questions on a daily basis, about CSUN. And I would say that a lot of them there, they're basically the same, sometimes they're just worded in a different way. But
Unknown Speaker 16:40
I the main one, though, is going to be how, how to get involved. And I think that I'll go ahead and talk about that real quick. Because I feel like, if we leave that to the last, like, some of y'all will get bored. So number one, how to get involved. First of all, make sure y'all follow us on Instagram at UNLV. Son, we have a link tree in there. And there's a forum that says get involved if you're a freshman. And you know, I've been getting a lot of questions from freshmen, how do I get involved in C sound like I want to, you know, I want to get involved and CSUN is a great way to just get to know campus more, because you're working so closely with red, you're close, you're working closely with all these other departments on campus that exposes you to all all the resources that you have on campus in a way that I feel like no other org does. And at the end of the day, if you don't want to continue on with CSUN, at least you have those opportunities elsewhere. But if you're a freshman, the best way to get involved, it's going to be through the internship, we have the internship application on that get involved link. And the way that's reformatted now is you're gonna have a five week general period after you're appointed in the Senate, and you're going to learn the basics about seesaw. And you know, the three branches, you know, kind of like the formal aspect of CSUN. Before you decide, okay, I want to go into all these different branches. So it's a great way to learn, you're going to get a mentor, and it's a great way to build your community and just get involved as early as your freshman year, or any any other year, if you are looking to get involved in CSUN, but don't want to, like fully commit to like campaigning during the Senate elections. I think that that's a really great way to just get get your foot in the door a little bit. But on that, no, you know, I also want to talk about Senate filing and Senate elections that's going on right now. So everybody else, not freshmen. And I will say that because you do need a UNLV GPA in order to run. So filing is open for Senate. And it will be open until the 22nd. And filing does close at 5pm. Y'all don't be don't be, don't miss that deadline. Um, so finally does end on the on September 22. And like campaigning starts very soon after that. That means going out on social media, talking to students, and talking about what change you want to see on campus. So right now, if you're, you know, if you're in your second, third, fourth, fifth plus year at UNLV, and you want to see change happen. And you've been looking to get involved in student government now is the time elections are going to happen on October 12. And for those of for those of y'all that, you know, you guys maybe don't want to position but you want to have a say, as to who's going to be dictating where your money goes where your funding goes, you know, make sure you you vote on on October 12. Just to give y'all a little just to give you all like a little bit of a rundown. We have 20 Or what's our student population on right now?
Unknown Speaker 19:46
Yeah, so we are about 26,000 students at the undergraduate level the total makeup is about 30,000 new 31,000
Unknown Speaker 19:55
and usually for Senate elections or just for elections. The general student elections, we're looking at only like 1000 to 1500. Student like turnout. And that is insane. Especially because CSUN can do so much for campus. And we're able to find ourselves on campus fund scholarships and grants. We have such a big voice on campus. We were talking to President Whitfield the other day. And you know, he said, he said it himself. If you look at the history of you, like UNLV, and student government, whatever, see some, like sets aside on it, like it gets it done. And this is, you know, talk, talk to those who are running and make sure your voice is heard during those elections, get your friends to vote as well.
Unknown Speaker 20:43
I mean, I think I think you answered it really clearly. But even with that, if that's not enough to convince you to want to get involved or to run in the Senate elections, kind of ask yourself this question and really think about, you know, what exactly CSUN does, like, what does the sun do? That is another common question that we get. My response typically is that we're V group, we are the community on campus that come together to try and best represent the students to make change. So if there's something students want, we can always have the open conversation, the discussion, the dialogue, we can see how we can help. I think a great example of this is one of the accomplishments that we had over the summer, where Senator Zachary billet from the College of Liberal Arts, special shout out to Zach, Zach is amazing. He was actually working on a resolution. And the resolution specifically was to urge the university, so to urge upper administration here at UNLV, to create a committee to basically create a climate action plan. The last time UNLV had a Climate Action Plan was in 2018. It is something that we just wanted to see more proactiveness on. And I'm very excited that CSUN was the body of individuals here at UNLV, that were the ones to try and call for that. And it's a formal declaration, we really wanted to see some kind of push for sustainability on campus. And that's just one example. There's a lot of other things that CSUN does do. The Big Three things we always tell people is our self funding, sponsorships. And also scholarships, the scholarships that CSUN offers aren't necessarily only merit based, we really try and push for equitable opportunity here at UNLV. We have a number of students coming from all kinds of backgrounds, and we want to be able to uplift them without having them feel like college is a burden. Yeah, the whole purpose of CSUN is to ease the stressors that students face. And sometimes we can achieve those things. Sometimes it might be out of our scope. But at every single moment, when there is students that come to us, we're supporting cast, we are simply there to be by your side. And even if you know there are any kind of disagreements in terms of how we can come up with a solution, or how to fix certain things, there's always room for compromise. There's always rooms for alternatives. And we always try and make sure that we hear as many people as possible. But here's the next question. And I want to ask you, Diana, as a student, how can you be heard?
Unknown Speaker 23:29
So the biggest one is going to be bug your senator is, um, and also at the same time bug Isaac and I. So Isaac, and I have a we have an open door policy when it comes to the offices. So for those of y'all that don't know where the CSUN offices are, they aren't found on the third floor of the SU. So if you if y'all know where sia is, we're held we're in the same those same offices. But as I can, I will have offices if y'all ever have any complaints or anything like that. Come in, sit in our office, you know, we'll hear you out. But at the same time, no know who your senators are. A great thing that we're doing this upcoming, you know, year is instead of holding like office hours like we have in the past for Senators, they're now going to be going out to different ourselves and different events in order to get more FaceTime with students. And I think that that's going to be the best way and you know, it's going to trial and error because we're trying a new thing, but but your Senators know who they are. And if you see something on campus that you need to talk to somebody about and you want to see change, go to your senator because they represent you. So if you're at a club and you see like a club meeting, you see a new face and they say, Hey, I'm the Senator for X College, go to them and bug them get to know who they are, so that you also know who represents you and you're able to know that your voice matters.
Unknown Speaker 24:59
Yeah. Oh, absolutely, I think you worded that very nicely. I would I would even add, like if you're a student and you want to partake and just being heard by a student government or your representatives within CSUN, and you don't know exactly what to voice your opinion on just yet, that is okay. Be very observant of what's going on on campus. That is how me and Diana ended up putting our platform together. When we did run, we really used a lot of our encounters on campus to try and see what we wanted to change. I would even direct people to our website, our website is something that we were working on the entire summer, completely read,
Unknown Speaker 25:37
like revamped y'all like there, it looks nothing how it looked in the past. Yeah. And it's going to be the best way to guess what find those emails of those senators that I was just talking about,
Unknown Speaker 25:48
Oh, absolutely. We even have our public meetings on the CSUN website. And a really big thing we wanted to show people is our budget, we want it to be as transparent as possible, since the funds that CSUN does use are collected in tuition. So students have a specific fee and their tuition that is titled CSUN fee goes to Student Government, the funds that we use our student funds, look at our budget, analyze it, critique it, and let us know because we can always adjust and work on some of the things in the future. A lot of the stuff that we have here, it was strictly for transparency purposes. We also have university resources on our website, rebel discounts and offers. So if you are unfamiliar of what we are offered as UNLV students, do, check that link out. We're looking at updating some of the links and offers that are in that specific list. But it is coming. It is coming very soon. We also have a crime logs. So if you're interested at looking at some of the overall safety practices and reports coming from UWPD UWPD does offer that and we're very, very appreciative of it because we are very big fans of transparency. And we also have Crisis and Emergency Services on our website, as well as student support resources. And the really big thing that I love about our website is that we actually feature our student media on there. So shout out to K, u and v. They're fantastic. We feature them on our website, because we just want to direct students to our student media. These are future leaders, these are leaders currently. And they're developing, so we should help them in the development. But we should also just tune in to what's going on on campus and what they're providing.
Unknown Speaker 27:36
Yep. So last thing that I want to give a shout out is that if you all want to learn more about meetings are if you want to give public comment, or get to know all of the senators in one place at one time, we hold our Senate meetings every Monday at 6pm. If you want to take a look at our website to see more updated event schedule, take a look at that. Just you know, really get involved and know what CSUN does for you. So with that, we're gonna go ahead and sign out yours in Unity.
Unknown Speaker 28:05
Yeah, thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you. Thank you all for listening. To find more details do visit www.unlv.edu/ces UI.
Unknown Speaker 28:17
And if you guys want to stay up to date with more events, go ahead and follow us at at UNLV CSUN.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai