The Daily Forty-Niner will be featuring profiles of ASI presidential candidates Christopher Chavez (Monday), Avis Atkins (Tuesday), Ricardo Linarez (Wednesday) and Raul Preciado (Thursday). The Daily Forty-Niner will also publish an ASI election guide on Monday, April 13.
Avis Atkins
Avis says she is service-oriented.
Most university presidential candidates come from political science majors and have extensive experience in civic-minded fields, but Avis Atkins differentiates herself from the typical Associated Student Inc. presidential candidate through her major.
“My major is not political science,” said Atkins, a senior human development major. “I’m not doing this to spear into government in the citywide area.”
Atkins said she has a service-oriented heart and that since stepping onto the Cal State Long Beach campus she has tried to figure out how to better assist her peers.
“Every time I wake up I just think about how to motivate and help more people,” Atkins said.
Atkins graduated from Millikan High School in Long Beach as an Advanced Placement Scholar and entered CSULB with 30 credits toward her degree in human development.
Atkins has served in ASI for two years and is currently the senator for the College of Liberal Arts.
Her on-campus involvement includes membership in the Black Scholars Student Association, which she is credited for founding after reactivating the club earlier this year.
Other affiliations include the African Student Union, SOAR Advising, the University Honors Program and Rotaract Leadership Club, where she once held the position of vice president.
She is also a peer mentor at the Bickerstaff Center for Student Athletes, an academic advising center for student-athletes.
According to Akins, her involvement in these clubs has helped build her leadership skills.
“I am very familiar with the aspects of learning how to motivate people and learning how to get a group to focus on one central task,” Atkins said.
Akins said she was prompted to run for ASI president after seeing how the current ASI leadership failed to get students educated about CSULB services and getting them to use the services they pay for in their tuition fees.
“We have 37,000 students,” Atkins said. “We have things on campus that can help and students aren’t as nearly aware as they should be.”
Atkins said she acknowledges that the budget is the one of the biggest issues on campus, and if elected president, she said she would cut unnecessary ASI spending and attract more corporate sponsorships to offset spending to reassure students that their fees will not be increased.
“Doing more corporate sponsorships is going to be better so we can keep the fees low,” Atkins said. “So if we are in a time of crisis, students will know that ASI won’t be raising their $43 ASI fee.”
She also said that quality advising is a bigger issue for her since it directly affects students.
“So many students get prolonged graduation, so many students get the wrong information, so many students get bad advice and it’s all because of advising,” Atkins said.
In her current ASI position, she has written a resolution involving the need for a central center for advising and has spoken to the heads of advising around campus to figure out a way to make on-campus advising better.
“I’ve actually gotten out there to make a difference and change how we do things,” Atkins said.
Akins says students should vote for her because she believes she is the only candidate that has a background that wants to serve students.
“I’ve been involved and even if I don’t get elected, I’ll still be involved,” Atkins said.
Major: Senior Human Development Major with double minor in Psychology and Sociology
Current/previous ASI positions: Senator for the College of Liberal Arts (no high school government experience)
High school government positions: None
GPA: 3.0
On/off-campus organizations: Black Scholars Student Association, African Student Union, Rotaract Leadership Club, and University Honors Program
Other ASI presidential candidate profiles:
I think I might vote for her, she seems down to earth.