Student Questions

We had to do a little research in order to answer your question about appealing a grad. I called the Ombuds office and they said there is no formal process. The informal procedure is to:

1. Talk to the professor about the situation. There are guidlines for how to do this on the Ombuds website at http://www.colorado.edu/Ombuds

2. If you cannot resolve it you can tak to the Department Chair. The Chair does not have the authority to overturn the grade but might be willing to mediate between you and the professor.

3. Write to the Dean. Very rarely does a Dean change a grade.

You can ask the Ombuds office to see if they can arrange a mediated conversation with the professor. The Ombuds office number is 492-5077 and they would be happy to give you whatever assistance they can.

The board of Regents for CU are elected by district. They serve a term of 6 years. CU is made up of 4 campuses and representatives from each campus form the InterCampus Student Forum. They elect one member to attend the Board of Regents meetings once a month, but they do not have a vote. Student interaction with the Regents is conducted through the Inter-Campus Student Forum. The four CU student governments elect a representative who attends the periodic meetings of the Regents. Their website is http://www.cu.edu/regents

The University of Colorado is a four campus system. The student government on each campus sends a representative to the Inter Campus Forum and they in turn elect a member to attend the Board of Regents meetings.

I think its just as safe as any other public institution. You can never plan for all the unexpected circumstances but CU does pretty well. If you would like to know statistics for various crimes committed on campus you can contact the cu police at 492-7311. I believe you can also get that information online thru the Planning, Budget and Analysis Office, as all universities must make that information available.

They are for sale in the Alferd Packer Grillin the UMC, or check with the Environmental Center on 3rd floor in the UMC.

Please contact the student Environmental Center at 492-8308 to see how you can get involved in sustainability efforts here on campus. Their office is on the third floor of the UMC Room 355

Your question has been forwarded to the Chair of the Student Groups Funding Board. I think that is the best place to answer your question.

In addition, you can go to the Student Organization Finance Office (SOFO) to learn about how to apply for other sources of funding for your student group.

Best of luck,

Office Manager

Audits are conducted on various portions of  CUSG periodically. You could check with Jon Tsuda, the director of SOFO (2nd floor UMC) about how often those are done.

Their budgeting process for student groups is conducted through the SOFO office and records are kept of all expenditures. Please realize that student fees are considered state funds and so we must keep records of what is spent and we must have contracts, receipts, and bills in order to process payments. If you are concerned about expenses for a specific event I suggest again that you contact SOFO. By law they are required to keep records for 3 years.

Freshman Council is an opportunity to learn about the workings of Student Government. This is a volunteer position and students are recruited in the fall of each year. Typically 15-20 students are selected and can work on a variety of activities, depending upon your interests and program availability. Some Freshman Council students "shadow" a paid student-staffer in student government. Others help to organize events. Look for recruitment announcements in the fall or come by UMC 125 to find out more.

Any student can run for representative at large. The fall election is your first opportunity to run. It is held the last week in October and we will start advertising for candidates about 6 weeks beforehand.

The process to be involved is an application and interview process. You apply online and then you will be interviewed, after the application deadline has closed.  

You might contact the Alumni Association. The student government does not have back issues for sale.

Fees are not based on per credit hour. Full time students pay $353.61 per semeter in student fees, representing an increase of 1.23% over 2009-10 academic year.  part time students (5 hours or less) pay $67.60. Student fees at CU are those fees the student government institutes and does not include administrative fees such as matriculation fee, career services fee, ITS fee, and do not include academic fees for classes. For a full breakdown of student fees, see the Bursar's Website.

Everyone who is a fee paying student at CU is automatically a member of CUSG. This includes graduate students. Your representative body is UGGS.

All joint board chair positions are paid $125.00 biweekly. That means if they have co-chairs, they split the amount between them, so $62.50 biweekly. The salary amount is set by legislative council.

There are 18 members of the executive staff, 3 tri-executives (we do not have a president but a system of 3 executives), 21 legislative council members and a permanent office staff of 3. We also have a judicial branch, the Appellate Court with 7 justices.

In addition, the student government at CU "oversees" certain services on campus that are supported by student fees, and therefore has governing boards for each of those services composed of students and a couple of staff/faculty members. For example, the Wardenburg Health Center has an advisory board of 7 students. Other cost centers (services) that have governing boards include, the KVCU radio station, Cultural Events Board, Environmental Center, Finance Board, Recreation Center, Volunteer Resource Center, GLBT Resource Center, Women's Resource Center and Program Council. So if you count all the students involved with these services provided by the student government you probably have a couple of hundred students involved with student government.

Finally, each college or school on the campus (9) has a local government (think of them as comparable to state governments). Each of those have executives and legislative councils or boards. So this could involved another 100 students.

If you would like more information go to our website cusg.colorado.edu and look up branches of government. Hope this helps

Great question. All of our meetings are open to the public, so students or community members can come to any of our meetings. Since we are a public university that receives public funds, these meetings are open. We wish more students knew about these meetings because there are some important decisions we make. Every week on our bulletin board in UMC 125, there is an agenda for our meetings and minutes are posted on our website.

Finance Board meets Tuesdays at 5:15 PM in UMC 425 and Legislative Council meets Thursdays at 7:00 PM in UMC 247. Hope to see you at a meeting and let us know if you have any more questions!

Legislative Council minutes from the last meeting online along with the upcoming meeting's agenda. If you look at the menu on the top of our website you will see one of the selections there is Branches (for our branches of government). Click on that to view agendas and minutes for Legislative Council and Finance Board meetings. For  issues that are voted on during the campus elections you can click on Elections in the menu to see results from past elections.

Call the CUSG Office to see if that item is available in paper form. If it has been passed, it will be on the web site shortly afterwards. See the "Bill Database" web site for Bills and Resolutions.

By laws and other governing documents can be found on this page of our website.

All Rep Council, Council of Colleges and Schools (CCS), and Legislative Council meetings are open to the public. Agendas are published 24 hours in advance in compliance with the Colorado Sunshine laws and posted on the bulletin board in front of our office. Rep and CCS are held at 6:30 on Thursdays and Legislative Council starts at 7 p.m. Committee meetings are not generally open to the public by any governmental entity. If you have any questions call the CUSG office at 492-7473.

The highest turnout that we have had in recent years was 36% in the Spring 2011 election. Usually it runs from 10 to 15%. Every year we try various methods of advertising to increase voter turnout: newspaper ads, buff bulletins, radio ads, chalking, T-shirts, and advertising. One year a candidate even rented a pet pig, put a sign and a halter on him and paraded it around the campus.

Still, we have a hard time generating interest. And this seems to be true of most colleges we are in contact with. If you have ideas we'd be happy to hear them. 

Please contact John Tomczak, our Election Commissioner.

CUSG has several ways that student groups can get funding for a proposal, event or travel.

If you have a large program such as Holocaust Awareness Week, which would interest the entire campus you should submit your proposal to the Cultural Events Board for major funding. They have a budget form to be filled out as part of your request and hold hearings usually in the fall semester for events all year long.

If you are a student group which would like to put on a smaller event or send members to a conference, you can request funding from Representative Council, the Council of Colleges and Schools or a particular local school or college government. Again you need to fill out a budget form as part of your request and then have a senator or representative write a bill for you to submit.

We do not normally fund individual students. For example we will not fund a program by a graduate student as part of their degree (music performance), we will not send a student to a program or to visit a campus or place of business which would be beneficially only to that student.

And finally, we will give operational funds to groups to be used to set up an office and get themselves organized. These are called SOC funds and are awarded twice a year.

The best place to start for application for funding is in the SOFO office located on the second floor of the UMC right next to the reception desk.

If this did not help, and its not what you really were asking about, please come see me in the CUSG office, room 125.

Student Group Web Sites are managed by the University of Colorado Information Technology Services Dept. (ITS). 

Your first step is to check with The Student Organizations Finance Office (SOFO) and they will verify your account and give you information on who to contact at ITS. SOFO is located on the 2nd floor of the UMC, by the reception desk.

Sorry for the delayed response. It is very easy to start a student group on the Boulder campus. What you need to do is visit the Student Organization Finance Office in the UMC. This is located to the left of the Reception Desk on the 2nd floor. You need 3 people to join your group and $25 to open up a student group account. Please visit them to learn about how to start your organization!

Please start with the SOFO office to fill out a budget request for funding for an individual event or travel for your group. Especially for travel you need a month or two in advance. Once you have filled out a budget and it has been approved by SOFO, a bill will be written by either Rep Council or CCS. They will have to hear the bill two weeks in a row you so need to allow sufficient time for that too.

Yes you need permission. Please go to the UMC Scheduling office in room 140 to find out where you can put your flyers and where you can chalk.

Any student group who would like to post flyers or have a table in the dinning area of the UMC need to schedule this through the UMC scheduling office in room 140. There phone number is 492-8833. Before the construction we had bulletin boards by the club offices where things could be posted. The new onew will be located along the hallway by the bowling alley (The Connection), but wont be up for 2 or 3 weeks yet.

CUSG through Representative Council and the Council of Colleges and Schools funds activities for various student groups. As an example, CCS just funded a law school group called Ageless for non-traditional students to have an orientation for incoming non-traditional students. We also fund groups to travel to national conventions or to bring speakers to school. Through our SOC funds we offer all student groups the opportunity to apply for operational funds - money for phones, pens and pencils, advertising, etc.

Program Council is a part of the UMC and thus indirectly a part of CUSG. They do the "fun" type of entertainment programing. The Cultural Events Board is also a part of UCSU and they do the traditionally more "serious" type of events such as dance troupes, poetry readings, speakers, films, etc.

Program Council is part of the UMC programs and the UMC is one of the Cost Centers overseen by CU Student Government.

To get a permanent office in the UMC, a club needs to apply thru the UMC Directors Office. Right now with the construction going on thats a little hard to do, but you can probably get on a list. Laura is the secretary and her number is 492-8832. If you want a room for a specific meeting call the scheduling office at 492-8833.

Not answered yet.

Some of the Students do not wish to have their pictures shown on the web site. There is no policy currently that requires them to have a bio or picture on the site.

Some students take class notes on laptops, although some classrooms do not allow it. That is up to the disgression of the professor.

Use whatever works for you. If you're interested in learning about Laptops or Personal Data Devices, (Palm & handhelds), you should check them out on-line or do some hands-on research at your local Computer shop or at the CU Bookstore. 

Yes, Our executive staff gets paid an hourly wage and our Executives (officers) get paid a salary of $400 biweekley. The Legislative Council President receives $250 biweekly and the Vice President $150 biweekly.

I will email you a form to use to apply to waive your fees to base and a list of criteria we use to determine whose fees can be reduced.

As long as you are not holding a paid position on the board (chair) you can apply to be on the Rec Board.

I do know that we use organics when possible in the grill, but I dont know about meats or local produce. You might want to check this our directly with the UMC by calling the directors office at 492-8832 or emailing the student chair of their advisory board, Piers Blyth. Also you can contact our student environmental chair, Amy.Harris@colorado.edu

Any time you want to table or hang up flyers or hand out information you need to check in with the scheduling department in the UMC in room 140.

We have both a College Republican and a College Democrats club here in the UMC so check with them about your candidate to see what they might be doing.

For this spring election we are running referenda questions in the usual fashion. However we do have an ad hoc CUSG group, headed by ASSG Senator Eugene Pearson, who are looking into how we need to revise awarding money to student groups so that it complies with the Supreme Court's ruling in the Southworth Case that funds be awarded in a viewpoint neutral way. There will probably be some sort of board, and referenda will become an advisory rather than a binding vote. But at this point there is not a definite decision.

The ACE is an administrative fee not a student fee. In the Spring 2000 election students held an advisory vote to indicate to the administration they were willing to have this fee imposed by the administration. Currently there are some meetings going on between students and the Budget and Planning office to see if another advisory vote will be run again this spring election.

Its a little more difficult in the middle of the semester because there are not as many openings. The easiest way would be to apply for a seat on one of the advisory boards for a cost center, like Rec Center, WRC, or Wardenburg. Go to the CUSG homepage and you will see a menu on the left side. One of the items is CUSG jobs and that will give you an idea of what is available now.

The Rep Council could not agree on an election commissioner this year. The Election code state when there is none that the election will be run by the Election Committee and the chair of that committee is Crystal Watson the RHA representative. There is a section on I-vote to enter your questions or comments about the election and if you use that we will pass it on to the proper personnel.

We have two students working on voter registration and arranging an on campus polling place. They are Jesse.Jensen@colorado.edu and Anthony.Delarosa@colorado.edu

Check out the CUSG Election Website page. 
The CUSG Election Commissioner is Danielle.Warly@colorado.edu

We keep a calendar of events on our website. You can also click on the event for more details and contact information.