Q&A with Kate Riggers, ASMSU Senate Speaker

Kate Riggers is the ASMSU Senate Speaker. She is a senior studying Business Finance with minors in Economics and International Business. Riggers was elected to the Senate at the end of the spring 2021 semester.

What are your roles as the Senate Speaker?

“My job overall is pretty much just to make sure that all of the functions of the Senate are running smoothly. I craft the agenda. I send it out every week. I make sure that all the senators have the documents for the meetings, whether we’re discussing any bills or resolutions - I make sure that they have access to those. I’m in charge of making sure our team’s platform is up to date, and we do everything electronically now, so we edit our bills and resolutions online. If we need Webex for the week because we have senators that have COVID so that they’re quarantined and can still participate. I run the meeting every week, making sure that we follow parliamentary procedure to the best of our ability, who we are not perfect but yeah, just making sure that all the little pieces are working so that we can get our business as a whole body.”

What are the top priorities of ASMSU this semester?

“For this semester, we are starting to get into budgeting season, which is one of the biggest things that we do as a body, so we budget over a million dollars in student fees each year. And that process typically starts in early March with the program directors coming and speaking to the Senate and advocating for their program and why they need this certain amount of our budget. Then, we go into the actual budgeting process, about the end of March, early April, and that goes on for a few weeks. So that will take up a lot of our time this semester and just making sure that we’re really fair and transparent with our process so that each program is getting the funds that they need, but that we’re not, you know, over allocating funds to one program versus another program.

Other important things that we’re going to focus on this semester, we’ve had quite a bit of sustainability legislation go through, and I don’t anticipate that stopping. We have a lot of senators that are really passionate about sustainability on campus, so I can see more bills and resolutions coming through there. Otherwise, normal duties, just making sure that the students’ voices are heard, if there’s initiatives that they want to see done on campus, we’ll always take our time to listen to them and make sure that we’re doing what’s best for the students.”

What is the election process like?

“So, after all the senators are elected after the big general MSU elections, we bring them into a Senate meeting. We go through typically the interview process so people nominate themselves for the position. I nominated myself for Senate Speaker, or you can nominate other people that you think would be good in the position. And then the Senate, as a body, comes up with an interview process. Typically, they determine what questions they want to ask you and you go through that interview process, and then you vote on who you would like to elect as the Senate Speaker and Senate Pro Tempore.”

What is your favorite part of being involved in ASMSU?

“I want to say one thing, I love meeting all the different people that come through ASMSU. We have representation from each college, and I personally am a business major, so had it not been for ASMSU, I wouldn’t have gotten to meet the people that I have, whether they’re other colleges or administration. Here at MSU I’ve gotten to participate in some really important conversations, which I’m really grateful for and had it not been for ASMSU, I wouldn’t have been able to participate in those conversations or meet those people, so it’s a really great opportunity to open doors and just see all that MSU has to offer.”

Is there any other information that you would like to share?

“So a part of OSE (Office of Student Engagement) is our PACE team, which are programs and campus events, and they have a ton of cool events coming up this semester. I encourage students to check out those events. This Saturday, Feb. 5, we had Rail Jam, TEDx on Feb. 26th and our spring concert, date to be determined, are just a few events that they’re putting on, but it’s just a really great way for students to meet other students on campus and see the cool things that the OSE is.”

What is the best way of contacting students and getting them informed on what’s going on?

“I would follow @msuose on Instagram. There’s always marketing going out for the events that we’re doing or what’s going on in Senate meetings. That’s a really great way. Students can also contact senators, if you just look up ‘Montana State University Senators’ on Google, then it’ll come up with the entire list of senators and you can get in contact with your senator, and they’ll be able to direct you to all the events going on as well.”