Ep. 89 - What Does ASI Do For You?

Yotes! Did you know part of your student fees goes to Associated Students, Incorporated (ASI)? Do you know what ASI does with your fees? Do you know the services offered by ASI? Do you know how to become more involved on campus through ASI? Find out here with our special guest, Carson Fajardo, student and your ASI President!

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Transcript

Matt Markin  
Hey, welcome back to another episode of the CSUSB Advising Podcast. My name is Matt Markin, an academic advisor here at Cal State San Bernardino, and on today's episode, our special guest is your ASI president, and that is Carson Fajardo. Carson is joining us today to chat more about Associated Students incorporated and what they do for you. So Carson, welcome.

Carson Fajardo  
Hello, yeah, thank you for having me, and hello to all the listeners out there and viewers out there. Glad I get to share space and get to give you my pitch about what ASI does and why you think it should be important.

Matt Markin  
Yeah, I'm glad for you to be here to chat more about ASI, but before we do let's learn a little bit more about you. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? You know? Why did you choose Cal State San Bernardino?

Carson Fajardo  
Well, my name is Carson Fajardo, as stated, and I'm ASI president, and I'm a business administration major with a concentration in management. Going into my last year, my fourth year should be my last year. We'll see what happens. But yeah, no, it'll it will be my last year. I'm out of here, and I'm an honor student as well. And kind of what made me choose CSUSB was I live about 2025, minutes away in Rancho Cucamonga, and I was applying this just pretty much schools around the area. I applied to UC Riverside, Cal State, San Bernardino and University of La Verne, and I pretty much was weighing scholarships, weighing who gave me the most aid, and CSUSB provided me a scholarship where I was able to get my dorming for free. And I'd never, ever thought about dorming on any campus, because it would be too much money. So they really gave me that opportunity, and I took it, ran with it, and I ended up joining, like the housing student leadership and student government over there in housing called village council, and worked my way up through the housing student leadership and then eventually built, you know, my following to become ASI president in 20 last this past year in 2023 24 and now I've won again, and I'm going to be continuing on as ASI president in 2425 so just super excited. And you know, I think for me, something about tsusb is that, you know, with the scholarship, with the people here. I felt so invested in and I felt so won over by this campus. And obviously I'd never stepped foot on this campus before I got the scholarship, and I came to this this campus, and I saw the mountains, I saw the amazing buildings that were in place and being built here in the student union, the San Marino Student Union, north, having that be a huge selling piece, the brand new dorms, the CGI, right, having these amazing elements of the campus really sell me, and feeling that investment into myself, and really wanting to pour back into the university, pour back into why I deserve the scholarship to come here in the first place, and that was to go and give back and give back in service. And I feel like, you know, I might not be in complete debt financially to the university, but I'm going to be in debt and service to my fellow, my peers, other students and and to the university to be able to make sure that we're creating safe spaces for students going forward until after me. So that's kind of, you know, breakdown of why I wanted to become ASI president, and kind of how I came to CSUSB.

Matt Markin  
I love that aspect of giving back, yeah, because CSUSB gives so much, and you can learn so much, and then, yeah, you're able to do so much for yourself through ASI, and that gives back to all the students here as well. But I'm curious, though, like, you know, with with the major, what made you choose that major? You know, what do you feel like, if that makes that's a good fit for you?

Carson Fajardo  
Yeah, so I in high school, I was involved in ASB associated student body, and I was a treasurer at the time, I was a treasurer, and I love and it was during covid, right? So there wasn't a whole lot going on, but something I really found a passion for was creating fundraisers that would benefit not only the, you know, the ASB, but also small businesses around that needed help during covid. And, you know, they didn't have the business that they used to they and they were the ones that had to stay open to, you know, provide for their families. The family owned businesses. So I was really wanting to during that time, my senior year of high school in 2020, 2021, I wanted to, I held fundraisers at different areas in Rancho Cucamonga that were kind of in the same region of my high school, and we got students there to fundraise, and ended up raising. I think the highest one we got was like $200 just for our organization, for one fundraiser. I think we raised over I think six or $700 just for business, some different businesses over there. So I think that was like the first kind of spark of like, I kind of like the entrepreneurship, I kind of like the fundraiser. Side of business, but I didn't really know going into college, like what I wanted to do, so I just kind of blindly shot I'm like, business sounds good. I know it's going to be broad. Management sounds like a leader. I've always been involved in leadership roles in high school and obviously now into college, so I thought management sounded good, and I just kind of went with it right, and didn't really know what would it would turn into. Didn't really know what my interests would be like when I got here. But what I thought I found is that this major business and management specifically is really translated perfectly into the ASI President role, because I act as the Chief Executive Officer of the corporation as well, on top of my presidential duties. So it's been cool to see how the more corporate aspect of where I'm at in my position has been able to allow me to learn more about the different things I'm learning in class. So it's been cool to see, especially this past year, that I've been able to, like, have a HR class, right? You know, talking about an HR issue, and then there's something that pops up in ASI where it's like, oh, that's, I just learned about that in class, you know. And I know how to navigate the situation, or I know how to do this the correct way, and it's been a great help. But I think for me, being able to have no clue what I wanted to do, coming into into school, and then finding different things that kind of matched up. And then now I'm thinking about taking a turn and and wanting to do something different than business, but still keeping it in the same field, like I'm really passionate for higher education and what that means for students, and being able to take themselves, but not only their family, but not only themselves, but their families, to the next level in their lives, to be able to succeed, to create that intergenerational construction of knowledge, not only within their field, but also financially, to being able to move up the ladder of the economy, pretty much. I love what that means, especially here in San beno, Riverside County, Inland Empire. And I want to continue my my passion there. But I always do like this little business side of things. You know, I like the business side how to fundraise and how to raise money. So what I've been looking at going into is advancement University Advancement and fundraising for universities. And I feel like that is kind of the best of both worlds, where I've been able to see where I can merge my business passion and the passion of higher education for myself and advocating for other students and advocating for the continued, you know, success of higher education in California. 

Matt Markin  
I hear two things kind of coming out of that. One is that, you know, a lot of your classes, you've been able to apply theory into practice and what you're doing, but then also knowing that, like you weren't sure, didn't know, okay, well, what can I do with this? Or what will come from this? And you just kind of jumped in and said, let's see what happens. And you know, a lot of students, I think, can be a little, you know, hesitate or fearful of things without knowing for sure what's going to happen. But hey, nothing's guaranteed. I just got to try it, go for it and then adapt.

Carson Fajardo  
I mean, now's the time, right? I mean, for our undergrad students, students that are coming straight out of high school or coming straight out of community college, now's the time to make mistakes. Now's the time to fail. It's because it's not really a failure, right? It's just you learn from it, you pick yourself back up, and you're better from it. So that's what I've kind of been able to stumble around and figure out. My own is kind of just pushing myself out of my comfort zone, taking a leap and hopefully falling, and stumbling here and there and and somehow I just keep running. So, you know, I think there's learning processes and everything that I do, especially this year, being ASI president and taking it into a second year, plenty of things to learn from, plenty of mistakes that I made, and I'm gonna fix for next year and continue to be better from it. But yeah, I think the one message is like, put yourself out there. Now's the time to get involved in that club and org. Now's the time to get that internship. Now's the time to join asi. No shameless plug. Now's the time to get that help from advising right. Now's the time to put yourself out there, make some mistakes. 

Matt Markin  
And let's talk about asi. So maybe it's a combination type question, you know, for a student listening, what is ASI and what are the benefits? Like? Why should a student care about ASI?

Carson Fajardo  
So ASI, I think the acronym sometimes gets skewed. So the ASI, it stands for Associated Students incorporated pretty much like associated student body, but there's a corporation where we're a nonprofit organization and a nonprofit auxiliary of the university. The main reason why you should care is that you pay us your student fees. That's the one reason you pay about give or take, $42 a semester. 42 to 45 Dollars a semester for an ASI fees, which means for all the events that we do, for all the student advocacy we do. And we're pretty much a student government on campus, as I said before. So pretty much having that student government, there's like two kinds. It's asi. We've a lot going on, right? That's, that's the thing. There's, like, two main aspects of ASI. There is the student government side, the advocacy side, and there is the event side, pretty much. So there's events that ASI does. We've done coyote Fest this past or every single year, and we brought, this past year school boy Q, and we brought the said element, oh, who all came and performed in a concert for our students. We have for that event every May. If you're unfamiliar with it, it's early May to kind of celebrate the end of the year and celebrate the end of the academic year. That's one of the biggest events on campus. This past year, we had six ish 1000 students in attendance, which is probably the biggest coyote fest you've ever done, from any any counts that we could find. We also do different concerts throughout the year. We bring guest speakers throughout the year. We do two other medium size of medium sized events. One that's coming up is called waves, which is pretty much a big pool party that we invite all the fraternities and sororities out to, they kind of table and promote themselves. And then it's just a fun way for students to just, you know, jump in a pool and create new friends. And another one that we do is cosmic Coyote, which is a we pretty much turn the bottom floor of the SMSU north, into somewhat of a club scene, like, pretty much a club scene. We have the bar open for those that are 21 and up, and we have a DJ out in, kind of the lounge area where there's kind of It looks like a like a pit, if you haven't been down in the student union north, outdoor, kind of patio area, and that is that's kind of like where there's a dance floor, there's a DJ going on, and then inside there is cosmic bowling that's going on inside the SMC north, and there's also another DJ in there with the dance floor. So that is probably one of my favorite events that I've ever been to on this campus, because of how rowdy it gets and how we got like 700 students in the bottom of SMC north. So it's, it's, it's huge. It's really a fun event. So I encourage you to come out to it, but that's one part of ASI, right? We do the events, we do the fun stuff on campus. We do the things for to create a student life on campus, right? The other part is that student advocacy side, right? That's where I come into play. Mainly, I have some, I have some, I have some pull in the event side too. But the student advocacy side, there is representatives from each academic college, right? All the five academic colleges there are also student representatives from different student populations, like housing students, students that live on campus, student athletes, graduate students, international students, students with disabilities, clubs and organizations. So there's a representative from all those different groups, and we all pull together and we advocate for or we really just talk about the different issues or successes that are happening on this campus, and we try to create solutions to these problems, or we try to advocate for different ways that A university should kind of shape its path, right? So that's kind of the other end of that. All those positions are elected. So they we have elections every spring semester in about April, middle of April. So we elect all those board members, board of directors, we call them, and then the four executives, and I'm one of them, so there's a president, there's an executive vice president, there's a Vice President of Finance, which is pretty much the treasurer position handled finances, and then a vice president of our Palm Desert campus. So that is the main legislative body of ASI that advocates on your behalf as students and be able and make sure to gather in student input, to go to make sure that we're bringing every voice to the table. So that group, that body, meets every week on Fridays time to be determined, because we still need to transition into our new board, but it will be Fridays. Typically it's been around it either late morning to afternoon, somewhere in the middle of the day, and yeah, so there's those two big parts of ASI. We advocate on the behalf of students for from a statewide level, a system wide level and a campus wide level. So all three of those areas, we go out and go. Of Sacramento every single year to advocate and talk about what are some things that are facing, what are some problems or challenges that students are facing in CSU, we've also done legislative advocacy visits to Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, and to be able to talk to our representatives over there that are represented in the Inland Empire, and we go every single month, myself, alongside another student, student staff member, to the Cal State Student Association, where we talk to other asis. There's an ASI every single CSU campus, all 23 CSU campuses, and each one of these campuses pull together every single month to talk about the different issues that are going on that may be common and try to find solutions to those problems. So it's lot of stuff going on advocacy wise, a lot of stuff going on in the event pool. So hopefully I kept everybody engaged. Yeah, any it's a long there's a lot going on.

Matt Markin  
Yeah, and I'm learning a lot just hearing from you on this, and I've worked on campus for about 20 years now, so just learning a lot more about ASI and I guess let's say someone's listening to this and they're like, Well, I love the advocacy piece, or I love the event piece. I want to get going. I want to do something. I know you're mentioning some of the positions are elected. Is that the way someone can get involved, or is there other ways someone can can join up with with ASI? 

Carson Fajardo  
I mean, there's a lot of different ways, and that's a cool thing. There's something for everybody, like we even have graphic designers that are students in this office that do all of our flyers, all of our sticker promo items, shirts, everything, all student designs. We also, like some of the students that go to DC or go to Capitol Hill, they're all student staff members as well. So, you know, that's that's the cool part about it. There's no real correct path into asi. There's a few different ways you can get your feet wet. There's a few different ways that it just depends on your time. Pretty much if you want, like a student job. You want to get paid, I would suggest a student staff position. Right at the moment, we don't have any student staff positions open, which is shame, but there's always another year, right? Because people graduate every year that things now open up. So I think this next year is going to be a big year where we're going to have a lot of turnover because we have a lot of seniors in office, I would say student staff position or run for the executive office, if that's what you're wanting. You know, the executives, myself, the vice presidents, we all get paid hourly, 20 hours a week, like a student assistant. So that is also an option, also, if you're really engaged, and that's, you know? I wouldn't say, I would say, if you're just in it for the money, not for you, it's not that good, you know. But if you're here for fulfillment, you're here to advocate for students. You hear, you're here for a purpose. I'd say, run for the executive, executive office, the board of directors is like, another step, like, I would say another way where, let's say you don't have 20 hours a week. You don't you already have your job. Let's say you have about five to six hours a week to spend on advocating for students, because that's what your passion is, right? Those representative positions are probably for you. They're incentivized every semester with a parking pass, or with a dining with dining dollars that you can use on campus and our dining facilities, or with bookstore vouchers, so you can buy books with that voucher. That is what the board of directors are incentivized with. And there's about, I think, 15 or so positions with that. So that is another good step into it. The next step I think you could go to, if you have one or two hours a week, or even possibly, like three hours a month, you can apply for our ASI health squad, which health squad is a committee appointee program that students are allowed to join, to sit on campus wide committees anywhere across campus. And if you're listening or watching and you don't know about campus wide committees, they're going to be campus wide committees across campus on any little thing. A committee is pretty much a meeting. It's just one meeting. There are people. It'll be faculty, staff, administrators, vice presidents, help sit in a room, talk about a certain Initiative, or talk about a certain challenge the university is undertaking, and kind of go through, how do we solve that university with these different partners in the room, those house squad members would be in that room, be in those meetings, to give that student perspective. And there is Matt, you probably sit on a few committees, right? There's a there's a couple 100 community committees across campus that are available to students are like you listening, that you can be heard on. So those are kind of the three levels, going from house squad to board of directors. A to A student staff position. Those are probably the three.

Matt Markin  
I appreciate you mentioning, like, the kind of time that might be involved. And really, there's something for everybody if they want to get involved in asi. But let's say a student's like, you know, I I work, I have other responsibilities, I have classes back to back, you know. Or maybe I'm more of an introvert, and some of these events, I'm kind of nervous to attend. Any advice for that student?

Carson Fajardo  
It's tough, right? And I think that one thing is there's one there's a way where you can just say, like, Oh, screw it. I'm just going to do it and see what happens. Or there's different ways to speak with. You can always talk to me, right? I'm always a good resource. I'll be in the ASI office in the SAM Student Union, North third floor at the all the way at the end of the hall by the leadership lab. I'll be here for you if you just want to talk one on one and see what opportunities there are for you, if you want to grab a friend, right? Grab a friend to see what they want to do, join a club like that's a great, small way to start, too. But it's really it's not going to be handed to you by any means, right? You have to have that initiative on yourself to go. And if it's running for a position, that's running for a position, if it's applying for a job, it's applying for a job, right? But it's finding the resources around you that will help lift you up, even if it's a faculty advisor, even if it's a straight up advisor, right, a CSUSB, finding the people that will uplift you, finding people that will challenge you, and finding different people you know that will continue to push you to be the best person you can be. But you have to push yourself to make those connections. You have to push yourself to make the most at your college experience. I you know something. I was just telling we have freshmen orientations for those listening that are happening at the moment. I don't know exactly when this will come out, but this is when all those freshmen are coming by through campus to learn about everything that's going on. And what I tell each and every single one of them is, you're not paying eight, $9,000 for this piece of paper that you're gonna get at the end of the year or at the end of the four years, and you get to go home and you walk on to your 106 figure job, right? It's that's not what you're paying it for, right? You're paying it for the experience. You're paying it for the connections you're paying that for, you know, the experience you're going to have here that will build your repertoire to be successful in the future. And ASI is a big part of that, at least it was for me. And there are different ways to get involved on campus. I'm obviously going to be a huge promoter of ASI. That's just what it is. But, you know, clubs and orgs, fraternities and sororities. There's tons of ways, and there's tons of people that maybe like you that don't know where to start either, you know. So it's how you leverage those connections, how you take a friend with you, and how we, together as a collective campus community, continue to pick each other up, because we're all here for the same reason, to go to make the difference that we were, you know, sitting in that freshman orientation, you know, trying to get that degree, you know, trying to figure out where to go from there. We were all there. And like I said, I'm always here if you need to pop in for me Student Union or 3304 that's room number. Come on by. I should be in the office pretty much every day, but I'm always happy to talk to anybody and see what we can do together.

Matt Markin  
Awesome. Nicely said. And you know, you know, you talked a little bit about some of the events and things that go on with ASI throughout the year. Anything you can share with anyone that's maybe listening to this right now, prepping for the fall semester, anything upcoming that you can share.

Carson Fajardo  
Yeah, so if you're a freshman, you have to be listening to this Coyote. Experience is a great one to come up. I think that's happening. I think the first Friday we're in school, that one's huge. It'll help you get more involved and engaged in the campus community. Next event, freshman, the next one is late night. Late Night should be the first Friday of the school year, and that's an event that we do in partnership with the Recreation and Wellness Center and the Samuel Student Union and a bunch of different other departments, where we go down to the rec, Recreation and Wellness Center and have a DJ, have a stage, and we get dancing. We have some different rides out there too, and clubs and orgs and and departments all tabling out and and trying to bring students in to see, you know, to expose them to the resources. The one after that would be waves. Waves is the pool party I was talking about, and that's coming up right in the beginning of the year. So we're going to start in the year strong, and hopefully keeping that momentum going all the way up and through to coyote Fest at the end of the year in May. So yeah, that's the next event going on, and there's if you're interested in getting involved in ASI, you can always find different ways to get involved through our website. I would also encourage you to follow us on Instagram at. Under it's at ASI, underscore, CSUSB, and if you look that up, you should be able to find it, and that's how you'll stay up to date on everything ASI, different opportunities and all the events that we have going on.

Matt Markin  
Sounds good. And you know, because it's an advising podcast, I have to ask you, yeah, you're a student. Yes, you're last year. But what's been your experience with academic advising or meeting with your advisor?

Carson Fajardo  
Yeah, I think students all have different you know, all have different experiences. I'm sure Matt, you hear everything right? For me, I had a really good experience. I had one really good experience, and I was a freshman. John Noriega Vargas, I don't know where he is or where he's working now.

Matt Markin  
Oh, he's still in this office, and he'll be glad to hear this.

Carson Fajardo  
Yeah, tell him, because I saw my freshman year, little a little freshman, and he set my path for my next four years. He got me dialed in with my road map. If you are listening. You don't look. If you have not looked at your own map, look at your roadmap. That roadmap saved my life a million times I looked at my roadmap. I mapped everything out for my major, and there were, have been years and semesters that I have not even needed to see an advisor already knew what I was doing. I registered for classes, and I stayed on on track this entire time. So thanks to him, he set me up with that. He set me up with the my cap. Make sure to get your my cap going. I'm sure you know, Matt, that my cap is amazing. That plan that I had set forth and dragging and dropping things from that roadmap changed my career. I probably would have had to be here another year if I didn't have that at my fingertips. You know, I think that is the main thing. Obviously, it for me, I'm an honor student, so sometimes it gets a little weird when I have to go to an honors advisor versus like my regular major advisor, but I always just stop in and I do the drop in hours and and I'm like, Hey, this is what I'm doing. I've been going off this my cap since freshman year, and am I still doing the right thing? And they say, Yep, you're good to go. And that's all I need so really, really positive experiences. But John Noriega Vargas, I never, ever forgot him, because I had one meeting with him, one and he set me up for the rest of my four years.

Matt Markin  
Sweet. That's good to hear. And yeah, I'll be sure to send this to him once it's live, so he can listen to and skip to this part, yeah, and hear his name, yeah, yeah. A lot of great information about ASI sharing you know, your background, your experience. Really do appreciate it. Carson, thank you so much for being on the podcast. 

Carson Fajardo  
Thank you so much, Matt. And truly to any student listening. I'm in the ASI office at Smith north. You can also follow me on Instagram at Carson Fajardo. You just look at Carson Fajardo, you'll find me, and I pretty much troubleshoot and answer any any calls on that or anything. Feel free to DM me and and I'll be there. We can set up a meeting, or even email me at asi president@csusb.edu so always accessible, whether it's in person, through DMS or through email.