The Associated Student Inc. Board of Directors discussed accomplishing the 2010 to 2011 strategic plan and having affordable textbooks during Wednesday’s board meeting.

The two parts to the strategic plan include increasing student awareness of ASI and increasing student involvement, Rylan Gervase, ASI executive vice president, said.

Gervase said research will be done on this topic by the end of the semester to create a goal on what the increase should be.

To create more student awareness about ASI, there was a discussion around either tabling in the quad or having the ASI directors tabling in front of his or her college’s building.

“Start off in the quad or Career Center then if successful, move in front of our [department] college,” Sergio Tapias, the director of engineering and computer science, said.

Tapias said there will be more success if board members work together and not focus on just their individual colleges.

To address the second point of increasing student involvement, Gervase said his goal is to have 90 percent of university committee positions filled.

Sarah Couch, vice president of university affairs, said one way to evaluate if this goal has been reached is by administering a survey at the end of the academic school year.

Vice President of Finance Chris Smith said in addition to increasing student involvement, ASI should also focus on creating more affordable textbooks on campus, which involves increasing the number of textbooks in the Library Reserve Book Room.

Smith said there are three ways this can be done.

He said one way is to look into how the Reserve Book Room could qualify for external grants. Another solution is to contact Pearson publishing to ask the company to donate books. Lastly, Smith said he wants to convince faculty and staff to donate textbooks to the Library Reserve Book Room.

ASI also discussed the recent controversial cartoon published in The State Hornet. Board members discussed on whether to write a letter to The State Hornet regarding the cartoon.

“It is within our responsibility to respond,” Couch said.

However, ASI President Terry Martin said the letter would be repetitive because of The State Hornet’s attempt to correct the issue.

There will be a further discussion and decision on writing a letter to The State Hornet during next Wednesday’s board meeting.

Michelle Curtis can be reached at statehornet.com