Acadia Students' Union

Acadia Students' Union

Institution	Acadia University
Location	Wolfville, Nova Scotia
Established	1967
President	Grace Hamilton-Burge
Vice presidents	Samantha Nixon, Emily Murray, Liam Schreiter, Malcolm Anderson
Affiliations	CASA, StudentsNS
Website	www.theasu.ca

ASU Executive 2014-2015
The ASU Executive during the 2014-2015 academic year. From Left: VP Finance Jalen Sabean, President Callie Lathem, VP Communications Suzanne Gray, VP Programming Chelsey Spinney, and VP Academic Liam Murphy.

The Acadia Students' Union represents the undergraduate students at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada. They are a member of the Canadian Alliance of Students Associations (CASA) and StudentsNS (formerly ANSSA).

The Acadia Students’ Union is a not-for-profit student organization that provides services, events, societies and advocacy work to the students of Acadia University! Founded in 1967, it is an organization led by students in order to provide services and events to the students at Acadia. It consists of over 80 employees and many more volunteers.

The ASU offers many Student Services to help Acadia students have a worthwhile university experience. These services include Off-Campus Housing Assistance, the Safety and Security Shuttle (which helps students get from place to place around campus and off in the evenings) and the Health and Dental Plan. The ASU also hosts the clubs that operate through the ASU, as well as the Internal Organizations like the student-led campus newspaper, The Athenaeum; the campus radio station, Axe Radio; and the Environment and Sustainability Office (AESO). Cajun’s, the Union operated clothing store is also owned and operated by the ASU with the proceeds from these sales going directly back to the students.

The Acadia Students’ Union operates out of the Students’ Union Building (SUB) located on Highland Avenue in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. This location, central to the Acadia University campus, is owned and operated by the union.

Inside the building is located several ASU run services as well as offices for the ASU Executive, all of the Internal Organizations, and the university office of Residence Life. The services provided inside the Students’ Union Building are the Union Market convenience store, Perkin’s Cafe (named after the 12th President of Acadia University), Cajuns Clothing Store, and the Axe Lounge. The building also includes an Information Desk which offers postal services, bus tickets, and dry cleaning.

The Axe Lounge, which is the only on-campus bar for students, is set to undergo renovations over the summer of 2016. It was last renovated in 2014 in a joint fundraising effort between the ASU and the 2014 Grad Class to help make the Students’ Union Building more accessible (the lounge previously could not be accessed by anyone in a wheelchair). This second renovation is set to be much more ambitious and could cost upwards of two million dollars to complete. The renovation was decided by referendum during the 2016 ASU General Election which it passed. Construction is set to begin during April 2016. The goal is to help offset these costs through an increase in union fees. On the cost per student, The Athenaeum reported "Part of this cost will be incurred through ASU student union dues, at a rate of fifteen dollars per student per semester for the first five years of operation, and then changing to a total of twenty-five dollars per semester per student.”