A special thank you to everyone who came out to enjoy the 15th annual Chili Cook Off. I hope you all had a good time. I would also like to take this time to thank all of the participating chili chefs and the rest of the team that made this event a success – Stephanie Dathe (our entertaining emcee) was amazing, a big thank you to her, as well as, a special thanks to the Aztec Student Union staff for making this event run so smoothly and the Graphics department for their awesome designs! Please feel free to forward any feedback or suggestions to me (felman@mail.sdsu.edu) for next year’s event.

If you need to clean out some old shelves of books, this is a perfect opportunity to recycle them for students! ASUB has officially launched the Book Sharing Project in the Student Lounge of the Union! This was an idea from our former Associated Students President, Blaire Ward, and the Operations Committee has been working on implementing it ever since. The concept behind it is having a little free library where students are encouraged to take and/or leave books. We created a space in the Student Lounge, collected book donations and opened it to students just last week! Since then, we have seen a lot of student participation and nearly half the books have been taken.

While this is very exciting, it also means our book stock is running low and we would love your help! ASUB will be collecting any leisure books and you can drop them off at the AS front desk, the ASUB cubicle, or the actual cabinet itself, down in the Student Lounge. Thank you for your help and if you have any questions or concerns, feel free to reach out to Cat Kricorian, the Operations Chair, at asub.operations@mail.sdsu.edu.

Submitted by Cat Kricorian, ASUB Operations Chair

Homecoming has come and gone, yet again. This year's Homecoming theme was "Clash for the Can," an homage to the rivalry game between San Diego State and Fresno State known as "Battle for the Ol' Oil Can." Many students and staff don't know the history of the rivalry so we used this year as an opportunity to educate the campus.

The Homecoming Committee, lead by Associated Students Executive Vice President Vanessa Girard, planned over 10 events during the course of the week. They collaborated with Aztecs Rock Hunger to raise funds for the cause, as well as donating canned goods. A few of the highlights of the week were the GLAB: Dodge for a Cause Dodge Ball game, the OneSDSU Aztecs: Past, Present and Future and of course the annual Homecoming 5k fun run. There were over 250 participants who ran the fun run early Saturday morning. While our football was not victorious, two of the Homecoming Court nominees won the title of Homecoming Royal. They will plan a service event later in Spring semester.

The history of the rivalry:

The "Battle for the Old Oil Can" was coined as the result of a contest run jointly by the Fresno State and San Diego State Alumni Associations. Entrants were asked to suggest a name for the rivalry game along with a trophy to commemorate it. One of the entries recounted the discovery of an old oil can from Fresno (circa 1935) that was supposedly recovered during a San Diego State campus building project.

"The oil can likely came from a time when Aztec and Bulldog teams and fans traveled to football games between the two schools via the old, twisting, precipitous Grapevine section of Highway 99 over Tejon Pass," said Jacquelyn K. Glasener, executive director of the Fresno State Alumni Association.

The alumni associations agreed on the winning entry, the "Battle for the Old Oil Can," and purchased an antique oil can to be the basis of the trophy, which was awarded to the winner of the game.

"Buses and cars in those days carried extra oil and water to be sure they could make it through difficult trips," said Jim Herrick, executive director of the San Diego State Alumni Association.

Quinnton Smiley is one of the Facility Maintenance Leads. We tasked him to be our first Lead and he decided that this was a challenge that he wanted to accept. The position has had its ups and downs but in his own words, “A.S. has given me opportunities to tackle projects by myself and to work with professionals directly above me which has taught me more about professional work then any class could. Additionally A.S. has helped cultivate me into a leader, allowing me to learn and make mistakes where professional environments would be less forgiving. A.S. provides students a work environment that is challenging and rewarding, while also giving them opportunities to make mistakes and learn.”

Quinnton is headed to the ACUI conference in Arizona this year. As an A.S. leader, he will be instructing a course about how we use FMX (our work order and maintenance software) within all of A.S. How he is creating instructional videos and placing them within the scheduled maintenance tasks to educate our future student staff. Quinnton’s idea is that this will free up his time and give the new staff the opportunity to view the video and attempt the task themselves to achieve a higher sense of accomplishment.

Quinnton will be graduating this spring with a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and we are sure that he will apply everything he learned, while working with teams here at A.S., into his future career. He is always looking out for other people’s best interests and successes while increasing his understanding of how people work around him.

Submitted by Dave McGrew, Aztec Student Union Assistant Director of Facilities