By now the student government elections are over. For the losers, better the luck next time. For the winners, I offer the following advice: Before undertaking any great effort in the coming year, be sure to consult your faculty adviser or faculty secretary of your group. This especially includes any member of student government who wants to lobby the state government over important issues like tuition. This will save you a lot of time and energy.

This column, however, is really about dissolving the Government of the Student Body in a five step process. You can have many reasons to dissolve GSB, but all you need is one. Perhaps you want to eliminate the over $300 students pay in activity fees, thus making students fund services and clubs directly out of pocket, instead of being funneled through GSB. Maybe GSB denied your club funding and you want payback. Or maybe you just want to practice libertarianism at the micro-level. Whatever your purpose, just make sure your reasons are strong. The plan to get rid of GSB will require a lot of time and work.

Step 1: Find about 25 to 30 students who also want to bring GSB down. In the upcoming year, you all will try to get appointed to positions on GSB. Given GSB’s precedent for high turnover, this should not be difficult. Not everybody, however, will make it. That’s where next year’s elections come in. No matter what happens, don’t try to become GSB president or vice president. These positions are time-consuming and subject to scrutiny and blame.

Step 2: Become excessively active on campus using GSB as a “screen” for your endeavours. You must appear to tackle many of the major issues facing students in the Ames/ISU community. Addressing tuition costs at the state government is fine, but more effective to your efforts would be to stage rallies on campus. You should also tackle the yearly housing contracts put forth by the vast majority of Ames landlords. The sensitive issues addressed on the ISU memes Facebook page can also be a source of inspiration for rallies and petitions. Who knows? This might actually shake off the apathy students have toward GSB.

Step 3: Win next year’s elections to attain a two-thirds vote on the GSB senate. But you must help your fellow group members with their campaigns to get them elected. Meanwhile, continue with Step 2, but on more intense scale (Occupy protests?).

Step 4: Derail and nullify the actions of the GSB president and vice president. Without a doubt, leaders in the Ames/ISU community will frown on large protests and petitions. University administrators will also pressure the GSB president and vice president into restoring order. Given that you and your fellow conspirators will have control over two-thirds of the senate, you have the real power, while the president and vice president take all the blame.

Step 5: Dissolve GSB with a constitutional referendum. Depending on how things go, you can sneak this referendum in an upcoming election, or you can put it to a vote during the year. In 2008, GSB added a referendum to the elections that year to make GSB compliant as a student organization with the university, specifically with the Student Organization Recognition Policy set in place by the Student Activities Center. The policy states that a club, including GSB, must include grade point average requirements for its members (members must have at least a 2.00 GPA). Removing this clause would cause GSB to be put on probation. You should pitch this referendum as a “way to make GSB more efficient and accessible to certain students would otherwise be unfairly left out.”

After this referendum is passed, your job, along with your fellow conspirators, is to simply ride GSB until it is no longer recognized by the university. I’m certain it would be a messy process. How would the student activity fees get distributed? Or would they be eliminated? Who would protest on behalf of the students at the state legislature? Most importantly, where would the stereotypical GSB member (as described in my last column) go to vent his energies?

Of course, these are all hypothetical questions to a hypothetical situation. I do, however, believe that if GSB became incredibly active using the methods I described above, the university administration would tolerate it for a time. But if major problems persisted, the administration would reign in GSB. That’s why I’ve argued GSB is powerless to aid the students in important matters.

Finally, if GSB dissolved, undoubtedly another group would take its place. Maybe IRHA would step up? Perhaps even the Sports Club Council? Would the Guild of Wargamers and Roleplayers be up for the task? Who knows? Personally, my vote would be for Cuffs.