The Government of the Student Body elected a new speaker and vice speaker of the senate Wednesday in its first meeting with president Jonathan Turk, junior in political science, and vice president Chandra Petersen, junior in political science.

After some debate, Human Sciences Sen. Michael Weber, junior in family finance, housing and policy, was elected speaker of the senate. Off-campus Sen. Jacob Wilson, sophomore in political science, was elected vice speaker.

The main concern expressed by senators was finding a candidate who could devote the time required to knowing the rules of legislation, which is the main role of the speaker.

“There’s more to being a speaker than going through bylaws. Not only is it important to know rules, but it’s important to have someone full of ideas to keep this senate productive,” said Off-Campus Sen. Jacob Johnston, senior in management.

GSB also confirmed a new cabinet to serve with the new presidential slate.

GSB also formed a new student debt committee, which will look into issues concerning student debt and find ways to address the problem with the help of the administration. The committee will aim to help clarify the function of the constituency council.

Johnston introduced the idea of the debt committee and said it was time for GSB to take a new approach to the growing problem of student debt at Iowa State.

“Every year we take the same steps, and every year the debt goes up. It has increased from 2006 about a thousand dollars a year,” he said. “We should gather facts and statistics, and then connect them to something meaningful, like the brain drain from Iowa.”

Denton Patrick, director of new student outreach and sophomore in preparation for human medicine, said although constituency councils were supposed to help represent different groups of students, sometimes that was not the case.

“It used to be that senators who were friends would vote each other in, but now we are getting students involved in the process,” he said.

Under the new bylaws, at least 50 percent of the votes to put a senator on a council cannot come from that particular group’s own representatives. The bylaw will not be applied until spring of 2010.

“It was actually vetoed last semester, so that spring application is just to give this change a little breathing room,” Patrick said.