While some students are disinterested in the work done by the Government of the Student Body and others believe that it is a waste of time and money, I would like to inform students about one possible way they can connect more to GSB’s daily work. In January 2009, under the direction of President Daniel Fischer, GSB developed a blogging Web site at www.gsb.iastate.edu/blog to give GSB senators an easy way to post status updates to the Web and give students a simple mechanism to comment on GSB’s work. This blog has been receiving new posts each week since the beginning of the semester, and I would encourage you to take a moment to explore the Web site and leave a comment on any issue(s) that are important to you. Hopefully this is easier to do than coming to the GSB office to talk to representatives — but you can do that too.

I would also like to let you know that the university’s ITS department plans to begin allowing students to transition their WebMail e-mail accounts to Google-hosted university e-mail accounts beginning this summer as part of the university’s new student e-mail program. This will be a voluntary transition period as the university irons out any bugs in the e-mail transition process. We hope that this change will give extra functionality to students’ Net-IDs, as they will now be able to access Google’s e-mail, documents, calendar, and other services under their @iastate.edu Net-ID. We are also happy to announce that upon graduation, students will be able to request a @ alumni.iastate.edu e-mail address from Google (ads will appear within the service after graduation).

The last big announcement is that students will soon have many more options for printing documents around campus with any printing credits they receive each semester. Recently, a university-wide committee decided to use the PaperCut printing system currently used in the Colleges of Engineering and Business across the entire campus. Students are excited by this idea because it will allow them to use their print credits across campus rather than only within their department (note: charge per page may vary by department). Expect to see this program in trial locations beginning next fall.

Remember, all students currently have a $5.00 CAC printing allocation grant they can use on central laser printers around campus. The grant is supplied as part of the computer fee paid by all students.

If you have feedback on any of these programs or ever have issues with information technology services on campus, please contact the GSB Director of Information Technology. The student in this position is tasked with representing the student body within the university’s ITS group and in a variety of committees that decide how your computer fee dollars are used. He or she will always be happy to hear more student opinions that can be discussed at the administrative level. If you are interested in taking the position of Director of ITS or any of the other positions within the GSB cabinet for the 2009-2010 school year, apply before Friday in the Memorial Union West Student Office Space. More information is available at www.gsb.iastate.edu.

Rick Hanton

GSB Director of Information Technology