My name is Jonathan Turk, and with Chandra Peterson as my running mate, we are running for president and vice president of the Government of the Student Body. We wanted to take this opportunity, now that we have successfully gathered the 1,500 signatures needed to gain placement on the ballot, to talk to you, the student body, about some of our platform planks and ideas for the future.

One of the biggest tasks the GSB is charged with managing is the allocation of over roughly $1.3 million of student activity fee money to the various student organizations and student-funded offices/services on campus. We want to launch a multi-faceted advertising campaign to make students more aware of the resources available to them through the GSB.

We also want to continue making improvements to the GSB Web site by placing a brief video from the president, finance director and speaker of the Senate, explaining the various ways to request money.

Further, we want to work on better organizing the Web site so that students do not have to click through four or five pages to get the information they need.

In addition to these improvements, we plan to actively meet and speak with student organizations in person, throughout the semester, to help improve the lines of communication over the funding processes. For this task, we will call upon not only the finance director and the treasurer, but also senators to actively reach out to student groups about their funding opportunities.

As president and vice president, we want to focus GSB efforts on a number of areas — none of which are more important to us than working to make college more affordable through increasing financial aid, strengthening funding for higher education and building students’ awareness of the other resources on campus, such as the Financial Counseling Clinic.

We plan to be strong representatives on the University’s Special Student Fees and Tuition Committee, where we will work to keep the recommendation for tuition and fee rates from rising, as well as strongly represent the students of Iowa State to the State of Iowa Board of Regents and the state legislature. We will appoint an ambitious director of ISU Ambassadors and will work hand-in-hand with that director and organization in planning a lobbying strategy to advocate for increased funding for higher education, in addition to addressing other student affairs-related issues.

We also are very supportive of the university’s move toward increasing sustainability on campus, and we believe that the GSB should take a more substantial role in promoting our community’s “go-green” efforts.

We want to increase recycling receptacles around campus and will work with the various university offices, including Facilities Planning and Management, to do so. It is our goal to help make recycling routine for students now, while we are on campus, so when we graduate these good habits continue, and we can positively impact our future environments.

Additionally, if we are elected, a Turk/Peterson administration will host the first ever GSB Director of Sustainability. This cabinet director will help us head up GSB’s efforts on green initiatives, working with the various student organizations as well as with the university administration.

We look forward to the next couple weeks as an opportunity to meet with many students to talk about our platform, as well as to field ideas from students on how to make the GSB work better for all students.

Please visit our Web site at www.TurkPeterson09.com to learn more about Chandra and me, and to learn about our other platform areas — City Relations, Campustown, Diversity, Communication, Dead Week and improving GSB. To contact us, feel free to e-mail us at [email protected].

Jonathan Turk

Candidate for GSB president