Offer free ice cream, and students will listen.

Ben Cohen used just that principle to pack the Sun Room of the Memorial Union with more than 300 students for his Thursday night lecture, “Make Your Vote Count.”

Cohen, co-founder of the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream brand and founder of Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, spoke to students about the distribution of the federal discretionary budget and how they can make an impact on politics.

“To have the message coming from the ice cream man makes it a little more palatable,” Cohen said.

After explaining his rise in business, Cohen launched into the principle of the Priorities! Campaign, using several visual displays.

“These days, high technology and powerpoints have become old hat. It doesn’t stand out. What stands out is the old stuff,” Cohen said of his examples.

In one demonstration, Cohen used plastic cookies to illustrate a picture of federal budget distribution. In this example, Pentagon spending was shown by stacking 46 cookies, representing $460 billion dollars in federal spending. The next highest in spending was children’s health care with five cookies, followed by homeland security and education with four cookies each.

“Some people see this demonstration and think, ‘What does that prove? So Ben can move around a bunch of Oreos,'” Cohen said.

Cohen showed how the United States could increase spending on education, children’s health care, homeland security, foreign aid and job training by reducing the Pentagon budget.

“I’m just trying to get a little balance here,” Cohen said.

Cohen said that the U.S. budget has not decreased since its escalation during the Cold War.

“You can approach the world either from a place of fear and greed or love and generosity. The world is a mirror,” Cohen said.

Cohen emphasized that he was not suggesting unilateral disarmament; with his redistribution plan, the United States still would have the highest global military budget.

“It’s a scary world. There are a lot of countries who aren’t exactly on the love train,” Cohen said.

Cohen’s lecture was part of the “Take It Back” campaign tour encouraging college students across Iowa to vote in the upcoming election and to get energized about the upcoming presidential election.

“[The Priorities! Campaign] chose to take our case to the people of Iowa and New Hampshire because of the unique role they play in politics,” Cohen said.

Students can help in the campaign cause by voting, attending the Iowa caucuses and pledging to vote only for candidates who support sensible priorities, Cohen said.

“Our country, the last remaining superpower on earth, needs to measure its strength not in the number of people we can kill, but in the number of people we can feed, clothe, house and care for.”

Students attending the lecture admitted to coming for free ice cream, but also felt that Cohen had a lot to offer.

“It’s very important that students make educated decisions when voting, and not just check the “D” and “R” next to a candidate,” said Peter Arentson, sophomore in pre-business.