Many students rushed to Central Campus around lunchtime Thursday, but the grill wasn’t the only thing giving off heat. There were several fevered debates that took place as a part of the Political Action Week event.

The theme for the day was “Flowers or Freeways?,” which focused on topics pertaining to conservation and sustainability.

The event kicked off with Michael Snodgrass, senior in mechanical engineering and president of Engineers for a Sustainable World, who urged students to get involved with conservation on campus.

“We need lots of people on campus,” he said. “Conservation, in my opinion, is the greatest way to make change.”

From there the focus shifted from conservation to animal slaughter. Andrew Schmitz, sophomore in agricultural engineering, in a letter that ran in Wednesday’s Daily invited Katherine Lydon, junior in pre-journalism and mass communication and president of the ISU Vegetarians, to debate animal slaughter procedures.

The debate grew from just discussing how humane current animal slaughter procedures are to if large farms are necessarily good or bad.

The intensity rose as students from the audience joined both sides and eventually had to agree to disagree.

Candidates for Iowa’s Secretary of Agriculture position Bill Northey and Denise O’Brien started off the first keynote debate. Their focus was sustainability.

Northey said ethanol has made a model of what can be used in sustainable resource research.

“We need more markets for corn,” Northey said. “We need to look for a demand [for corn].”

Northey stressed that Iowa’s corn production and research with ethanol can be beneficial to the state’s future. Using corn and soybeans that are grown and processed in Iowa, the resulting ethanol can be used for products that previously used oil, Northey said.

The debate over large-scale farms was brought up throughout the day.

“It is important to encourage in Iowa all sizes and types of farms,” O’Brien said. “We need to have small, medium and large farms. We need the whole array.”

The second keynote debate featured City Council candidates for the 2nd Ward Jami Larson and Erv Klaas. A reoccurring topic that has been brought up in association with the 2nd Ward election is the proposed new mall.

“I would probably weigh in on the side of the economic benefits to Ames,” Larson said.

Klaas did not share his sentiment.

“I think a new mall would cause an extreme upheaval in the community,” Klaas said.