With the Government of the Student Body election around the corner, many students still do not know much about the people who represent them — many don’t even care.

“No one takes it seriously because we take ourselves too seriously,” said GSB senator Dave Stout. “It’s because we are a disconnected group of people who lose perspective as soon as we get on board, which includes myself.”

Will Rock, GSB vice president, said it’s easy for student representatives to be very serious about frivolous issues because they deal with them on a daily basis and it becomes their lives.

“Some people’s most important decision to make during a day is Cocoa Puffs or Count Chocula,” Rock said. “For us, it’s a 4 percent or 4.5 percent increase in student fees, which amounts to a few dollars per student.”

Jacob Larson, GSB off-campus senator, said there often is a divide between students and their representatives, who are sometimes considered “the GSB elite,” but the biggest factor with apathy is the inability of GSB to make a difference on issues important to students.

“It’s been hard to effect change on a lot of policies that affect students,” Larson said.

Angela Groh, candidate for GSB president and director of government relations, said students aren’t generally aware of what GSB does for students.

“A lot of the programs that GSB works on affect only a select group of students,” Groh said. “Even though GSB does affect all students, I don’t think it’s necessarily known on campus.”

Henry Alliger, candidate for GSB president and speaker of the senate, concurred with Groh’s statement.

“Most people don’t see how GSB can impact their lives, but every student is impacted,” Alliger said. “Like a lot of general elections, people just don’t care.”

Brian Johnson, senior in civil engineering, said he doesn’t know much about what GSB does for him, and he is not going to vote.

“I just don’t care,” Johnson said. “I’m not trying to know what they are doing.”

Chelsea Knight, senior in French, works as an office assistant for GSB, which is how she learned about student government and the candidates, but she said she understands why many students are apathetic.

“A lot of people don’t see a direct correlation between GSB and what happens to them on campus,” Knight said.

“They can’t distinguish between the candidates.”

Rock said student apathy toward the GSB election should be weighed against other local elections to put it in perspective.

“Apathy is relative; it’s not just GSB,” Rock said. “Our turnout is actually higher than other local elections — like the City Council election.”

Of the roughly 43,000 people who are eligible to vote in Ames, a little more than 4,000, or roughly 9 percent, voted in the last City Council election.

More than 5,000 students voted in the last GSB elections, although that is just 18 percent of the nearly 28,000 eligible voters.

“For a candidate to effectively represent students, it’s important to listen to students, to actually be a student and not necessarily consider themselves to be better than everyone else on campus,” Groh said.

Debates for three senate races Thursday highlighted student apathy toward GSB. Of the three races, only a handful of people showed up to listen to their cases. The debate for the seat for the College of Engineering senator saw the largest crowd, with four people in attendance.