As students contemplated campaign promises made by the Government of the Student Body candidates in deciding their votes, others looked at last year’s campaign promises.

Although there is some debate among GSB officials, GSB President Sophia Magill and Vice President William Rock said they believe they have fulfilled most of their campaign promises from a year ago.

“Our main mission was to work with students, and I feel that we’ve had an enjoyable time working with students on a variety of issues,” Magill said. “You always have to go into a position with high goals and high expectations of yourself and of others.”

Rock said he and Magill have completed some important tasks since their inauguration last April, but he said there was more he wanted to do.

“We made our platform fairly accomplishable,” Rock said. “However, there were a lot of things we put in there that were long-term goals.”

One long-term goal was to institutionalize activism on campus. According to a column submitted to the Daily by Magill last March, this would be accomplished by attending at least one meeting of every group on campus.

There are more than 600 student organizations, and Magill and Rock said they each planned on attending up to three student group meetings each day for five days each week.

“As far as reaching out to student groups, that’s something I would have liked to see us do more,” Rock said.

Magill said this campaign promise is ambitious and could be hard to fulfill as her term, along with Rock’s, expires at the end of April.

“It would be an overwhelming feat if I said I have attended 100 percent of the organizations at Iowa State University,” Magill said. “But I can’t say that I’ve gone to all of them.”

GSB College of Business senator David Stout, who ran against Magill and Rock last year, said he wishes Magill and Rock would have done more to communicate with their constituents.

“I think maybe they focused a lot on the outer relations and forgot about the inner relations,” Stout said. “There is definitely room for improvement.”

Stout said that the two did a good job of “rebuilding fences” with members of the community after the April 18 Veishea riot — an accomplishment he said was important because community members typically would not have responded to most students.

Another important effort worthy of recognition, Stout said, is the frequent dialogue Rock has had with state legislators in lobbying for lower tuition, increased support for Iowa State and other student interests.

“I know he goes down at least once a week to talk to legislators on his own,” Stout said. “Will does do a lot with the Legislature.”

Rock said he spent a lot of time with representatives from Story County in January trying to explain the Board of Regents’ Partnership for Transformation and Excellence, which would hold tuition at Iowa State and Iowa’s two other public universities to the rate of inflation — this year, 4 percent, the lowest since the 1998-99 academic year.

“It’s kind of confusing,” Rock said. “I didn’t get it right away either.”

Rock said the proposed 4 percent tuition increase and request for an additional $16 million for Iowa State’s budget next year is one example of how their hard work has paid off for students.

Good efforts aside, Magill said she was disappointed by a budget proposal from the House Education Appropriations Subcommittee that only provides $6.3 million to the three regent universities, which have requested $40 million.

“The Senate still needs to figure out its exact target,” Magill said. “We’re hopeful that they will consider higher education.”

Stout said Magill and Rock have done a better job at representing students than he anticipated. If he wasn’t an active member of GSB, he said he would not be aware of their hard work and would have much less praise for the two.

“I still don’t think students understand and care about what GSB does,” Stout said. “That hasn’t changed, and it mostly likely won’t.”