Among the unanswered questions is a fairly basic one.

In its third meeting Monday, the Commission on Improving Relations Among ISU students, the University, the City of Ames and the Ames Community worked to answer the question: When you hear the word Ames, what do you think of?

Bob Kindred, assistant city manager and chairman of the commission, reminded the group of its task.

“We need to try to determine where we are as a community and where we need to go to get there,” Kindred said.

The commission spent most of the meeting determining what information is needed before recommendations can be made.

Laura Bestler-Wilcox, Web coordinator for the dean of students’ office and co-chairwoman of the commission, presented data on everything from change in GPA to alcohol use.

“I don’t know if we want to do anything with this,” Bestler-Wilcox said. “But it’s just things that make you go, ‘Hmmm.'”

Chuck Cychosz, Ames Police support services manager, commented on what he said was a huge shift in census data around the university-impacted area.

“Clearly we’re on a path toward intensification of use,” Cychosz said. “This is happening around this area.”

In its third meeting, the commission was still struggling to define itself, but its members stayed lighthearted.

Patrick Hultman, graduate student in political science, said handing out Xboxes to every new student might be the answer. Hultman also tried to put the commission’s task into perspective.

“I did find an example of 13th-century Oxford where town-gown relationships were so strained that the city invited the students into town and shot 60 of them,” he said.

“So our task is relatively simple, if you think of that.”

Although much of the commission’s focus seemed to be on the students at Iowa State, several members of the commission commented on what the university does or doesn’t do to make students feel they are involved and the frustrations involved in trying to do so.

“We have a huge turnover every four years,” said Doug Gentile, assistant professor of psychology.

“Every year we have to socialize 8,000 new members about what our culture is.”

“It needs to work both ways,” said Joyce Durlam, co-owner of Durlam and Durlam Men’s & Women’s Clothing, 226 Main St.

“It has to be a mutual commitment. We need to make students aware of the fact that they are part of a community. And what are we doing to get more community members to see what the university is really like?”

The commission is contemplating sending out a survey similar to the one that will be sent out by the Veishea task force, but is still in the planning stages.

“We know we need to create something,” Bestler-Wilcox said. “We just don’t know what that’s going to be.”

Kindred summed up much of the mood of the evening when he said the nature of the city of Ames would make the commission’s task a difficult one.

“There aren’t any perfect answers,” he said. “Ames is a very dynamic community.”

The commission meets again Aug. 2 in the Ames Public Library Auditorium.