Editor’s note: Each slate for GSB President/Vice President was asked to write a column for the Daily. This is the third of three.

So, it’s that time of year again. Time for all the Government of the Student Body executive slates to tell you what they think you want to hear. Never mind whether those promises will address the lingering problems facing students. We’ll just tell you what you want to hear, take your vote and then go collect our scholarship and forget about all our plans. Not this time.

This year, all the slates are talking about communicating with students. It’s an important goal — communication and information were the primary concerns of the students GSB surveyed last October. But the method each slate is using to address the problem is telling. Only our slate is focused on making sure this communication reaches all students, and only ours is focused on making sure that every GSB in the future maintains this stronger level of communication.

We’ve already started attending house meetings, dinner announcements and clubs. Beyond that, we have also started working on establishing a weekly GSB column on this page. That would allow everyone to know what we are working on and what opportunities are available to them for positions, leadership and funding.

We also want to see the GSB Web site become useful to students. By setting up rating systems for professors and landlords, we can make sure that we all get an honest appraisal of the things that matter to us.

However, communication is only one part of what the GSB needs to do. Once lines of communication are in place, it needs to act on student concerns and work hard to represent general and specific student interests. GSB has done a reasonably good job this year, especially considering most members are in their first term of service. Drew Miller has been involved in almost every major effort this year, from coordinating the voting drive to helping avoid a hard waiver system for insurance, all the while serving on the finance committee, which is responsible for allocating virtually the entire GSB budget.

This record of results is what sets him apart from the other candidates.

I do not have experience within student government, but I have experienced it from the outside. As the president of ISU Fair Trade, I have seen what the funding process is like. It is scary. One of my main goals is to make sure that no aspect of GSB is intimidating to students. As a union organizer this summer, my job was to put a human face on a power movement. The primary objective of our campaign is to generate power for students, so this real world experience should prove invaluable.

Part of power is leadership. Leadership comes from experience, but it also comes from training. We have a number of great leadership organizations on campus, but not every student has the opportunity to go to those meetings. We also have Cy’s Leadership Summit, but as a once a year event with a registration fee, it also misses many students.

Our goal is to make sure every student organization president is trained in university policies, event organizing,and civic activism. If the Iowa Student Public Interest Research Group receives funding, we’ll have access to a trained organizer on campus. If not, I know a healthy number of professionals who would be willing to do the work for free. With a strong student leadership from within — but especially from outside GSB — we can work to increase the power of all students.

This will not be easy. It’s no secret that money is the most important element in generating power, and students are not exactly flush. The one way we can get power is by voting and by using our votes in the most effective way possible. Our voting plan is relatively modest; it would only take a few thousand registrations to make it work.

The important thing about it is that it will focus on districts where there are more students than votes separating the elections.

By informing them about their representatives’ stance on higher education funding, we believe we can mobilize a strong voting bloc across the state and basically force the legislators in those districts to vote to fund higher education or risk losing their jobs.

The new Iowa Quarter is titled “Foundation in Education,” and we will remind the state of that focus.

This is what needs to get done, and we’re the right people to make it happen. You can count on us to come through on our promises because our happiness comes from those successes. Check out our Web site, www.miller-riggs.com, for more information and to contact us with your suggestions about what you think GSB should be working on. Together we can make GSB a force for students.