With nearly three weeks of their term behind them, newly-elected Government of the Student Body President T. J. Schneider and Vice President Joe Darr are looking toward the coming months with optimism, still confident they will be able to fulfill campaign promises made to ISU students.

Schneider and Darr built their campaign around vows to extend the hours of the Moonlight Express, to institute a truly “dead” Dead Week, to implement a better system of teacher evaluations and to work to ensure students are still receiving a high-quality level of education despite budget cuts.

“Most all of these promises have been taken care of or are being worked on currently,” Darr said.

When students return next fall, the Moonlight Express will run as late as 2:30 a.m. on weekends. Currently, the service runs until 2 a.m., and doesn’t accept calls after 1:45.

“The expanded Moonlight Express hours have been guaranteed already as we got the funding needed to make that happen for next semester,” Darr said.

Schneider said students are faced with a decreasing quality of education as a result of recent budget cuts. He said this is the first time current ISU students have been faced with a double-digit tuition increase.

“We need to work in conjunction with the university presidents and the Regents to ensure that higher education remains a priority in Iowa,” Darr said. “The Legislature is more concerned with building new roads, which must be only to help expedite the departure of those professionals and students leaving the state.”

On April 9, the Faculty Senate passed the Dead Week proposal constructed by Schneider and former GSB President Andy Tofilon.

President Gregory Geoffroy also recently approved Schneider and Tofilon’s policy. The online teacher and course evaluation Web site is ready for use and is linked from the GSB Web site.

The first weeks of Schneider and Darr’s term have not been without challenges, however.

The GSB Supreme Court, in a controversial ruling, eliminated senate seats held by students representing international, nontraditional, disabled and American ethnic minority populations.

Schneider and Darr compensated for the lack of representation in GSB by creating positions on their executive cabinet for the diversity populations.

“Although these areas will no longer have a vote on the GSB senate, I feel that this is a more effective way for their constituents to have their voice heard as they can work much more quickly and efficiently through the executive branch of GSB and not have to work their way through a lot of the bureaucratic processes that can sometimes hold you back in the GSB senate,” Darr said.

Schneider has implemented an office of Student Diversity to help meet the needs of the different populations.

“This office will work in conjunction with organizations already in place to create awareness of diversity on campus,” Schneider said.

The new executives have also learned to cope with the challenge of being full-time college students themselves, as well as the leaders of an excess of 27,000 students.

“In all honesty, it can be hard to balance GSB commitments with everything else in life,” Darr said.

“It’s just a matter of making sure you’re focusing on what needs to get done the most at the time you’re working on something that requires your attention most.”

The GSB executives also have ideas of what to accomplish in the long term.

“I would like to be able to look back and see that I have actually brought some things from GSB to the students that they can actually look at and appreciate that GSB is serving them to their best capacity,” Darr said.

Darr said he plans to work on several initiatives this summer that students can expect to see next fall, including an event that would bring together students from all areas of Iowa State.

“This event will hopefully take place during the early fall semester and will serve as a way to bring the greek community, the residence hall community and off-campus students together for some fun in a welcome-back type event in the form of a barbecue, a concert or maybe both combined,” Darr said.