With tonight’s inauguration of the newly-elected Government of the Student Body executives, this year’s GSB president and vice president are looking back on what they both consider to be a very successful 2000-2001 senate session.

Both President Ben Golding and Vice President Lisa Dlouhy said they came into office with high expectations for what they wanted to accomplish as student leaders at Iowa State.

“When we came into office, we thought we had everything planned out,” said Dlouhy, senior in pre-business from Bettendorf. “But, over the course of the semester, new things popped up all of the time.”

Through the combined efforts of the executives, the cabinet and the senate, GSB has put the wheels in motion for several projects, she said. These projects include the establishment of the multicultural center, the beginning of renovations to the Memorial Union and the overhaul of the teacher-evaluation system.

Golding, senior in construction engineering from Cedar Rapids, said he and Dlouhy, in cooperation with other branches of student government, also put a lot of work into several other areas.

“The fare-free CyRide issue was not something that Lisa and myself had set out to do once we were elected,” he said. “We were very happy with the way that turned out, as well as things like the Fall Gala, which 500 people attended, and the search for the new [ISU] president.”

Despite all the tangible results they can look back on, Golding said the best accomplishment is the cohesiveness GSB developed this year.

“One of the things that I’m proud of the most is the way that GSB came together as a team, both with the senate and the cabinet,” he said.

The executives said they are very pleased with efforts GSB made to reach out to the students, Dlouhy said. The students changed the way GSB has viewed itself, she said, and GSB has changed the attitude the students have toward their government.

However, Dlouhy admitted the job did have its low points from time to time.

“It’s hard when you open up the paper and see editorials saying that GSB sucks and that we aren’t doing our jobs,” Dlouhy said. “We didn’t come through on the tuition hike and a couple other issues. Sometimes, when you are the executives and the ones directly responsible for dealing with the university, it feels like there is nobody there to back you up. However, we by no means have any regrets about our term in office. We don’t have regrets, because we got so much more than we had planned to out of this term.”

Vice Chairman of the GSB Finance Committee Alex Olson, who worked closely with Golding and Dlouhy on many of their main platforms, said the pair did an excellent job running the student government.

“They added value to GSB as president and vice president by rising to the challenges that were presented to them,” said Olson, off campus. “[Andy] Tofilon and [Charlie] Johnson have been left with a great place to start off from next year.”