Iowa State students will have a chance next week to cast their votes for president, vice president and all senate positions in the Government of the Student Body election.

Students will also have a chance to vote on the much debated GSB constitution during the election that will be held from Feb. 16 to 18.

“Overall, it’s really important for people to get out and vote,” said Rob Wiese, president of GSB. “We’ve had a decent year and got a lot of things done. Hopefully we can continue.”

The two slates on the ballot for president and vice president are Bryan Burkhardt and Jamal White, and John Hamilton and Amy Robertson. There is also one write-in slate, Chris Wisher and Jennifer Johnson.

Wisher and Johnson were denied a ballot position when the Election Commission found that only 1,955 signatures of their 2,058 were valid. To obtain a ballot position slates must have at least 2,000 signatures.

Burkhardt, sophomore in computer engineering, and White, junior in metallurgical engineering, have four main points on their platform, but they plan to focus on expanding current GSB activities. If elected, they said they intend to have student fees surveys, improved teacher and course evaluations and community outreach.

Use of student fees is also a concern of Burkhardt and White.

“We want an efficient way to use student fees to meet student needs, and it’s crucial that the administration knows them,” Burkhardt said.

Burkhardt and White also want to improve public safety on campus by looking at lighting and emergency phones on campus.

In correlation with community outreach they want to develop a multicultural/student activity building to “provide a place (for students) to feel at home, and do things like prepare food,” Burkhardt said.

One of Hamilton and Robertson’s four main platform points includes an improvement of student representation on GSB. They said they would like to do surveys and forums, and actually go out to student group meetings.

“We want to know what the students think GSB is doing poorly, what we are doing well and what we should be doing,” Hamilton, junior in marketing, said.

Establishing a multicultural center for campus is something Hamilton and Robertson, junior in exercise and sport science, said they will work on if elected.

They also plan to work with the class evaluation system so students can see the evaluations of the teachers before taking a class

Their final platform idea is to develop a university-wide, student-run community service project.

“Our main focus is getting out and finding what students want [that will] make GSB more of a student organization,” Hamilton said. “We also could serve the students better with the new constitution.”

Wisher, junior in finance, and Johnson, junior in elementary education, have several main points on their platform.

They want to fight increases in room and board rates, specifically next year’s 7.5 percent increase, and they want justification for tuition increases beyond inflation.

The team said they also want to make food service optional, improve transportation with CyRide, implement more on-campus parking and improve Project Vincent.

“We want to increase the storage capacity along with the server, and make it an ongoing process as technology advances,” Wisher said.

Wisher and Johnson also want to increase communication between GSB, the student body and the administration.

“We’d like to form a committee through the GSB president to get students more involved in university affairs and GSB,” Wisher said.

Their final idea is to enforce a higher English standard for teaching assistants and professors, by possibly having a testing program.

All of the executive candidates hope for a good student turnout at the polls.

“Hopefully it will be better than last year,” Wiese said. “We had 1,900 [voters] last year. We want at least 3,000 this year.”

To vote, students need to bring their ISUCard or picture ID along with their fee card to the polls.

“You get one vote for president/vice president, one for college senator and one for residential senator,” Wiese said.

The vote for college senator can be subsided for a specialty seat vote if desired.

“It takes about five minutes (to vote), depending on the lines,” he said. “It’s really very important. We can’t stress that enough.”

GSB members realize some students think their one vote can’t make a difference, but a lot of the issues this year were started by one person.

“You can get stuff accomplished,” Wiese said. “We love to hear from people.”

Elections are being held over three days to give people a chance to get out and vote when convenient.

Not only is a lot of time put into having the election, it also takes a lot of money in paying people to supervise the polls.

“It’s your money sitting there,” Wiese said. “Students need to realize that GSB plays a big part and does a lot on this campus.”

To help inform students of what the candidates stand for, debates are being held at the Memorial Union this week.

The presidential debate is today at noon in the Sun Room, the vice presidential debate will be tomorrow at noon in the Campanile room and the full slate debate will be held Friday at noon in the Pioneer Room.

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GSB debates

Presidents

Today at noon

Sun Room at M.U.

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Vice Presidents

Wednesday at noon

Campanile Room

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Presidents and Vice Presidents

Friday at noon

Pioneer Room

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Elections will be Feb. 16 to 18.