Alcohol awareness will be a major focus for the Iowa State Government of the Student Body at the Big 12 Leadership Conference.

Twelve members of GSB, including senators and executive members, will attend the conference this weekend in Boulder, Colo. The conference will run Thursday through Saturday.

Mike Pogge, LAS, said a wide range of topics will be covered at the conference.

“You name it,” Pogge said. “[The conference covers] the gamut of issues for college students.”

Pogge said the conference will include an eight-hour alcohol summit. He said GSB is hoping to “possibly find solutions that could steer students in making alcohol decisions.”

Kate Kjergaard, LAS, also said she was interested in the alcohol issue.

“I think that information is going to be very valuable for Veishea 1998,” Kjergaard said.

“It will also be important for GSB since we passed a resolution [supporting an alcohol-free Veishea],” she said. “We’ll look at ways other universities of our size are looking into alcohol awareness.”

Matt Craft, RCA, said he hopes to borrow ideas that have worked for other universities.

“From my understanding, the University of Colorado had a similar situation to Veishea,” Craft said.

“I’m interested in seeing what they think could work here [regarding alcohol awareness] since they’ve been through all this before and we haven’t,” he said.

Kjergaard also said the session on tuition would be an important issue.

“We had a lot of expressed interest [on tuition] from students as well as from senators,” she said.

Kjergaard said she is hoping to get ideas from other Big 12 universities about the tuition issue.

“I know we’re trying to educate ourselves a little better,” she said. “We’ll try to see what other universities have done in that department.”

The trip is jointly funded by the GSB discretionary fund and the legislative affairs allocation.

GSB had originally planned to fund the entire trip, but decided the $3,000 allocation may be unfair, said Matt Ostanik, design.

“I felt like any other student group would not have even been considered for that much funding,” Ostanik said.

“I don’t believe we need preferential treatment just because we’re on GSB,” he added.

Senators and cabinet members said they were excited to learn what other universities are doing.

“I think it’s an opportunity to see a different perspective from other Big 12 universities and see how they’re dealing with issues,” Pogge said.

Jeremy Williams, director of finance, said he is interested in how other schools are using their student fees.

“I want to compare with the other schools and see how much money their student government has to allocate to student groups,” Williams said.

Williams also said he is interested in schools’ plans on student fees regarding a recent court case in Wisconsin.

Williams said the case calls student fees unconstitutional because students’ money is going to things they do not support.

Yasmin Blackburn, off-campus, said she hopes to find ideas on how other schools run their student governments.

“On our GSB, there’s only five senators who represent minorities as a whole,” Blackburn said.

Blackburn said she was looking forward to founding out other student governments had more minority representation.

“I think that makes a difference on how decisions are made,” she said.

Craft said he hopes to bring ideas that have worked at other Big 12 universities back to ISU.

“I hope to gain a better understanding of how they do things there, and steal their ideas,” he said.