Iowa State Student Government election polls open Monday. Four of the seats on the ballot are for the College of Engineering. Joe Zuber, a second-year student but a junior academically in computer engineering, is one of five candidates running to represent the College of Engineering.

What makes you qualified to represent the College of Engineering? 

I would say I have spent a lot of time in plenty of leadership positions and I feel very passionately about leading and making sure that we do things that are good for our students, especially during the current circumstances we are in with COVID, and financial situations can be very rocky right now. I think is important we are making good decisions that benefit out students. I mean, every penny we can save can help people … It is very, very important to make sure we pass some savings on to the students right now. 

How would you plan to represent your constituents?

I would want to work very closely with the clubs and organizations that are popular among engineers. I am a part of the e-sports club, and it is kind of a major talking point on my campaign that I have been working in e-sports for three years and run four teams, two of which are international teams and two of which are teams here at the university. Working really closely with the engineering student council and making sure I am going to every meeting. I have read a bit that showing up to a lot of the Student Government meetings has been hard for some people. I would want to make sure I am there every time they have a meeting. It is very, very important for me.

What are some of the biggest issues that need to be addressed in the next year?

These are my three big talking points. Basically, I have been going around to clubs, organizations and fraternities talking about these three things I want to make sure we accomplish within the next year. It is that we make sure we give our students quality education, and part of that is that we are working in the classroom again. That is something President [Wendy] Wintersteen has addressed in her emails; I have been going on about that even before then. I want to make [it so] that we get back safely, we get back in a way that is beneficial for our students. If there are students who still feel uncomfortable, maybe we could provide a lot of online options for them. We can sort of take what we learn and keep it to the side for accessibility.

Adding on to that, I feel like all of our students deserve to be involved, and that is something that has been very difficult during this process, is we were all separated and we are all in our own dorms or homes, it can be hard to interact. … Some of the freshman in honors this year, they have a really hard time meeting people, getting involved, knowing how to join a club. … I think we need to reach out to those kids and make it easier for them to get involved, especially during this time.

One of the ways I sort of brainstormed of doing that is … promoting e-sports more on campus, maybe expanding it a bit. We have a new space in Beyer Hall where people can go. Even if they can’t afford a new gaming computer, they can go and compete as an athlete just using those computers in Beyer Hall. That opens up a wide variety of ways for students to get involved from socially distanced atmospheres. … That infrastructure we create during COVID, it won’t be wasted when it ends because e-sports are a really great thing for accessibility reasons. People who are disabled can get involved with e-sports, which is something I think is really unique with e-sports compared to a lot of other athletic stuff on campus. … Everyone starts from the same point, so everyone can get as good as everyone else. That is the beauty of it: you learn a lot of social skills and teamwork. That is why I love e-sports, personally, myself.

Lastly, the third point is cost savings. I think we could reduce the activity fee, just a little bit, because I think we need to be passing some of that on to our students right now. Reducing the activity fee and reducing the budget of Student Government a bit is very, very important to me.

Are there any goals you would like to accomplish outside of what you already mentioned?

Another issue is we are “thinking green” about things. I remember a decision Student Government made recently on [the] e-scooters issue. I personally do not think it was a good decision to allow e-scooters on campus; I think they are going to be littered across our dormitories and hurt accessibility a lot. … I don’t think it is going to be sustainable, I don’t think it is going to be green for the environment. There is a study that Portland, Oregon, did [it], and in 2018, they ran a pilot program with e-scooters in the city, and they found that 50 percent of the people using e-scooters actually came from the lower-emission transportation methods. So 50 percent of people said they would rather walk or bike if the e-scooter wasn’t there. That increases emissions; now, the other 50 percent, they did come from cars and buses that do have larger emissions, but my concern is that here at Iowa State, we don’t have a lot of personal vehicle transport when we are getting around campus. So I think the vast majority of people who are taking these e-scooters will come from lower emissions or from our buses. That is just going to reduce the efficiency with our CyRides, and if we do decide to run less CyRides because of it, that means we are going to reduce accessibility. Students who can’t afford to spend the few dollars for the e-scooters aren’t going to be able to get around as easy, people who are on wheelchairs won’t be able to get around as easily. The thing I worry about most is winter, when it snows you can’t use those e-scooters. 

Why is it crucial that the College of Engineering share an equal role in Student Government?

“I think it is very, very important because us engineers, we have a lot of work to do a lot of times. It is very hard problem-solving work. … I know a lot of majors within Student Government are pushing to add new classes and new things for our students to accomplish, for example some online training programs, and I just don’t think that is the way to tackle some of our problems. Us engineers would rather have it combined into another class than take a whole other credit along with the existing credit we already have.