Imagine roughly 36,000 voices screaming on Twitter all at once for changes to happen to Iowa State. Some may be serious, some may be trolling and others might just have questions that need answers.

This is where Student Government comes in.

“The role of Student Government is to advocate on students’ behalf to administration, to state legislature, to different faculty and staff,” Julian Neely, Student Government president, said. 

However, despite their wide reach, some students may perceive Student Government, or at least Senate, as an organization that passes resolutions that may or may not change anything on campus.

But Student Government also seats students on important committees across campus and in a variety of different departments.

“There are administrators and there are faculty that really want to hear student’s perspectives,” Neely said. “This new leadership at Iowa State is very focused on serving students”

But what about the rhetoric that Student Government isn’t important? Outreach and communication — a focal point of the Neely-Bibiloni campaign.

One example of this lack of communication is that elections and the election process are often communicated late in the process to students. If a student has an issue they are passionate about and what to change, they may find out too late about how to join Student Government.

“A lot of the times [when] we join Student Government it is [because] we see an issue and we want to fix it,” Neely said. “It’s not because its a resume builder, it’s because we see an issue and want to tackle it and make sure we are improving it for the future students that come to Iowa State.”

And Student Government is actively taking steps to address institutional misperceptions.

“We are trying to restructure and rebrand Student Government so that we have approachability and friendliness to students so they know they can be engaged and involved,” Neely said. 

And once the student body realizes the importance of Student Government, real change can begin to happen at Iowa State. 

“I see Student Government as the heart of Iowa State,” Neely said. “Where we are well known in the sense that students know they can go to us and we have that credibility to handle certain student concerns, handle student problems, and also make our experience a whole lot better than it has in the past.”