The ISD Editorial Board is endorsing Cody West and Cody Smith for the president and vice president of the Iowa State University Student Government. The two have proven to not only have realistic goals in line with the most pressing and important issues on campus, but they bring unique perspectives and the groundwork to make it happen.

We decided to base our endorsement on the four key issues we feel are most prevalent at Iowa State: transparency, diversity and inclusion, sexual assault prevention and enrollment growth. While all three of the campaigns offer diverse perspectives on solving these key issues, we feel the West-Smith campaign has the best proposed solutions.

West, a biology student and current vice president of Student Government, has served on a variety of Student Government and university committees in addition to other student organizations, and is suited with the relationships and realistic mentality to accomplish the tasks of the presidency. In our interview, West said that it’s important to keep in mind that they may never see the changes they hope to accomplish, but know they will have a future impact on Iowa State. This mentality is key, especially when trying to tackle issues that involve changing the culture on campus.

Beyond this, West offers genuine and efficient ways to bring more student voices to the table. Some of those ideas include monthly town halls structured in a one-on-one setting, or involving students who speak at Senate open forums to get involved with solving the issues they are speaking on. Smith, who is currently serving as the Student Government public relations chair, has brought new ideas for outreach throughout the entire year. Additionally, Smith brings a perspective of understanding into his role and has made many efforts throughout the year to understand perspectives of Iowa State students who do not identify in the same groups that he does, such as his working to help get the American Sign Language minor approved and serving on the Student Government diversity committee.

Because of these experiences, we believe the pair to be well suited to tackle the platform that they are running on. Below are a few highlights of what we think their platform can help accomplish, as well as our analysis of how we think they can improve their ideas.

• The two feel that peer education is essential in helping prevent sexual assault because they believe that students should not only be able to identify what rape culture is, but be able to openly discuss with their peers that sexual assault is never OK. They believe in longer term initiatives that are consistently keeping the dialogue alive, rather than short-lived campaigns. Additionally, they want to help eliminate the stigma of survivors seeking help and bring more awareness to available resources.

• The pair plan an initiative to work with the city of Ames and property managers to help solve issues related to lease gaps where students don’t have a place to stay between two leases and times when leases are signed. While the Student Government does not technically have any authorities over these outside entities, actively working to have the conversation is a great start.

• West and Smith hope to implement a “Cyclone 101” course, which West and current Student Government President Cole Staudt campaigned on last year. The course will include various topics important to students’ time at Iowa State such as diversity and inclusion, sexual assault prevention and financial literacy.  

• The two understand that decisions that are made by administrators, the Board of Regents and the Iowa Legislature are not something that they can control, but something that they can influence. West, as vice president this year, has worked with administrators to help them understand the need for being transparent, especially about decisions that will directly affect students.

• The campaign believes in the importance of enrollment growth and advocates a cautious approach for reform, but also specifically mentioned was the importance in retaining current students.

While we are endorsing the West-Smith campaign, we also wanted to point to issues we felt need additional work and attention.

• West offered one proposed solution to the lack of student resources on campus due to enrollment growth as working with community organizations, such as Mary Greeley Medical Center on the physical health spectrum. The ISD Editorial Board believes that the best first step would be to establish what the inefficiencies on our campus are and turn them into efficient on-campus solutions and entities.

• The two mentioned understanding implicit biases and the intersectionality of identities. We encourage them to further develop ways to help Student Government representatives and all students understand these concepts to recognize how each of us offers different perspectives through our varying experiences.

In addition to providing an endorsement of the West-Smith campaign, we also wanted to provide analysis of the Tillo-Barnes and Chavez-Hanscel campaigns.

Conner Tillo and Rachael Barnes bring diverse leadership experiences and campus involvements to their campaign. Tillo, as an ROTC student and active member in Student Government, brings leadership training and knowledge of the inner workings of Student Government. Barnes, with her leadership involvement in the greek community and Women in Science and Engineering, brings a style of empowerment and advocacy. While we believe in the substance of their qualifications, we feel they have too broad of a platform, making it difficult to know what all they would accomplish. We also feel their push to restructure the Senate to include student organizations is not necessary, and rather they should work to solve the true issue of lack of communication between senators and constituents.

Anthony Chavez and Emeline Hanscel are different and passionate in a unique way. Their campaign stemmed from not feeling the other two campaigns represented the issues they cared about, and thus entered as write-in candidates. They are passionate about including all student voices and doing a better job of reaching students through platforms such as social media and email outreach. While they believe in effective bystander intervention in regard to sexual assault, the ISD Editorial Board believes they should instead focus on comprehensive consent education because a number of sexual assaults occur in private settings. Due to their late entry, their platform is less developed and with a lack of current experience in Student Government, it’s hard to know to what extent they would actually hold true to their word.