A new year and a new semester provide the ideal opportunity to start fresh. This could mean setting objectives from short, personal goals to long-term team ones, or rekindling goals created in the fall. 

The fall 2015 semester was full of ferment. The university hired a new football coach and health center director and said goodbye to multiple senior administrators, including Senior Vice President for Student Affairs Tom Hill. Dean of Students Pamela Anthony announced she, too, was leaving Iowa State.

Students of color persistently demanded change to campus culture with multiple demonstrations and meetings with administration.

Iowa State’s very first vice president for diversity and inclusion, Reginald Stewart, is starting the semester with a plateful of inclusion initiatives, including ISU PD creating a multicultural liaison position for three officers, University Museums developing a plan to relocate multicultural artwork to more visible areas on campus and additional training for police and ISU faculty.

The new Thielen Student Health Center director, Erin Baldwin, was hired in the fall and is set to implement the new initiatives to improve the student health center, after a report released in early summer 2015 revealed the center wasn’t up to standard in care.

All of this in addition to the regular stresses of classes, jobs, homework and extracurricular activities.

These changes, and more, make for a lot of adjustments thrown at the campus community in a short amount of time. Break was a chance to reset and recharge, but now, it’s time to get to work.

The initiatives intended to improve campus culture will mean nothing if the student body doesn’t hold the administration accountable for actually implementing them. This first semester after all of the changes and decisions is key. Spring 2016 will set the tone for the changes to come, and the student body is crucial to manage that mentality.

The student body succeeded in its mission in the fall semester, to make sure voices and concerns were heard. The administration should be commended for its response of being open and welcoming to student opinion and input. Both parties were excellent in learning to and adapting to working with each other. If we learn how to do this now, this mentality will be passed down, and it will be a tone for which campus will be known.

Students and faculty are charged with holding administration accountable for the promises it makes to the campus community. We must continue this trend to ensure change is enacted on this campus.