Wednesday night’s Government of the Student Body meeting brought up discussions revolving around helping students with financial literacy, funding the Cultural Ambassadors Program and seating senators to a committee. 

Hillary Kletscher, president of the GSB, proposed working with the Office of Financial Aid to help students by addressing whatever financial services are deemed needed by the student body, Kletscher said. 

“We [GSB and Office of Financial Aid] came to an agreement that we aren’t sure what extra services are necessarily needed by the student body, and taking services from the previous financial offices and just moving them over to a new office doesn’t necessarily mean we are meeting the needs of students,” Kletscher said. 

GSB plans to partner with the Student Loan Education Office to ensure students have access to all services they need. A survey is planned to be sent out to the student body to ask them about what services they would like to see, what their needs truly are as well as host some focus groups with students. 

GSB did the first read of a bill to provide the Cultural Ambassadors Program with funding. If passed, this bill will fund the Cultural Ambassadors Program $2,540. 

The funding is broken down so that $2,320 goes to hourly student wages of $7.25 an hour for 320 hours a school year. 

Approximately 10 hours a week for 32 weeks, $170 will go to cultural training, group pairing orientation, whole group event, final banquet material boards, name tags, markers, certificates and activity material. The final $50 goes to promotional material which would be split $25 per semester. The second reading of the bill will take place at next week’s meeting. 

In other business, a senator was elected to represent the College of Human Sciences. Other senators were elected to the Diversity Committee, and the University Affairs Committee was elected a new chair. 

Also on the agenda was funding transportation for the Big 12 Conference. 

The conference, which will take place Nov. 13 through 16, will bring members from the student governments from all Big 12 schools to Iowa State. 

The bill is for a total of $2,064 that would be allocated from the Reserve Account. The money would go toward CyRide at a rate of $86 per hour for 24 hours a day. 

At next week’s meeting, GSB will meet with the Ames City Council to discuss issues that face both ISU and the Ames community. The purpose of the meeting is to create a better relationship between the two governing bodies.