After winning at this year’s University of Iowa Student Government elections, I Party officials say they are working on polishing platform issues geared toward academics and safety.
President-elect Nic Pottebaum and Vice President-elect Jessie Tobin, along with their 39 senators, were announced as the winners April 6. They are the first candidates to win a contested election in three years.
UISG officials are pleased with the increased voter turnout — about 25 percent of the undergraduate students — in this year’s elections. The # (Hashtag) Party and the I Party were the two campaigning slates.
This year marks an 10 percentage point increase over last year’s voter turnout in an uncontested election.
Tobin said she and Pottebaum are finishing up the details of a few projects and will complete a few programs during the summer to get them running by the beginning of the fall semester.
"We want to develop a timeline," she said. "The Safe Ride taxi program is going to be rolled out Day One [of the fall semester], so that’s going to be a huge thing over the summer making sure that it’s ready to go."
Along with the Safe Ride program, the diversity campaign for freshmen and the I-clicker rental will be completed over the summer and début first thing in the fall semester.
"Because a lot of things need to be rolled out at the beginning of the year, we’re going to have a lot to do over the summer months," Tobin said.
The I Party’s proposed database of syllabi for past classes will not start this fall, Tobin said, because of the number of people across the university needed to collaborate on the project.
"The one that Nic and I both feel strongly about is the syllabi database," Tobin said. "We’re here for school, and it’s going to improve academic life."
Though his party lost, # presidential candidate Sunny Kothari said the increase in turnout marked a successful election.
"I’m very excited to see that we succeeded," he said, referring to the combined effort from all candidates to increase turnout.
President-elect Nic Pottebaum said he was also glad the student government could reach so many people.
"Being involved in the past two elections, this year was extremely exciting," he said. "We reached out to a lot of student organizations in 11 days. This lets us recognize what student government can pick up the slack on."
Kothari and # vice-presidential candidate Nick Rolston said they believe Pottebaum and Tobin will do a great job in office.
"I Party did an excellent job with the campaign," Rolston said. "Obviously, the result wasn’t the way we wanted it to turn out, but I don’t regret anything. It was a great campaign."
Rolston and Kothari will not be a part of the Senate next term, but they have the chance to run for the executive board.
Current UISG President Elliot Higgins said Pottebaum and Tobin will be great leaders.
"I’ve had a chance to learn about their platform, and I think it includes feasible goals," he said. "I think they’re both ready to hit the ground running."
"We feel that they are extremely realistic and doable," Pottebaum said. "We have to go out and use those 365 days to accomplish all 15 items on our platform and hopefully accomplish some other things along the way."
Pottebaum and Tobin will be inaugurated April 22.