As the summer nears, newly elected University of Iowa Student Government leaders Katherine Valde and Jack Cumming said they want to start implementing certain aspects of their platform as soon as possible.

On April 12 in the IMU, the HOUSE Party was announced as the winner of the UISG election, receiving nearly 54 percent of the votes cast. Valde will be the new president, and Cumming will serve as the vice president.

A reported 5,651 undergraduate students (27 percent) voted in the election, the fourth highest turnout in 20 years.

Valde, currently the governmental relations liaison for UISG, is excited about implementing the ticket’s ideas — one of which is a bike library.

“It’s basically a 24-hour bike-rental system, in which you can check out a bike and a lock for a day,” she said. “We’d have a pilot rack right outside the IMU, because it’s a pretty central location on campus.”

The HOUSE platform covers eight topics ranging from safety to sustainability with proposed initiatives for a student food bank and quarterly newspaper.

Cumming spoke of big plans for the coming year but said he has the remainder of the school year to finish his reign as senator.

“First thing’s first; I need to get that done. We still have a lot of stuff to finish,” he said. “But I’m really excited to start implementing our platform. It’s going to be a lot of work and a long summer.”

Both he and Valde will spend the summer in Iowa City hammering out the details for their fall 2013 platform.

Valde said she wants to see the program up-and-running as soon as possible.

“We’re waiting to see how quickly we can implement this program,” she said. “We want kids next fall to have access to it.”

TOGA Party presidential candidate Aaron Horsfield said he was happy that he took part in the election, despite the fact that the results were not in TOGA’s favor.

“Being part of the TOGA journey provided so many people with the opportunity to grow as leaders on campus, become friends, and most importantly, make a change, not only through awareness, but also through the transparency — helping students become aware of what student government does here on campus,” he said. “I could not be more proud of my team, and I look forward to watching what each member of it will accomplish during the rest of their time here at Iowa.”

With many changes set to take place for UISG, the new senators are excited to start their terms.

“I feel awesome,” said UI sophomore Alyson Wennlund, and freshly elected senator.

“And I know that Jack and Katherine are super ambitious. They’re going to get their stuff done.”