By Bill Cooney[email protected]
The election to decide who will lead the University of Iowa’s Student Government for the 2016-17 academic year has begun.
The two factions vying for the executive position this year are the Yes Party and the BLOC Party.
Students are able to vote in the UISG elections by logging onto ISIS and selecting Student Records. Under the My Iowa tab on Student Records, students should click on the My Vote link, which will take them to the ballot page.
Yes Party
On the Yes ticket are Jon Langel and Elliott Smith, running for president and vice-president respectively. Yes has no official platform. Smith and Langel said they prefer to focus on what they could do from the executive branch, since the Yes has no senators on the ballot.
If elected, Smith and Langel have said they will give up their UISG salaries of more then $8,000 each and use them to fund student organizations and initiatives on campus.
If the Yes is elected, it will bring the BLOC senators and their platform along with them.
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BLOC Party
BLOC, which stands for Bettering Lives On Campus, aims to take control of UISG. It has a ticket of 36 senators. Rachel Zuckerman and Lauren Freeman are running for president and vice-president, respectively.
Student Life — BLOC said in its platform it hopes to improve student life by working to allow food trucks to operate on campus, encouraging more undergraduate art showings, improve the Wi-Fi signal in Kinnick Stadium, and to expand the charger checkout from the library to the IMU welcome desk, among others.
Diversity — The party said it wants to focus on diversity by: expanding the UI’s use of gender neutral bathrooms, expanding diversity and inclusion gen-eds to all colleges, working with student legal services to asses legal problems international students could face with a landlord, along with various outreach initiatives to veterans, first generation students, and those belonging to the LGBT community.
Campus Safety — The party said it will encourage the Department of Public Safety to include trigger warnings on Hawk Alerts, update the Responsible Action Protocol, work to get lighting and heat installed in cambus stops, and offer peer counseling and substance abuse recovery support, among other things.
Academics — BLOC has said it wants to decrease the number of 7:30 a.m. finals, increase the number of common spaces in Pentacrest buildings, streamline undergraduate research, and continue to lobby for an affordable tuition.
Sustainability — The party said it wants to improve sustainability by organizing weekly farmers, markets at the IMU, expand composting on campus, encourage the use of less paper during classes, offer a discount for double-sided printing, and begin a student carpooling network.
Accessibility — BLOC said it wants to increase the accessibility of UISG by increasing travel funding for student organizations, holding a State of the Students’address at the beginning of the 2016 fall semester, providing a UISG live chat for students during UISG office hours, publishing a UISG newsletter, and streamlining the UISG budget application process.